How to Organize Food Expenses

"Present a topic on budgeting. Again with the help of expert village, hopefully we'll be able to help people and assist people in terms of developing a budget. In this clip we'll talk about another budget item which is food and groceries. I would say that this is probably the third largest expense that's going to impact your budget and this is another expense for the most part don't have control but you do have control because again you can be somewhat flexible in terms of controlling these items. So food would be the next category that would impact your budget after utilities and after housing expenses. Normally most people will buy groceries either once a week or twice a week depending on their needs. A larger family probably a little bit more. If your family is smaller maybe little bit less. This is a category that through my experience can vary very, very wildly. I have some clients whose food budget is $100 per month and I have some clients whose food budgets are $500 per month. so you can see that that will impact the budget very, very wildly on a monthly basis. One of the keys I would recommend to determine what your budget is for food is to collect the receipts. So I would say for the next three months, what you need to do as you shop is collect those receipts and put them in an envelope and after a month add those receipts up. The second months again collect those receipts. Add those receipts up. And the final third month add the receipts up. And then what you're going to do is divide by 3 and that should get you a good average of what your food expenses are. And for example if it's $250 per month you can use that in your budget in an estimate that you are going to, on a monthly basis, spend about $250. So again the key to the food category in a budget is receipts, receipts, receipts. So retain your receipts, add them up and then divide by twelve or if you are doing it on a three month basis divide by three to get that average because that number is going to be important because we nail those changes depending on the time of year, the season obviously around the holidays you're going to spend more on food versus maybe in the summer where you're going to be out dining a little bit more. So that will impact your budget."