Winning at The Grocery Starts With Planning

Assess where you are – and plan the future going forward.

Winning at the grocery store has a lot to do with planning.

But before you take another step, it’s best to know how much money you have to work with. A budget tells you that. Businesses start with a budget. Households should, too.

Creating Your Budget – the Easy Six-Step Plan:

• Pull up your bank and credit card statements from the last month. If you’re ambitious, do three months. If you’re really ambitious, do a year. But don’t let perfection stop you from getting started.
• Don’t judge, just look. You want the whole picture…warts and all.
• (And if you don’t save receipts, start saving them now for fine-tuning later.)

• Housing. Transportation. Health and wellness. Debt and obligations. Household expenses. Miscellaneous. That’s it.
• Keep it simple. This is quick and easy (and gives you something to work with if you decide to move to an app or spreadsheet later.)
• While you’ll want to understand the whole picture, we’re mostly interested in the household expenses category. Groceries, meals eaten outside the home, household products, and cleaning supplies. That’s where we’re headed next. That’s my lane.

• Make a column under each category for each month. (If you have yearly or twice-yearly items, make a column for them, too.) Start sorting the expenses into the columns.
• For debt items, use the minimum payment.
• If you have overdraft charges, include them here.
• If you have bills not yet paid or accounted for, just make a note of them so they aren’t forgotten.
• As you categorize, it will be easy to see what is essential and what isn’t.
• Now you start to see the bigger picture over time. This is a huge win.

• Add all the money you have coming in. You know the drill if you get paid weekly or every other week: sometimes, a month gets an extra paycheck. To get a true picture of your income, multiply your weekly pay by 52, biweekly pay by 26. Divide by 12.
• Are you tracking positive? That’s great. It means more to work with.
• Playing catch-up every month and in the negative? It’s a stressor, but now there’s an opportunity to turn that around.

• You have all the information now.
• Recopy it if you want, adding in more columns for future months.
• Going forward, it will only take a few minutes each month to update. Most categories will need only a quick review and adjustment.
• Household expenses (where groceries, dining out, food, and dining delivery services are included) will need more detail, as much as you can give it. Same with miscellaneous expenses. Work off receipts for these in the future.

6) Now take a minute to congratulate yourself! You’ve done good work.

The Next Step:

A business doesn’t set prices without knowing its costs. A household shouldn’t set a grocery budget without understanding its current spending.

Now you know where you are. And if you’re here, chances are you’re interested in where to go from here.

Before we start making changes, let’s get a clearer picture of what’s actually happening.

As you move forward, save your grocery receipts. This is where the nitty-gritty happens. You may know how much you’re spending at the grocery store, but your receipts tell the rest of the story.

They show what was spent on food at home and away from home. They show what was spent on household items, cleaning supplies, personal care items, pet supplies, birthday cards, flowers, and all the other little purchases that quietly ride home in the grocery cart.

Don’t worry about changing anything yet. Just pay attention.

And keep those receipts. We’ll use them later.

Lucky you (and I’m so glad you’re here!), this is my area of expertise. I’ve spent decades learning how to make good food fit real life, and it all starts with understanding where your money is going before deciding where it should go.

And now the planning part starts to take shape.

The Business Plan:

Every successful business starts with a goal.

Maybe yours is to reduce grocery spending. Maybe it’s to eat better. Maybe it’s to free up money for other priorities. Maybe it’s simply to stop feeling like you’re constantly reacting every time you walk into a grocery store.

Whatever your goal is, write it down.

Now it’s time to decide how much of your budget should go toward groceries, household items, eating out, and convenience foods like delivery and takeout. Once you know those numbers, the rest becomes strategy.

That’s where meal planning, understanding sales cycles, inventory, knowing your suppliers, and all the other business strategies come into play. We’ll get there. For now, let’s focus on setting a realistic target.

Government and university studies regularly estimate food costs by household size, age, and gender. I don’t recommend treating these numbers as a budget or a goal. Instead, use them as a reference point.

The most useful question isn’t whether your spending matches a chart.

It’s whether your spending matches your priorities.

If you’re spending significantly more than the estimates, it may be worth looking closer at where the money is going. If you’re spending significantly less, make sure you’re not sacrificing nutrition, variety, or quality.

Keep in mind that every household is different. I’ve seen families spend very little because they garden, hunt, raise livestock, receive assistance, cook almost everything from scratch, or simply have access to lower food costs. I’ve also seen families spend far more because of dietary restrictions, location, teenagers, convenience foods, or simply being in a demanding season of life.

One benchmark often mentioned is the USDA Thrifty Food Plan. It’s frequently misunderstood.

The Thrifty Plan was developed as the basis for SNAP benefits. The “S” stands for Supplemental. It was never intended to represent the total amount a household would spend on food, nor was it designed as a universal budgeting target. Snap assumes the user will contribute 30% of their own $$ while Snap covers 70%.

The Thrifty Plan is also only one of several USDA spending levels. The USDA also publishes Low-Cost, Moderate-Cost, and Liberal Food Plans, which may provide a more realistic reference point for many households. Check it out on their Monthly Cost of Food Reports. And click all five of the links. Some of the best info is hidden.

My advice? Take a look at the numbers. But not as a goal, but as a way to understand where you stand. Then decide what works for your household, your priorities, and your stage of life.

And if your budget is little more than the bare minimum right now, don’t worry. That’s exactly why we’re here.

Let’s move forward now. Any of the Strategies will show you a piece of how to run your household as a business. I recommend moving on to

• Strategy Two:  Follow the Money – A Grocery Spending Audit

And remember:

The goal is not simply:

“Spend less money.”

The goal is:

Bring home the most groceries for the least amount of money over time.

That’s a completely different mindset.

Play the long game.

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• Menu Planning 101.
• Menu Inspiration
• Quick and Frugal Planning and Shopping

Winning at the Grocery: Twelve Strategy Overview

• Strategy One:  Have a Business Plan
• Strategy Two:  Follow the Money
• Strategy Three:  Pay Attention to the Bottom Line
• Strategy Four:  Bank Your Foods
• Strategy Five:  Take Advantage of Cyclic Changes in the Market
• Strategy Six:  Maximize “Profits” and Minimize Losses
• Strategy Seven:  Give Back to the Community
• Strategy Eight:  Invest in Training
• Strategy Nine:  Know the Products You Buy
• Strategy Ten:  Know your Suppliers
• Strategy Eleven:  Take Advantage of Special Offers & Incentives
• Strategy Twelve:  Use Sound Investment Principles