This is easily my biggest area for improvement...we have a LONG way to go actually on the grocery spending. Here are our stats: family of 5 with 2 adults, 16 year old boy who plays sports (who eats more than the rest of us combined), 7 year old boy, 5 year old girl. I've made strides since beginning tracking in 2015, but we have a long way to go. My target right now, for grocery and eating out combined, is a ghastly $1200 per month. I know this sounds like a lot, and it IS a lot, but we frequently have a hoard of teenage boys in our house eating food with reckless abandon. It's worth it to me to pay for the food and know where the teenagers are and what they're doing!
We have already made some improvements in this arena:
2015 our food spending was $2126.95 per month, yes, this is wretchedly obscene; I seriously considered not even posting this here because it is SO horrendous
2016 our food spending was $1774.69 per month. Still horrendous, but down an average of $352.26 per month compared to 2015
For 2017, my target is $1200 per month. As of today, the 19th, we are currently sitting at $776.15 spent for the month, which has us on track to spend $1266 this month at our current pace.
Please be kind...I am certainly getting some push back from the husband and teenager on trying to get our food spending under control. We both have 6 figure salaries so it's hard to convince my husband that this is something we need to reign in. It is our easiest place to cut the fat though, so I'm determined to get these numbers down.