Brown bagging seems to be one of the symbols of frugality, often touted as a way to save money in these hard economic times. And it’s true, buying lunch every day can really add up. Why pay up to $10 for a sandwich when you can make it for $2? So why do we need to be told to save money by taking our lunch to work and why is it so unappealing?

I think that the problem is that we see homemade lunch as boring, or we’re just not organised enough to get lunch ready in the morning before work. Also, I don’t think that twelve years of warm, soggy schoolbag sandwiches encourages sandwich taking to work.

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These are the weird little things I think about because I have way too much time on my hands.

If you want to cut down on the grocery bill, the first thing to do is to reduce how much food gets wasted. But what does this mean in practical terms? The other day I was thinking specifically about wasting bread.

I was eating the crust end of bread so it doesn’t get thrown out (DH tells me he leaves them specially for me), and I was thinking that throwing the thin crust out doesn’t at first seem like much waste. But then I did a little maths:

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Photo by teejayhanton

I generally think that we’re pretty frugal, but sometimes I wonder. So I thought I would share how much we spend on food and groceries, and some of the rationale behind the choices that are appropriate for us. ‘We’ are currently a household of two adults and a cat.

I keep a detailed cash flow budget in excel – basically we track every cent we earn and spend. This year, I did something a little different: I track our groceries in a separate sheet, linking the totals into our overall expenditure. What does this mean? It means that not only can I see at a glance how much we’ve spent on groceries for the month, I can click over a sheet and tell you exactly how much we’ve spent on milk v meat v toothpaste etc for each month and for the year. This also reveals how often we buy things like toothpaste.

Before I give a weekly total I want to tell you exactly what our ‘grocery’ amount includes and how I calculate it.

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