End of October update: well, managing the depression + multiple back-to-school fundraisers + apparently running out of everything our house uses for no apparent reason has combined to mess with my best-laid plans. I did ok with groceries for the last two weeks at $175 -- I tried the new Weis, which wasn't really that great, but I didn't have time to do two runs (out of town) so spent probably $20 more than necessary there. The big blip was deciding to treat the family, which has been really good about not complaining about everything I'm not buying -- I picked up a bunch of ice cream at Weis since our local parlor is closed for the season, and I made a trip to the Italian deli to get DH a bunch of fancy stuff that he really likes (plus fresh ricotta for me!), so that's probably $60-70 total that was completely and intentionally frivolous. I remind myself (like someone reminded me) that it's about finding something that works for all of us, not meeting an arbitrary target; they are not going to be happy if they don't have their stuff, so if I can knock those treats down to once every month or six weeks, we're still better than when I was buying stuff like that every week or two. So MTD for groceries was $508. Household for this last couple of weeks was $63 (I thought we were in good shape until I saw a receipt from a Safeway trip I didn't know DH made Sunday), for $123 total.
The real killer was takeout -- we've had two school fundraisers this month at the local pizza place, and I've been up and down in my ability to cook, so all told we were at $92 for the last two weeks and $127 for the month. But that comes with an asterisk, as I worked late last night and DH ordered Chinese and I have no clue how much that was, probably another $40-50.
So in the end, I did manage to keep the groceries and household close to my $600 combined target, and most of what pushed us over was intentional choices on my part, but I'm still disappointed, because I hate not meeting targets, even when I've told myself I don't need to. We did noticeably better than last month, but "yay, I didn't suck as much" isn't exactly compelling. :-)