How to Track Your Food Expenses

The very first step to spend less on food is to track expenses.  Tracking every single dollar helps you to know how much you are really spending so that you can decide if you would rather be spending your money on something else!  I can almost guarantee that you will be surprised at how much you are spending on food.  Here is an easy step by step tutorial on how to track your food expenses.

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Food expenses especially are hard to keep up with because we have to eat all the time!  But it doesn’t have to be too painful to track your food expenses-here are three steps to make it easy.

Step 1:  Save your receipts

Pick a place to put all your receipts.  Save every grocery store receipt, restaurant receipt, and online shopping receipt.  You will need a place to keep your receipts.  I keep my receipts in my purse and then transfer them to my desk.  If I order something online, I wait till I receive the receipt when my order arrives.  Then I make sure the receipt gets to my desk.

Some people have a designated basket or jar for their receipts.  If you want a cute option, you could use a cute jar like these from Amazon and label the jar “receipts”.

Step 2:  Get a Food Expense Tracker  

I have a printable Food Expense Tracker where you can easily record your every food expense and know how much you spent in each category.  There are columns for each category so that you can tell at a glance how much you spent at grocery stores, online retailers, and eating out.  You can sign up for the printable below.  (Once you sign up you will be sent a download link, and you can print off the expense tracker.)

Step 3-Record All Money Spent on Food on the Expense Tracker.