This could be on the anti-mustachian wall of self shame. Our grocery spend was $720 this month. o_O. For 2 people.
Some caveats:
1. We just moved into a new house and had to restock
2. I have been doing mega cooking to prep our freezer, so I expect the numbers to level out eventually.
3. We won't be buying a ton of food between now and March 9th, so March numbers should be way lower.
4. We bought fancy things for a party this past weekend, and didn't end up using it, will eat this weekend instead.
5. Some of this "grocery" bill is house stuff too, but I know some other places I buy groceries and classify as a house purchase, it all comes out the wash.
Overall on food/booze, our spend was high this month: $1266 (Vs 2017 average challenge of $773).
Positives: Restaurants/fastfood/coffeeshops were the 2nd lowest they have ever been (if you don't count moving day coffee and snacks). I felt like we did a lot better this month on mitigating extra spending.
- Hosted games night instead of going out to a restaurant
- Ate at home before going out for a friends birthday
- Only 1 restaurant meal that was just Mr.HH and I (cheap chinese food tradition for Vday), rest was social events. (1 or 2 which would have been mitigated if we had fully been moved into the house..they happened early in the month)
- Only 2 purchased lunches (1 was just after the move, 1 was Mr.HH's work event). Every other lunch was brought from home.
- Only 3 purchased coffees, all on a road trip. Coffee is made at home or for free at work!
Areas to improve:
- Ended up caving and getting gross late night McDonalds last weekend. It was disgusting and has completely turned us off fast food. That is a silver lining I guess, but a complete waste of $18.
- Got take out pizza one night after a road trip, we had a freezer full of food. We should have not bought it. Now we have a frozen pizza in our freezer for situations like this.
Alcohol and bars was high, but we bought beer for our moving help at the beginning of the month, and wine for the games night that was not consumed.
Overall since we got settled in the house, our food spending outside of the house has been much more controlled, and even though our grocery bill is high, we are cooking a sh!t ton of food. Most of the meals I'm cooking have been around $3/serving (or less!)