About Food Budgets

A food budget is a chart of food-related allowances and expenditures. It documents the estimated and actual amount of money spent on food products or services, including grocery and restaurant bills. Food budgets are popular in combination with other household budgets...including utility, entertainment and clothing charts.

Types

Food budgets are broken into daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly charts, with the most popular being monthly. Most food budgets are recorded in spreadsheets on a desktop or online software. Some people choose to keep their food budgets in notebooks that can be revised manually.

Benefits

A food budget can be predictive of what will be spent in the next cycle. It can also be indicative of what has already been spent. Food budgets allow users to identify where the money is going--with one glance--instead of backtracking through receipts and credit card bills. If used as a predicative tool, food budgets allow users to control spending by giving a designated amount of money that can be used.

Potential

Food budgets can cut costs for the future by tracking spending trends. Food budgets reject cost prohibitive products and encourage the user to buy alternative, lower costing items. Because some food budgets also break down the exact amount of money a user can spend on a particular item (like meat or dairy), a user will find the best buy and eliminate luxury items.

Considerations

Any successful food budget includes flexibility. Food budgets cannot be too restrictive. In fact, they should allow for unforeseen costs. Food budgets work best as part of a whole household budget, giving users the big picture.

To create a successful food budget, a person needs to consider their income and how much of it should go to food purchases. Initially, it's best to estimate rather then get too precise. After designating a percentage of the income to the food budget, a person should then schedule his purchases accordingly. Prior to setting a budget in stone, it's important to know how much items costs and separate necessary items from luxury buys.

Features

The primary feature of a food budget is the maximum money allotment. Budgets can be daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. Food budgets are further divided into product type, price and quantity. Some food budgets are interchangeable with grocery lists, allowing the user to check off items from the budget while shopping.

Expert Insight

Susan Krumm of LJWorld says, "Make a meal plan before shopping. Prepare a weekly menu to fit your budget. Consider the food you already have to help clean out the pantry."

Resources

• Create an Online Budget
• Dave Ramsey's Budget Solution
• Susan Krumm of LJWorld