Grocery budget revisited

My grocery budget has been €80 for a while.  I can not actually remember the last time I went through our household budget, so I decided that this weekend would be a good time to check it out.  Having sat down wand worked out our in comings and outgoings, I've realised that we can now comfortably spend €100 per week now instead of my previous €80.  This is just as well as my baby has gone from one meal a day to 3 meals a day within a matter of weeks.  He has an excellent appetite, so though he is only a baby and eating a small amount of food in comparison with the rest of us, I still need to get some snacks for him and the occasional jar of food which all adds up.

This week is the fifth week I've tracked the money I've spent on the food shopping so I decided to work out how much I've spent to date.  Looking back I can see that I spent €228.60 on grocery shopping.  During the week we've sometimes had to pick up extra milk and bread, so I am adding on an extra €10 per week as I haven't made a proper note of this.  That means that over the last 4 weeks our grocery shopping has come to €268.60 which is an average of €67.15 per week. This is quite low. 

If you are wondering how I've managed to keep my weekly spend so low over the last four weeks it is because I have only had to pick up a few cartons of formula for the baby and no nappies, toiletries or cleaning products.  This is because I stocked up on these items before Christmas when there were some really good offers going in the shops.

Although I now have a budget of €100 per week, I will try to keep this as low as possible.  Any money that I have left over at the end of the next four weeks I will use to buy seeds and supplies for my garden as I will soon be preparing to grow my own vegetables over the spring/summer.

My weekly grocery shop for this week I spent €52.42 in Dunnes, €8.23 in Marks and Spencers, €4.39 in Lidl, €10 in the butchers (10 chicken breasts for €10) and €4.97 in my local green grocer.  That's €80.01 in total.