Grocery Challenge: January

Welcome to the grocery challenge! I am so excited to help you save your family thousands of dollars this year!

The first thing we’re going to do is track our expenses.

That’s it for this month! Don’t change anything about how you’re shopping, just keep your receipts & track every single one of them! This will give us a baseline to see how much you will cut your grocery spending this year & get you in the habit of keeping track of what you’re spending

Saving Receipts

I like to save my physical receipts on my fridge with a magnet clip(away from kids’ reach) until I can sit down and enter them in my spreadsheet. Many grocery stores also have a copy of your receipt online on your account! I like this option for any pickup orders I make. Even Costco keeps a copy of it on your online account when you made a purchase in the store.

Recording Expenses

I made this spreadsheet last year to help me track not only our expenses, but also break it down in certain categories, just because I was curious where our money was going. It’s free to download, so go get it and it will help you so much!

Tip: If you haven’t used Google Sheets(or excel) before, click in the cell you want to add to, then type the equation: =3.45+9.20+0.57(use your own expenses for these numbers) and it will auto-calculate it for you! I go down my receipt with each category and use a pen to cross off the ones I’ve typed in so I can see what still needs to be accounted for.

What is considered “groceries”?

This could be different for everyone! For me, I only count food items from the store as groceries. So toilet paper, shampoo, diapers, etc. are not added into my total. I find that this helps me have a more accurate idea of what we’re spending on food, but feel free to track those items separately!

What about restaurants?

Our family rarely eats out(we live 30 minutes from town & have two busy little kids that make it difficult) so I don’t add any restaurant expenses. I know we’re not spending much money there, but if you are a family who does eat out often, make another spreadsheet and track it so you can see how much you’re spending there and can make any changes if you want to.

Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions at all by commenting or messaging me on Instagram!

xoxo Morgan