Feeding The Family – Budgeting, Planning and Tracking

Following on from my first post on the Family Finances survey – Feeding The Family – What Are We Spending?, today I wanted to delve a little deeper into the results and the feedback received on the survey.

The response to the survey has been fantastic, highlighting to me that spending on food is a big issue for families. The survey has provided some base data for comparisons, for families to see what like sized families are spending to feed their family. It does however have limitations:

  • Not all respondents new exactly what they were spending in total.
  • Not all respondents new the break down into grocery, fruit and veg and meat.
  • From the comments it appears respondents have used their total from the supermarket. So would include toiletries, cleaning products etc. I know this is what I did!
  • Those who have smaller weekly food bills could be eating out more.
  • Those who have a smaller weekly food bill may be using the canteen for kids’ lunches.
  • Some food choices are more expensive than others. For example I have started making my own breakfast cereal consisting of nuts and seeds. It would be triple the price of the processed cereal I was buying, but I am happy with that choice. (Thanks Theresa for reminding me of that!)

But it has certainly made me think about how much I spend and where I can save money. I will share some of this next week.

Budgeting

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53% of respondents said they set a family budget. The data highlighted that those who budgeted did spend less per week on food by about 5%:

Average amount spent per week on their total food bill:
All respondents:$198
Respondents who budget:$195
Respondents who do not budget:$208

Tracking

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51% of families are tracking what they spend on food on a regular basis uses a variety of tools. As with budget setting, those who tracked their expenditure spent on average 5% less than those who didn’t.

Average amount spent per week on their total food bill:
All respondents:$198
Respondents who tracked expenditure:$197
Respondents who do not track expenditure:$207

Menu planning

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94% of readers are menu planning some capacity, 56% doing so on a regular basis. And it was this data that surprised me the most. Those who did not menu plan at all were spending a massive 18% less per week on food:

Average amount spent per week on their total food bill:
All respondents:$198
Respondents who menu planned:$197
Respondents who did not menu plan:$162
The sample size for those who did not menu plan was 39, so relatively small at 6%. It would be interesting to have asked additional questions as pointed out by readers in the comments of the first results post and on the Planning With Kids facebook page about additional expenditure on food like school lunches, snacks, take away meals and eating out. Snacks, take away meals and eating out is something we categorise in our budget as miscellaneous – not that we have much expenditure on these though!

The key finding for me is that tracking what you spend and where is powerful. You can compare your expenditure to this data to get an idea of how you are going, but if you are doing your own tracking and know exactly how you categorise expenditure on feeding your family, you have significant information to make budgetary decisions on.

How do you track spending on things like school lunches, snacks, take away meals and eating out?