My husband handles our finances and does a very capable job of it. He does not see the need for us to be on a budget. He says if we don’t need it we won’t buy it and if we do need it we’ll buy it. Of course, this is a very convenient philosophy for me to live by. J

But… My mother was always a saver. When my dad and she were just a young couple and had almost nothing left after paying off their bills each month she would still always try to put something in their savings account, even if it was only $5. So, naturally this has influenced my thinking.

I have been trying to think of ways that maybe I could cut back on spending and take any extra and put in a savings account. One area that I have been thinking about is the Food budget.

I did find this site by Crown Financial Ministries. They have a Budget Guide Online Calculator where after you type in your gross income, tithe and tax it will calculate a budget for you based on percentages for each category. For instance, the suggested percentage for food is 12% and for clothing it’s 5%.

You don’t have to sign up for anything to use the calculator and it only takes a couple of seconds to get the information.

The amount the calculator said I could spend on food each month I think I would have a hard time keeping to. For goat milk alone our family was spending $200/month. (We’re not buying it right now since the lady we were getting goat milk from moved to Colorado.) Still, you can see that buying milk at $6/gallon can put a serious dent into a food budget!

I do buy bulk and since we hunt we usually have plenty of meat in the freezer. One idea that I have been doing off and on and which I think will be a help to my budget is planning my meals.

I’m going to give this budget idea a try. I may see if I can budget more categories in addition to Food. I’ll try to keep you all updated about once a month as to my progress.

Does anyone have any tips on how they cut back on their food bill each month?