New Priorities, New Grocery Budget...

Many of you probably starting reading this blog after seeing me on the news, when I had already changed our grocery budget to $35/week. In a nutshell, the background story is that our grocery budget used to be $50/week, but then I did this $20 weekly grocery budget challenge for the month of October, and my eyes were opened! If I could easily spend $20 a week on groceries, then I could definitely lower our grocery budget down to only $35 a week.

Well it's been fun, my friends...but the grocery budget must change once again. The $35 has become harder and harder to stick to, and after much deliberation and discussion with my husband, we have decided to switch the grocery budget back to $50 a week (Ouch. I'm cringing at the thought of it, honestly).

These are some reasons for why we have decided to change our grocery budget:

• We started our $35 weekly grocery budget not long after we became Vegetarians. At the time, I was like most people in thinking that not buying meat would actually make our budget a lot easier to stick to. Little did I know, it would actually make it much harder to stick to!

• When cooking Vegetarian, you have to get creative. Many recipes call for exotic vegetables, spices, and other ingredients. Many of the ingredients are organic or can only be bought at an organic grocery store. You can imagine how this requires a little bit more money in the budget each week.

• I am beginning to lean towards more products that are Fair Trade and Organic certified anyways. I know we definitely can not afford to buy all Organic products at this point in our lives, but I would like to start including it in our budget sparingly.

• It is really difficult to come up with lunch ideas as a Vegetarian. A lot of times we have leftover dinner from the night before, but I usually just end up taking a PB & J sandwich, along with some other odds and ends. My poor hubby stays at home working all day, and I feel like he has nothing to eat for lunch. I need to start buying more fresh fruits and vegetables just for snacking on at lunchtime, in addition to what I buy for dinners.

• Back in October when we made the switch to $35 a week, I always received CVS coupons from the price-scanning machine for $10 off a $50 purchase. Without fail, every single week! It was part of the grocery shopping routine -- Stop by CVS and run inside to scan my card to get a $10 off $50 coupon to use at Publix on my groceries. Well, I no longer receive those, for whatever reason! I still scan my card every week, and no $ off a $$ purchase coupon. That is a large amount of money that I am no longer saving on my grocery bill each week, which in turn makes staying under $35 much more difficult than it used to be.

• We don't have the money to up our grocery budget. We barely pay the bills as is. However, we are switching cell phone services this month. (I will be blogging about this later on, because it is a company that I HIGHLY recommend). Our cell phone bill will be reduced from $130 to $75 a month. So that gives me room in the budget to somewhat justify this change.

• I need some wiggle room. Every week, I'm cutting things to buy, just so I can stay under the $35. A lot of times, these are things we really do need (like fresh fruits and veggies).

• I am back on my diet hardcore and have to buy healthy foods, as well as low-calorie snacks. (The snacks I can get for free or almost-free, though!). For example, it would have been nice to be able to buy some of the Smart Ones meals at Target a couple weeks ago, so that I could have something different for lunches at work every day.

• As much as I don't want to admit it, I was pressuring myself to stay under the budget for some wrong reasons. How often do I tell all of you to NOT compare yourself with other couponers? Well, I should definitely take my own advice, because I still find myself doing it. It's like I'm trying to make a statement of "I coupon, and that's why I can keep my budget so low!" It doesn't matter. As long as your couponing wisely, keeping your budget at what you have set it, and saving money...that's what truly matters. Every family has a different set of circumstances and needs. And for us, I think $50 will be a good number each week.

• It will make grocery shopping more fun for me, because I have that wiggle room that I talked about. We probably won't use the $50 every week, but we will have it there if we need it. Hopefully I can save a little bit of money out of the grocery budget each month.

• I can hit up the Target, CVS, and Walgreens deals when I need to, without guilt.

Will we use all $50 every week? Most likely not, like I said above. But I think this is going to be a nice change for us. It will make shopping quite a bit less stressful for me.

When I began discussing this with my husband, he said, "Well don't you want to be able to say on your blog that you keep your grocery budget low? That's the whole point of using coupons." And I said, "Yes, I'd like to be able to say that, but that's the trap I've fallen into." Like I said above, that's not what it's about. We have different circumstances and new priorities now, and as a result a new grocery budget must be put in place...

What About You: What's your weekly grocery budget? What special needs or circumstances do you feel you have to accommodate for?