Tabulate your month's food bills to determine your overall food costs.
Depending on how many people you have in your family and how expensive your tastes are, food bills may make up a significant percentage of your monthly spending. If you've having trouble making ends meet or simply wish to know exactly how much you're spending on food, you can calculate your grocery and restaurant bills to give you an accurate idea of what percentage of your income goes toward food.
Instructions
1. Keep track of every grocery store receipt for one month. If you eat at a restaurant during the month, keep those bills, too. Instruct your other family members to contribute by saving their receipts and bills throughout the month. Store the bills chronologically in a designated envelope or box and make a habit of putting each new bill into the storage area once you get home.
2. Add up the total amount of grocery bills and the total amount spent on eating out at the end of the month. Add these two totals together. The total amount is the food cost of your family for an entire month. Divide it by the number of days in the month to get an average weekly food cost for your family or divide it by the number of family members to determine the average food cost for each person.
3. Divide the items on your grocery bills over the entire month into food categories to give you an accurate idea of what foods make up the majority of your food costs. Categories could include meats, fruits and vegetables, beverages, snacks and desserts. Systematically go through each bill and list each food item under one of the aforementioned categories.
4. Add up each category at the end of the month to see how your grocery bill is broken down, then divide each number by the total amount to see what percentage it is. This will help you decide which types of foods you could cut down on. For example, if you find that you're spending 40 percent of your monthly food bill on snacks, you may wish to buy fewer or less expensive snacks.
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