How to Plan a Food Budget
With the soaring food costs today, it is important to plan a food budget before going to the grocery store. To plan your budget successfully, you will need to make sure you incorporate all the food you will need until your next shopping trip, otherwise you will have to run back and forth to the store, spending more money than you need to.
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Instructions
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Plan a regular budget that incorporates all of your monthly bills. Once you have figured out what money you have remaining, plan a food budget around that. For example, if you have $300 left over from your weekly paycheck after paying your household bills, you might plan to use $150 of that for food.
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Plan a menu that will allow you buy all the food you need for at or under the amount you have to spend. If you are going to grocery shop for one week, you will need to prepare a list including all of the foods you will eat for each meal for every day of the week. In other words, you will need seven breakfast meals, seven lunches and seven dinners, not to mention snacks and extra needed ingredients.
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Search your pantry, freezer and refrigerator to find items you already have that can be used toward your menu that you will not need to purchase. For example, if you have spaghetti and meatballs on your dinner menu but you already have jarred spaghetti sauce in your pantry, you don't need to buy it again. Once you have searched the food items you already have, make a list of the rest of the things you will need for your menu on a separate piece of paper.
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Include the extra items you will need on your shopping list. Things such as toilet paper, paper towels, dish soap and laundry detergent all need to go on the shopping list. Also include any staples you will need such as flour, sugar or salt.
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Search your local grocery store circular for the items on your shopping list. Write down the sale price for each of these items and estimate the price of the items that are not on the flier. Match coupons to the items on your list and those things on sale in order to get the best savings.
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Tips & Warnings
Save even more money by food shopping once every two weeks--or monthly.
