I almost had a heart attack when I saw our spending on food and dining for December. My hubby and I definitely need a major face punch for this. We managed to spend CAD $1,039 on groceries, eating out and buying alcohol for just the two of us!!!! Argh I'm so disappointed! We slacked quite a bit in December because we though we deserved it since we had been doing so well in terms of saving and were only spending $2,000 a month on everything (insert face palm). For December we ended up spending $3,500 in total including gifts and our ridiculous eating expenditures. So that means $1,500 less in our investing accounts (my heart bleeds)!!! I usually aim for $400 a month on groceries, eating out and alcohol, so I'll be working hard to stick to that for all of 2015.
Anyway, I've attached our December food/alcohol binge expenditures courtesy of Mint just so you guys can have a good laugh (hopefully I've attached it right and you can view it)! It's really easy to lose track with all the multiple $20-30 trips to the grocery store; so I will definitely get back to doing grocery shopping once a week to stay within budget. We also love the Vietnamese restaurant (Pho Boi as you'll see in the attachment) we go to frequently, but again, we'll go back to visiting there once a month instead of weekly like we did in December. And we also plan on cutting back on alcohol since hubby and I will be stepping up our fitness game over the upcoming months. I'm honestly surprised that we aren't overweight from such extreme spending on food etc.
Laugh away... And please feel free to offer any advice on managing grocery costs. We live in Canada, on Vancouver Island, where food is generally expensive, and we eat a lot of fresh fruit and veggies, nuts and grains, and organic meats... (and we like our chocolate and alcohol too).