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hrjBecause I've been focusing on food for other reasons this year, and because it's a category I've been particularly trying to get under control, here's some more detailed food-related data.
In order to trend some different spending habits, I keep track of "groceries" separately from "prepared food" (which includes restaurant meals or any sort of ready-to-eat items purchased for immediate consumption). From the latter, I've also broken out "meals" and "snacks" separately.
Groceries have been running pretty consistently around $300 a month. I'd expected this to change around mid-year when I started doing my food-journaling and subsequently altered some of my shopping habits, but interestingly the average stays the same and all that changed was a bit of an odd every-other-month fluctuation.
Similarly, the "prepared foods: snacks" category is relatively consistent month to month. Overall, the biggest month-to-month fluctuations result entirely from differences in restaurant meals, and it results more from the number of restaurant meals than from differences in individual price. (Although the time I treated the work gang to lunch is a bit of an outlier.) If I could stick to my theoretical goal of one restaurant meal per week, it looks like I'd meet my target budget easily. The biggest hazard on this point is conferences/conventions or other travel events where I'll end up eating out 3-5 times over a single weekend. At any rate, this gives me some data to use when strategizing for my various goals.
When I look at my overall budget and try to find places I could cut, if I wanted to, I keep wishing I had the fortitude to drop things like my cable service, but mostly it's nickels and dimes here and there. The biggest thing is the mortgage, of course, which eats up a larger percentage of my income than it theoretically ought to. One of these days I need to grit my teeth and talk to the tenants seriously about raising the rents, rather than just mentioning the possibility casually from time to time.
In order to trend some different spending habits, I keep track of "groceries" separately from "prepared food" (which includes restaurant meals or any sort of ready-to-eat items purchased for immediate consumption). From the latter, I've also broken out "meals" and "snacks" separately.
Groceries have been running pretty consistently around $300 a month. I'd expected this to change around mid-year when I started doing my food-journaling and subsequently altered some of my shopping habits, but interestingly the average stays the same and all that changed was a bit of an odd every-other-month fluctuation.
Similarly, the "prepared foods: snacks" category is relatively consistent month to month. Overall, the biggest month-to-month fluctuations result entirely from differences in restaurant meals, and it results more from the number of restaurant meals than from differences in individual price. (Although the time I treated the work gang to lunch is a bit of an outlier.) If I could stick to my theoretical goal of one restaurant meal per week, it looks like I'd meet my target budget easily. The biggest hazard on this point is conferences/conventions or other travel events where I'll end up eating out 3-5 times over a single weekend. At any rate, this gives me some data to use when strategizing for my various goals.
When I look at my overall budget and try to find places I could cut, if I wanted to, I keep wishing I had the fortitude to drop things like my cable service, but mostly it's nickels and dimes here and there. The biggest thing is the mortgage, of course, which eats up a larger percentage of my income than it theoretically ought to. One of these days I need to grit my teeth and talk to the tenants seriously about raising the rents, rather than just mentioning the possibility casually from time to time.
