Monthly grocery budget summary update

Month end for us!! And pay-day tomorrow.

I'm really pleased I was able to keep under the $800 I set ourselves for the month (just!). For 2 adults and 3 little people, and one still in nappies, I think that's a pretty awesome achievement.

We've spent $794.04, and that includes $100 into the bulk meat fund for our bulk shop on the weekend (we tend to spend about $200). An average of about $1.74 per person per main meal, which includes snacks, picnics, and entertaining on two occasions. I don't feel like we went without this month, and hubby certainly didn't (I asked him!).

I'm pretty confident I can stick with that again this month although we will have a little get-together for DS#1's birthday.

This is how we spent our money:

• 25.9% F&V
• 19.3% dairy (yoghurt, cheese, milk, eggs)
• 18.2% meat (beef, fresh fish, chicken, cold meat)
• 16.3% pantry items (tinned tomatoes, tinned fruit (good in case we run out of fresh stuff), cereal (a biggy), sauces, oil, flour, yeast etc)
• 7.3% health and cleaning (deoderant, pads, tampons, toilet paper, cleaning, washing powder etc)
• 5% nappies and wipes (I've been slack using cloth nappies of late because a) they're consistently leaking and b) it has been to miserable and wet to be able to dry them)
• 2.9% junk food and "treats"
• 2.3% bread - possibly lower as I made a fair bit of bread myself this month
• 2% soft drink - we entertained, and we also tend to have a small glass each every night (definitely something we could cut down or out!)
• 0.8% dog food

I love having this breakup, because it shows me pretty easily where I can cut back if I want to. To me, the top four (around 80%) are pretty crucial and the most important, the others, especially junk food and soft drink are leaning more towards luxuries, which would instantly mean a $40 cut in our monthly groceries, and I could probably reduce our health and cleaning and nappies and wipes about 4% between them, so another $30. That means I could get pretty close to the $700 mark if I tried hard! And I could also cut back a little on the other areas, like the pantry and meat, a little if I had to.