Tracking Food Spending

I have been tracking my spending on food this month. The reason that I am focusing on this category is because I think it is an important area that can fluctuate quite a bit. And I personally have a lot of control in keeping this expense down if I put my mind to it.

Also, I was having too much trouble tracking all of my expenses, so I thought I would be able to focus on just one category. (Now that I have begun using Pear Budget, I think it will be easy for me to track all of my family's spending. Check out my post about it here. And note that this was not a paid endorsement. I just found it to be just what I was looking for and thought it might be helpful to others too.)

So, here are the ugly numbers for our food spending so far this month:

3/14 - $497.57 (monthly subtotal as of 3/14)
3/20 - $184.20 (groceries for Easter)
3/26 - $68.97 (groceries - parents staying with me)

Monthly Subtotal = $750.74

Wow! That is really high! A good $250 over budget - but, some of the spending wasn't on groceries - it was for dining out, and that might be better categorized under "spending money". I'll have a whole breakdown of all the types of food spending when the month is officially over.