June 15, 2023
Food and household supplies represent a significant portion of a family's budget. The 50/30/20 rule allocates 50 percent of income after taxes to needs, 30 percent to wants, and 20 percent to savings and paying off debt. Using this breakdown, groceries are lumped in with other substantial needs like housing and transportation. So, how much of that 50 percent should you be spending on groceries on average, and how do you compensate for seasonal changes like the altered family schedules of summertime? Exactly how do you go about creating a summer grocery budget that will work for you and your family?
Take a Moment to Assess Your Needs
- Groceries are a need, but needs change over time — especially when schedules change. For a family with school-age children, summer means no more school food plans for breakfast or lunch.
- Children may need food for summer activities or day camps, for example, and they occasionally may be responsible for bringing snacks for others as well as themselves.
- If children go to extended camps, you may be obligated to pay for a meal plan there or send food and supplies.
- At home, play dates with friends or visits from family or friends often include a lunch or a snack for children and adults. Hungry tweens or teens can potentially clean out your cupboards.
- If the whole family goes on vacation, weekend getaways or day trips, how much food will you need to fix your own meals, and how much money will you need to eat out?
Even the types of food you keep on hand may need to change. For example, in warm weather, cool treats like popsicles and healthy treats like fruits and veggies become popular to keep everyone happy and hydrated.
Once you’ve assessed your needs, the next step is to check spending habits — what you typically buy and why. Do you tend to choose pre-made, pre-portioned or pre-packaged foods for their convenience, or do you prefer to prepare your own foods and snacks from scratch? Do you tend to buy the same things each week, or do you like more variety and novelty? Consider how you handle buying the rest of the year and how summer activities may challenge those patterns. For example, you may need to reconsider something as basic as how often you shop.
Create a Summer Grocery Budget That Will Work for You
To develop a realistic summer grocery budget, you’re going to have to come up with a figure that determines your weekly, biweekly or monthly grocery spending limits. With the prices of everything relentlessly creeping upward, that can be a tall order.
A great resource for creating a baseline figure is the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA tracks food prices and spending and issues monthly reports on the average costs of thrifty, low, moderate and liberal food plans. Reports give both weekly and monthly cost estimates broken down by the age and sex of family members. Be aware that while food costs have typically increased about 2 percent a year since 2000. In 2022, prices jumped by more than 10 percent, with staples like eggs, fats and oils, poultry, cereals and bakery products increasing by percentages in the mid-teens. For more detailed assistance, you can use apps, online tools and food calculators to create and track your grocery budget.
- Grocery budget apps can help with everything from tracking your favorite stores’ weekly specials and sales all in one place to budgeting and tracking your grocery expenditures through debit or credit cards tied to the app. Search for a “grocery budgeting app,” and you’ll see how much help is as close as a tap on your phone.
- Online tools can be as simple as a spreadsheet. Track your dates and purchases, or itemize how you’re allocating funds when you spend. You need to know which items claim the majority of the budget, and you also need to be aware of your shopping habits.
- Food calculators can help you compare your grocery shopping and food usage to recommended formulas. Most focus on creating a budget designed for your family based on family size, the ages of family members, the frequency of eating at home versus going out, for example, and even dietary restrictions.
Establishing a summer grocery budget may take some trial and error, but apps and other online tools can be really helpful in analyzing spending patterns and identifying expenditures you may want to adjust in the future. You might even consider using one debit or credit card specifically for groceries to help you track expenditures.
Plan Your Meals in Advance
Plan your meals for a week or even two weeks at a time. It’s easier to maintain variety in your meal plans yet also allow for multiple uses of food or leftovers. The classic example is roasting a chicken for one meal and using the leftovers for chicken salad, soup or enchiladas later. You might also consider making dishes that work better in larger quantities — a batch of chili or soup, for example — and freezing half to serve later, creating two meals from one that’s budget-smart.
While planning, be sure to take advantage of summer’s bounty with seasonal produce. For example, summer is usually a tough time to buy citrus, but it’s the perfect time to buy berries or stone fruits like plums or peaches. Grocery stores will usually have local harvests on special, and they’ll also be available fresh at road stands. Purchasing what’s in season usually coincides with buying what’s on sale. Chances are, choices will be plentiful and will save you money. Plus, the produce will taste great because it’s fresh and at peak harvest.
Planning makes developing a grocery list easier. Use your recipes to check your supplies and create your list of needed items. Planning also gives you time to research suitable substitutions for ingredients that are expensive, hard to find, out of season, unlikely to be used again or simply not to your taste.
Shop Smart To Make Dollars Count
Save where and how you can. If you shop at stores with loyalty programs, be sure to enroll. Most stores have their own online apps that not only alert shoppers of weekly specials and promotions but also make online store coupons available that are loadable to the app. Some run repeat specials. Some even let you redeem rewards.
In addition, manufacturers issue coupons and rebates through various couponing sites. Be sure not to miss coupons and other savings printed on the insides of packaging, as well.
You may even want to consider one of the meal plan services. Most allow you to select a menu of meals for the week and then send you recipes and everything you'll need to make them. For families pressed for time, it can alleviate some of the pressures of planning, shopping, and having to buy in quantities that you may or may not be able to use.
Ultimately, the key focus is comparing prices and shopping where your dollar stretches the most.
Reduce Food Waste
One of the greatest challenges to budgeting is often simply overbuying without a plan for surplus food. As family shoppers, we want to ensure everyone has what they enjoy. Meanwhile, grocery stores are pros at making products look amazing, for example, and they aggressively promote their sales on meat or other staples. Likewise, food companies spend a lot of money making their packaging compelling. It’s easy to find yourself buying more than your family will be likely to eat or different items than you’d planned. With budgeting, the goal is to ensure that you’re not wasting food.
- Avoid impulse buys. If you really must have the product, wait, and work it into the next meal plan and its corresponding grocery list.
- Break up and repackage large quantities. Specials on meats, for example, involve large packages often more than needed for a single meal. Rather than fix six types of chicken in one week — something that could cause more waste — break larger packages into smaller, meal-sized portions, and freeze them. When you make your next meal plan, you’ll already have the main ingredient.
- Store leftovers properly so that they can be eaten later or repurposed in other dishes on the meal plan. Invest in freezer-safe storage containers that will let you freeze and thaw food without losing taste or quality.
- If you’re not sure whether you’re going to be able to use something before it might turn or spoil, freeze it. Most foods freeze well if stored or arranged properly including fruit, vegetables, meats, bread, and many bakery items.
Adjust Your Budget as Needed
Grocery budgets for the summer or any other time aren’t static. Needs change, and creating and adjusting an effective grocery budget can take some practice. Some meal plans will be a hit, while others may not turn out quite the way you envisioned them. Some weeks, the store specials may align with all your favorite dishes, while other weeks, you may struggle to plan affordable dishes that everyone will like. Special activities or social events can strain a budget for one week, while vacation plans or a weekend getaway can shift the need for funds. The ideal budget allows a bit of room for adaptability, flexibility, and change.
Creating a Budget for Summer Groceries
Summertime is a season when most households experience significant shifts in schedules and spending and is a perfect time to create or adjust a grocery budget. Simply assess your food needs, and determine a viable budgetary baseline that matches your household. To make it work, take the time to plan meals. Then, you’ll be able to shop smarter, reduce food waste and adjust your spending as needed. Looking for more ways to make your summer budget go farther? Reach out to the financial specialists at La Capitol to help make the most of your money.