Many people who have recently started couponing have a hard time knowing how much to budget for groceries.  I think this is very personal and by addressing this I in no way want you to feel like yours is wrong.   I just want to get you to think a bit and if you need to adjust ours please do.  If you don’t feel you need to just take this post and get out of it what you need to.

The first thing you need to do is to know how much you are spending now.  This means tracking your spending for a week or 2 find out how much you really spend.  don’t just guess.  Next you have to figure out what your buying and decide if you want to keep buying it.  As you build your stock pile you will notice you will spend about the same amount for a month or 2 but getting a lot more food.  then you will notice you you don’t have to spend as much and you can slowly shave off amounts of your grocery budget.

If you already have a stock and you are trying to see if you can live on less, there is a way you can figure out your ideal amount too.  It is found through trying to live on less!  We have had a $40 grocery budget for quite some time.  I was inspired by others to lower it and lowered mine to $35.  We have been not shopping for 2-3 weeks at a time and I recently discovered that we were buying way to much.  I tend to spend whatever money I have so I buy the max amount. I have decided to lower my grocery budget to $30 a week for the month of November to see how I do.  

I will try to use what we have and only buy as much as we will eat and not have to worry about expiration dates coming up.  I think we will find that we still have more then enough and I may end up dropping it again in a couple weeks.  So if you have a budget amount that you have been using for a while, don’t be afraid to lower it analyze what you really need and try to live within that.  I’ll bet you would surprise yourself what you could do if you challenge and stretch yourself a bit.

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