Midyear 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 half of the year I would share my progress and you can share yours!!

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

Savings - $5136.01

Spent - $798.92

That puts us at an average of about $30 a week for groceries! And a savings of 86% off retail!! I'm not sure how I managed to stay SO under-budget in the 2nd quarter especially since the first quarter I was averaging around $35 a week (maybe its all that eating out we did that you'll see below)! I will continue with my weekly budget of $50 and hope that the catalina deals continue to roll in!

This included all of our food, health/beauty products and household consumables (no liquor)! Looks like I'm a little under where I was in 2009, especially in the rebate category. And I still haven't been able to get those Costco receipts on my log...perhaps I should make that a 2011 goal at this point! I will tell you though that we don't do large shops at Costco like typical Costco shoppers, just little things here and there like bananas, rotisserie chickens, beer and a few staples if I can't manage to score them for a rock bottom price elsewhere (granola bars, apple juice, frozen breaded chicken).

I also promised to keep track of our eating out expenses too and were at just under $1000 midyear or about $165 a month. Eek that's more than we spent on groceries and we typically only go out 2-3 a month (although this summer has been more like once a week)! Can you imagine what I could have done with that money at the grocery store! And that doesn't include eating out while "on vacation" since that money is budgeted from our vacation fund. But looking at that number I know we need to cut back - how do you manage to avoid eating out if you LOVE to eat out!! How much do you spend a month eating out?

How have you done so far this year? Are you keeping track? Did you stay within budget?