Step 1.

In order to start this, you need to figure out where you are now and where you want to be with your food budget. To make this a bit easier, I've broken it down into 3 questions that may help you get started.

1a. What is your current food budget? Do you even have a budget? Do you know how much you're spending every month to feed your family?

Knowing this is extremely important because it's ridiculously easy to lie to ourselves about where we are. For a while, when we first toyed with the idea of cutting back, we gave ourselves a $500 a month goal. At the end of the month, we'd tally up all of our spending at Walmart and Kroger and any fast food we may have picked up (thank you Quicken for making that so easy) and every month I'd be certain that I hadn't spent nearly $500. All of my shopping trips were for amounts of $40 or less so there was no way I'd spent the entire food budget but every month, there we were, around the $460-90 range. It was frustrating, I just had no idea what to do.

Which brings me to:

1b. Why do you spend so much on food?

If you need to, try and save your receipts for a month and then read over them. I guarantee you that you probably don't realize just how much you're buying and probably just how much you're wasting or you don't need. We all spend differently so there are many different reasons that the bills might be so high.

Some people may be love a bargain and buy anything they see that they MAY like if it's on sale. Sales are nasty things that trick our brains into thinking they're getting a bargain and sometimes it's true but often when we think we're spending less, we buy more because we think we have "extra money".

Some people may love junk and snack food- anything pre-made or processed is automatically going to have a high price attached to it. For example, I can make a delicious, healthy, extra-large homemade pizza for around $2.50. A smaller, processed and filled with preservatives freezer pizza from Red Baron runs for almost $5. Snacks are killers too- crackers, cookies, chips, all can be terrible on the budget for very little in return. I can't believe how much you have to pay for premade rice crispy treats- it's horrifying! And soda? Don't even get me started.

Eating out can be a nasty vice. Nothing will deplete your food funds faster than eating out- especially if it's on a regular basis. When we were first married, I went through this lazy phase where I'd justify eating out for a meal because I associated it with things that might make my husband or me happy. The truth was, I was just lazy and the more I justified eating out for a meal here or there, the more I wanted to justify eating out so we did it 1-2 times a week. To feed both of us, it cost about $13-15 a meal which was 1-1.5 times what I was making for an hour's worth of work. I thought I was saving myself time, but I can make AMAZING things in only 30 minutes, things that are much better than anything you can get from Wendy's. Would you work for 2 hours just to get the results of the bag that they pass you through that window?

DISCLAIMER: I'm not trying to belittle anyone for eating out- I did it. I'm not saying that we never grab a burger from Wendy's- but it's only once every few months and most likely only going to happen if we hit some unforeseen circumstances and are stuck away from home with no access to other food or if we're on long car trip.

What happens if you can't figure out where your problem is? It's okay if you don't know, it's just helpful. Chances are that once you start your changes, you'll realize just what made your grocery bill so high.

1c. Now that you've figured out where you are and why you're there, where do you want to be?

Our $30 a week budget (perhaps soon to be a little higher) isn't going to necessarily work for larger families with more kids. However, DON'T get sucked into the trap of assuming that it's impossible to feed a larger family for less money than what you're already paying.

How to calculate a goal budget:

I'd probably start with $30 for the first one to two people. It's not low enough to seem impossible but it's a reasonable number if you're going to be cooking meals that both of you eat.

Now, comes the tricky part... kids. Most kids 10 and under don't eat a lot. We put a lot on their plates, we give them servings that are way too big but kids are smaller and they need less so if they're eating the same meals you're eating, the number of meals you get out of a dish may be a little smaller, but not much.

I know a few families with 4-5 children who maintain a $120 a month food budget. If a month has four weeks, that's $30 a week for 6-7 people. These families aren't starving, they eat pretty decently- I'm not saying that you have to be that intense about things, so maybe add $2.50 a week per kid 10 and under and $5 for 10 and up but I'd be careful not to fall into the trap of buying more simply because you think about the "extra money" you have every week. If you find that you're consistently going under budget or using the leftovers on junk food, maybe lower your budget a bit- it's all money that will stay in your pocket and gives you more of an exciting challenge.

Note: If you find that even despite your best efforts, you can't stay on your budget, try and figure out how much more you need for a reasonable week and add it. It's not going to kill you because chances are the higher total is still a lot smaller than your old budget.