1st Quarter 2010 Budget Update

Have you been keeping track of what you are saving and spending this year? You can follow along with me on the right hand side of my blog where I update my totals every week of what I've spent and what I've saved as well as the rebates I've submitted. I thought since we've rounded out the first quarter of the year I would share my progress and you can share yours!!

Here's where I ended up for the first quarter of 2010:

Savings - $2794.09

Spent - $422.30

That puts us at about $35 a week for groceries! A savings of 87%!! I'm not sure how I managed to stay SO under-budget except that I started with a full freezer and the catalina deals have been fruitful! I don't plan to lower my weekly budget of $50 but it sure feels good to be so under!

This included all of our food, health/beauty products and household consumables (no liquor)! I said in my 2009 annual report that I was going to add in Costco trips and I failed to do that. Our membership actually expired at the end of January and we just renewed in March. We have been twice but my oldest son swiped the receipts to get a darn smiley face and now I can't find them! Since not everything we bought was food (I planned to subtract out household purchases like clothing/decor), I couldn't use my debit log as a resource.

I also promised to keep track of our eating out expenses too and we ended the quarter at $388.35 or about $130 a month. I can't decide if this is high or low yet - I mean, we spent almost as much eating out as we did on groceries and I feel like we only went out for a few nice dinners! How much do you spend a month eating out?

How did you do this quarter? Did you stay within budget?