Many people get complacent in their financial lives and it works out for quite a while until a car accident, medical bill, or other emergency smacks them in the face. They have a realization that their finance habits need to change and that they need to change quite quickly. They believe they have to make up for lost time so they instantly become frugal as they possibly can. Spending less money is definitely a good thing to do, but your grocery budget is definitely not the place to start.

If you cut your groceries back to the bare minimum, eating pot pies, ramen noodles, and just the most basic of foods, you’re going to get sick of them rather quickly. You’re going to miss all of the foods that you know, love, and would eat everyday if you could. Every now and then you just want to eat some good food.

You don’t have any good food in the house, because you’ve forced yourself to buy the basics, so what do you do? You make an emotionally based decision and go out to eat. You spend $10 on a nice meal and go on with life. A few days later, you still don’t have any good food in the house, so you go out to eat again, and again. You’ll quickly realize that you’re now spending just as much money on food if not more than you were before you began your quest to become more frugal. A few emotional decisions to go out to eat instead of eating at home, and you’ve already blown your food budget.

It might be tempting to start with your food budget and slash it right away, there are other things that you should consider cutting before your food. It’s okay to cut your food budget some, but don’t cut it by more than 20%, otherwise you won’t have any good food in your house to keep yourself physically and emotionally satisfied.

If food’s not the place to start, where should one begin their quest to spend less money? Instead of nickel and diming yourself into not spending money, start on the big things. Maybe you have a car or other vehicle that’s out of line with your financial situation. Are there any toys that you have that you probably couldn’t afford in the first place? Perhaps you are subscribing to some services, such as magazine subscriptions and fancy cable packages that you never make good use of. Those are all great places to start cutting back before even thinking about touching your food habits.

Avoid cutting back in the areas that effect you the most emotionally. Food is definitely on the top of that list, with entertainment being a distant second in most people’s lives. Start with the areas that you don’t have an emotional attachment to, and then work your way on in from there.



 Related Content: