Why I Started Tracking Expenses
I began keeping records of our food expenses after a conversation with a co-worker that left me wondering, “How much does it cost to feed my family?” As with many people I had seen the news and other stories how difficult it was to feed a family with the resources provided by the SNAP program. You know the ones, “I can’t afford my daughter’s favorite kiwi fruit with the money they give us.”
Given that I have stood in line behind people using SNAP cards to purchase more and much more expensive food than I ever do, I was genuinely curious about how much it really costs to feed a family. I mean I do all the shopping, given that I have no interest in prepared foods, usually have as my main goal getting out of the store as quickly and while spending the least amount possible.
I forget what got us onto the subject. One day my buddy was talking about how well they ate when his sister and her son were receiving public support for a brief while. He mentioned that he understood why people would stay on SNAP given how well four people were able to eat while his sister was receiving SNAP benefits for two. Let us not get too far into the weeds here about this comment.
My friend and his now-fiance are both well compensated professionals and dine out quite often. The three adults also are quite accomplished in the field of quick, yummy and cheap cooking and I have no particular knowledge how their food budget is allocated.
Recording Our Food Expenses Begins
What interested me was that I had two views on how expensive it is to feed a family and no easy way to validate my intuition on the matter.
What I do is record all of the food expenses for our family. Mostly this is at grocery stores of various kinds but it also includes food and drink that we might (rarely) buy at a restaurant, fast food joint or other outside the home location.
The result is a long baseline of my family’s food expenses which I can use to calculate some average expenses on a per person basis.
So How Much Does It Cost To Feed Us?
For those of you that like to skip ahead to the end of the story, when I did this last year the answer was roughly $25 per person per week. Even that number comes with the caveat that we do a certain amount of building food stores so that we can comfortably survive a major disruption in the supply chain, which in the geographic area where we live will be caused by a major earthquake.
What Will You Learn Next Week!
How will this work on Doodle Mom’s blog? I will keep recording our food expenses which will cover roughly the previous seven days.
As we move forward I will discuss things like the usual stores I frequent and some timing issues around when you should expect sales and other savings opportunities.
Sometimes the subject will be outstanding deals that I found, such as the time that Costco was closing out their Kirkland branded chocolate chips and I backed up a small truck.
Mainly I will write about the methods and aproaches that this cheapskate uses without having to work real hard at finding deals.
See you all next week.
