It’s not how much you spend that matters!

Last week I was privileged to meet TWO great bloggers – Crystal from Money Saving Mom and Amy from The Finer Things in Life!   I’ve actually met Crystal before – she is, after all, my cousin-in-law’s sister-in-law! ;)   But, I hadn’t seen her since our wedding six years ago and it was great to meet again!   Meeting Amy marked a first for me (and Crystal, too!) – I “met” Amy on Twitter before I ever read her blog!   I’ve connected with lots of local people from Twitter at the tweetups, but haven’t ever met another blogger and arranged a meet up before!

Anyway, so we had a great time and it was so fun to get to know them a little better.   But, that wasn’t the point of this post!   Amy wrote a great post a couple of weeks ago about grocery stewardship.   In it, she wrote:

What we spend on groceries compared to others is irrelevant. I can’t evaluate my family’s food budget next to another family’s without considering our needs, food availability and costs, lifestyle, and nutrition (as we know it).

She hit it spot on!   I am never going to be the mom with the world’s lowest grocery budget, and for awhile I thought that meant I wasn’t a good shopper!   It took me some time to realize just what Amy said – that I can’t possibly compare my grocery budget to someone else’s because there are so many variables.

I don’t know if you eat 100% organic, dine out four times a week, go vegetarian a few nights a week, have a garden for fresh produce, include or exclude household items from your grocery budget total, or have special dietary needs, so neither I nor anyone else can possibly say if you’re a good “bargain shopper” or not!

It’s also interesting to me how many bloggers spend so little on their grocery budgets, but fail to mention that they often use [swagbucks] gift cards to pay for groceries from Amazon, or use gift cards they received from hosting giveaways on their site (etc, etc, etc).  It’s awesome that we as bloggers are able to earn money in a variety of ways that helps with our grocery budgets, but we kind of have to include those groceries we purchased with an earned gift card as part of our total spending amount or it’s not truly accurate.

At my workshops and Grocery University, I try to de-stress your actual grocery budget numbers and just encourage people to do the very best they can with the eating habits they want or need to follow.   It’s hard to just let go and realize that you’ll never spend as little as some people are able to, but it’s so important to just do the best that you can and relax and not stress about it!

I’d encourage you to go read the rest of Amy’s post for some food for thought.   And if you want to learn strategies for reducing your budget, no matter how much or how little you spend already, I’d encourage you to look into my audio series, Grocery University.