A food budget built on your numbers, not your hopes
Food is the largest variable cost in most homes, and the one that collects the most abandoned limits. Usually the limit was set on hope: a reasonable-sounding figure well below what was actually spent, broken in the third week and then dropped. A limit that lasts starts from real numbers and comes down gradually.
Step one: know what you really spend
Do not start with the number you wish for. Add up what went on food over the last three months and take the average. If you do not record your spending, record one full month before setting any limit. A month of records turns up figures nobody expects, mostly in small meals and delivery.
Step two: split food into three lines
One food figure hides the difference between what you buy for the home and what you order ready-made. Separate:
- Groceries: the supermarket, vegetables, fruit, meat and bread.
- Eating out: meals outside the home.
- Delivery: what is ordered to the home or the office.
In many homes the third line grows fastest, because each order is small, and because orders come on tired days when nobody reviews anything.
Step three: keep the first limit close to reality
If the three-month average is EGP 10,000, do not set EGP 6,000. For the first month, set a limit about a tenth below the average, EGP 9,000, and divide it across the three lines in proportion to what each really took. If you hold to it, take another tenth off the next month, from the line that was easiest to keep.
A hypothetical household that averaged EGP 10,000 a month on food:
| Line | Actual average | First-month limit |
|---|---|---|
| Groceries | EGP 6,500 | EGP 6,300 |
| Eating out | EGP 1,500 | EGP 1,300 |
| Delivery | EGP 2,000 | EGP 1,400 |
| Total | EGP 10,000 | EGP 9,000 |
Most of the cut comes from delivery, because it is the line you can reduce without anyone at home feeling short.
Step four: track weekly, not monthly
A monthly limit is found broken at the end of the month, when nothing can be done. Divide the grocery limit by four weeks and shop once a week from a written list. Repeat trips to the supermarket in the same week are what add the unplanned items to the basket.
Step five: set one rule for delivery
The hard thing about delivery is that it is decided in a tired moment. One clear rule is enough: a fixed number of orders a week, or one delivery evening a week. A rule decided in advance is easier to keep than a resolution you have to summon every night.
How to follow it in Masareefy
Give every purchase you log in Masareefy its category, and the insights show your spending in each category against the same days of the previous period. For a line's limit, create a goal of the monthly category cap type and see what you spent there against the cap as the month goes. The shopping list compares what you estimated for the list with what is left for you this week, before you leave for the shop. Insights, goals and the shopping list are part of Premium. For the household budget as a whole, read Lesson 2.3: The household budget and the grocery shop, with everyone in on it.
Questions people ask
Should each person at home get a food limit?
Not at first. A limit per line is enough. In time you may find that one line, delivery for instance, belongs mostly to one person, and you agree a rule for that.
What if I go over in a week?
Do not make it up with a deep cut the next week; that produces another week over. Take half the excess off the following week and look at what caused it.
Does buying in bulk save on the food budget?
For things that keep and are used steadily, such as rice and oil. For anything perishable, bulk raises waste more than it lowers the price.
Log your food purchases in Masareefy for one full month, then set your first limit from your own numbers.
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