The Grocery Budget

For the past month, I've been keeping track of my grocery spending by keeping receipts and writing down any miscellaneous expenses like market purchases and take-away meals. Yesterday, I tallied it all up and found that we've been spending a bit less than €150/week.  I'd hoped it would be more like €100. Oh well. 

I wondered how this compared to what other people spend, so I posted a poll on one of the Irish forums.  44% of the respondents (over 100 so far!) claim to spend in the 100-150 range.23% spend less and 30% spend more.  I don't know the demographics of the respondents, but I'd guess that most of them are stay-at-home mums, and because they're looking at the finance forum they're probably more budget-conscious than average.  In the discussion of the poll, I learned that some women with six or more children spend less than we do, while I'm sure some couples with only one child spend even more.  

Am I over-spending, or are we doing just fine?  I don't know that I really care, but having opened the question I found myself whiling away the entire afternoon looking at these finance, menu-planning and home-management discussions in various mumsy forums around the internet. I got a lot of frightening 1950s housewife ideas about menu planning, etc.  I do like the idea of simplifying cooking and reducing trips to the grocery store, but I don't want to get bored, either.

For my next non-writing project, I'm thinking of devising a regular meal rotation that will save money and keep all of us happy and healthy.  We'll see how it goes. Meanwhile, I can waste more time looking up other people's menu lists.  Is this useful, or merely a frivolous waste of writing time?

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