Are you spending too much of your hard earned money on food? Find out with a free printable food expense tracker!
The average American family of four spends between $713 and and $881 monthly on food eaten at home according to the USDA. These numbers are based on eating food at home. The cost of eating at restaurants is substantially more-I would venture to say that eating out could easily add $100-$400 more to the monthly food cost.
I spend way less than the average even though I buy healthy food including organics. One of the reasons is because I track my food expenses. Tracking how much I spend helps me to stay accountable to my budget.
If you have never tracked your expenses, I highly recommend trying it for a month or two. Seeing how much you spend is highly motivating. It makes you think about what things besides food that you could be spending your money on!
Spending less on food might enable you to do things you would rather do like:
- Stay home with your kids
- Experience new things
- Take vacations or do fun things with your family
- Splurge on something that you want (For me-I like to buy something pretty for the house or quality non toxic makeup!)
- Save for a house or a car
No matter what your goal, tracking your expenses is a great first step toward accomplishing what you want to accomplish. I have a free printable to make tracking your expenses easier. I designed it where you can list where you spent the money and how much you spent in each category.
Here is a sample of what the columns in the expense tracker will look like when they are filled out:
As you can see, there will be totals for each category (grocery stores, online shopping and eating out). This way you can see easily if there is a category that you want to spend less on. There is also a space for the grand total so that you can know what you spend on food for the whole month.
Ready to start tracking? Fill out the form below for your free printable!
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