Oh, yay, Friday I love you

[selenay]

I was reading a debate on a forum about how much people spend on groceries each week. I know, sounds exciting. It was more about how much people should spend if they are on welfare (which got me boiling every time people said nobody on welfare should ever have any treat food of any kind but that's a different post), but many people were quoting their weekly bills and they're so low, it made me wonder where I'm going wrong.

Then someone linked to a report just out about the cost of eating in my area. A study is done each year on the minimum cost of buying a healthy, nutritious grocery basket each week. It assumes an average family of four eating fresh (rather than frozen) fruit and veg, a normal omnivorous diet in the quantities recommended as healthy and using store brands where possible. Per person, it comes in at around $44 a week. When the premium for being single (it's always more expensive to buy smaller amounts of things and not everything is practical to buy in bulk and store/freeze) is added, it comes to $55 per person per week.

So, the minimum that I should expect to spend on my food to eat healthily in this area is around $55 per week, based on 2010 prices (and food prices have gone up a fair bit in the last year *sigh*).

Suddenly, my average $80 bill (which includes toiletries and other personal care, 'paper' goods, cleaning products, cat litter, eye drops etc.) looks really good.

I even feel a little less guilty about the odd times it's $100 and impressed when it's under $50. After all, I shop at a higher-end grocery store for my fruit, veg and fresh meat and fish. This is because it often works out a bit cheaper for single little me to buy what I need there: all the fruit and veg is loose, so I only need to buy what I need rather than getting $5 bags of green beans or huge heads of cabbage because that's all the store has and watching them rot five days after purchase when I can't eat them fast enough. Also, the fruit and veg lasts much better when it's that bit higher quality so no mid-week top-ups to replace all the stuff that's gone bad with another $5 bag of green beans.

My meat and fish, yes, is slightly more expensive. As I don't eat huge amounts of either, it doesn't seem extravagant. Overall, I've gone from feeling like I'm dreadful at budgeting and must live on rice and beans to assuage the guilt to being rather pleased with my budgeting ability.

I've got no idea how two people can live a combined grocery budget of under $50 per week, but the people who claim they do either are not living here or they're buying things that I probably don't want to know about to keep within that budget.


In other thoughts...

Oh, Friday, I love you. This has been a long week. Thankfully I'm no longer at the "too tired to think, will have a melt-down in the grocery store" level of exhaustion by the end of the week, but an average, non-stressful week still takes a fair bit out of me. I have no idea how I coped through most of February, March and April with full-time work in the state I was in. The cousin who asked a couple of weeks ago when I was going back to work? Is a doctor and probably had a point about the amount of time that I should have taken off to recover.

Of course, if I had short term disability cover at work and Canada had a better scheme for sick pay for people in my situation, I probably would have taken the time off. I'm rectifying that: saving up with the intention of eventually having six months of salary in the bank and keeping my savings at that level, just in case the worst happens again. My long term disability cover kicks in at six months, but it's hard to figure out exactly what covers me until then.

In more cheerful thoughts...

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is really brilliant. Loving it. I may try to get groceries and other things done early enough tomorrow to be able to spend the entire afternoon reading it. Fantastic.

Comments

[nic]

I've got no idea how two people can live a combined grocery budget of under $50 per week

Two ways:
(1) Not buying meat
(2) Only ever buying reduced food / what is on sale this week.

(My grocery budget is usually very low because I buy in-season fruit and vegetables, rice, and stuff-on-sale. I rarely buy meat. But I do buy take-out, which of course means I spend more than the $30 I assume!)