For the month of August I've been keeping track of our grocery and eating out totals. People seem to focus a lot on that area of the budget, and I think we do fairly reasonable but every once in a while I keep tabs on it just to see if we're somewhat close to what we estimate.
Before Julia, we spent about $250 on groceries and $200 on eating out a month. That's 1 nice dinner out, 3-4 medium-priced dinners out & a pizza each month. Back then, we had a paid off mortgage and very few expenses, but even still I don't think we lived high on the hog.
If you ask me what we spend now, I would say $300 a month for groceries and $100 for eating out. Our groceries would be up because of 1 other person, despite the fact that she doesn't eat much. And since we have a toddler, we tend to eat out a lot less frequently. It's more of a hassle and not as much fun when a 2 year old decides she is DONE with sitting in a high chair when the food hasn't even arrived yet! Note this guesstimate includes household products (soap, shampoo, etc.), but it does NOT include diapers and baby wipes.
This month we spent $262 on groceries and $36 on eating out. All in all, I came in lower than I thought, and I hosted 12 people earlier this month, so that total includes a couple bottles of wine that we wouldn't have bought otherwise and some extra food. I did buy a huge amount of soup online last week, and that will see us through the next several months. It will give us 52 dinners, and the soup cost $154. So I can even throw in $100 of that cost into the food budget for August (even though it was delivered on August 30th), and we're still on target.
It was a good exercise, and I think I have a pretty good grasp of most of our expenses.
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