Improvements

No Credit Needed asked the question “What one area of your personal finance management would you like to improve?”

The one area of my financial life that I would like to improve is the amount we spend on food. Our family of four spends $900 a month on food. Gasp! Isn’t that insane? That is made up of $500 a month at the grocery store, $200 a month eating out as a family, and $100 a month each for me and my husband for lunches during the week. I would like to note that the grocery money also buys all our paper goods and cleaning supplies.

This past month I tried to cut back on the eating out and it totally backfired. Normally I eat lunch out twice during the week, then as a family we eat out twice on the weekends. That is our routine and it has worked for us for a long time. But I decided we needed to cut back. We did good for about a week and then I went crazy and we ate out three extra times. So I ruined the good I had done, plus a little extra. It’s the 17th and there is only $13 left in the eating out budget. Not good.

I just don’t have control of myself in this area. I don’t know why. Obviously, if it came to paying the bills or eating out I would be able to make the sacrifice, but it’s the first place I spend any extra money. When I am restricting myself from eating out I feel poor. It makes me hate my budget, so I just throw it out the window.

"Maybe the most any of us can expect of ourselves isn't perfection, but progress."~ unknown