There is a manila envelope on top of our fridge, and every grocery receipt goes into it. On the first of the month I dump it out on the kitchen table, pour a cup of coffee, and add everything up while Rosie "helps" by sorting the receipts into piles by length. August's envelope was fatter than I wanted it to be.
Our target is $1,200 to $1,300 a month for the five of us: Mike, me, Ella (11), Owen (8) and Rosie (4). August came in at $1,284. Inside the range, technically. But it was the very top of the range, and it took some scrambling in the last week to stay there, so I want to walk through where the money actually went.
The August numbers
| Where | Trips | Spent |
|---|---|---|
| Aldi | 6 | $612 |
| Giant | 5 | $438 |
| Costco (split with my sister) | 1 | $171 |
| Farm stand | 3 | $38 |
| Dollar store and gas-station milk runs | 4 | $25 |
| Total | 19 | $1,284 |
Nineteen trips is too many. My plan is one big Aldi trip a week plus a smaller Giant stop for sale items and the few things Aldi doesn't carry. When I start popping in "just for milk," the budget leaks, because nobody in the history of the world has walked out of a store with just milk.
What pushed it up
Back to school
School started the third week of August, and the lunchbox math hit all at once. Ella packs a lunch every day, and Owen packs about half the time. I bought granola bars, a big bag of pretzels, applesauce cups, and two loaves of bread a week instead of one. My best guess is that back-to-school food added about $70 to the month. Some of that is pantry stock that will carry into September, so it isn't all gone.
A birthday
Owen turned eight in the middle of the month. Cake mix, frosting, hot dogs for the cousins, ice cream and a veggie tray came to about $58. Worth every cent. He asked for "hot dogs and a blue cake," which is a very affordable birthday wish, and I plan to remind him of it when he's sixteen.
The hot weeks
When it's ninety degrees out, I don't want to turn on the oven, so we ate more rotisserie chicken, bagged salad and frozen pizza than usual. Convenience food costs more. I knew that while I was putting it in the cart, and I did it anyway.
What kept it from going higher
- Free produce. Our zucchini plants finally stopped sulking and started producing, and the neighbor two doors down left a grocery bag of tomatoes on our porch twice. That's easily $20 I didn't spend.
- The Costco split. My sister and I split a big pack of chicken thighs, a case of eggs and a giant bag of rice. We get the bulk price without twelve pounds of anything getting freezer burn in my little chest freezer.
- Leftover nights. Tuesdays and Saturdays are "fend for yourself" from the fridge. Nobody loves it, but nobody starves either.
- A breakfast push. On the last Saturday of the month I rolled thirty freezer breakfast burritos for about a dollar each, which should cover school mornings well into September.
What didn't help: I skipped meal planning for the week of Owen's party, and that was the most expensive week of the month by a wide margin. No coincidence there.
What I'm changing for September
- One milk run a week, max. I'll buy three gallons at Aldi on the main trip and freeze one. Milk freezes fine if you pour a little off the top first.
- A lunchbox shelf. One pantry shelf gets the month's lunch snacks. When the shelf is empty, lunches go back to apples, crackers and cheese cut from a block.
- Four oven-free dinners on the plan. Early September around Philly can still be sticky, so I'm planning slow cooker and stovetop meals ahead of time instead of letting the heat talk me into the deli counter.
For the record, $1,284 works out to a little over $8 per person per day, and that includes paper towels, dish soap and the occasional pack of batteries, since they come from the same stores and I'm not going to split the receipts. Food prices aren't what they were when I started tracking, and I've stopped comparing to old numbers. I just compare to last month.
I'll share September's envelope when it gets dumped on the table. My goal is under $1,250 with fewer than fifteen trips. We'll see what the milk has to say about it.
