How much do you spend on groceries and eating out each month? Do you know? When I started tracking our food bill, I was surprised at how much we spent. Although, when I researched the average food spending for a family of four, our budget was right in there.

Food is our second largest expense each month after our mortgage. This is true for most people. Feeding a family is expensive! And it’s also one area where we can save some money. A mortgage is fixed, but your grocery bill isn’t.

The first step to saving money on your food bill is tracking your spending. The tool that I use to track and budget our monthly expenditures is Mvelopes. I’ve really liked this program because 1) you can connect it to your bank accounts, 2) it has a user-friendly mobile app, 3) it’s easy to use, and 4) it’s free!

With Mvelopes you have the ability to create “envelopes” with different categories. For our food spending, we have a grocery envelope and an eating out envelope. Every month we allocate a dollar amount to each and try to stay within the budget.

When a charge hits our bank account, we can assign it to an envelope. My favorite part about this program is how easy it is to “split” up the charge. Every week I sit down with our saved receipts and allocate our expenditures to their correct envelope. For example, at Costco we buy mainly groceries, but we also buy toilet paper.  I put toilet paper under a different envelope than groceries and it’s so easy to separate out the items on our receipts.

Using this financial tool has helped us to know where our money is going and to create a budget. My next goal is to decrease our food bill (while still maintaing a healthy, unprocessed diet)! You can sign up for Mvelopes here. They also have a blog that shares financial tips.

Are you okay with your food spending? Do you use a budgeting tool to track your monthly expenses? Have you ever tried Mvelopes? Do you use an online budget tool that you love?

Mvelopes is not an affiliate partner. I just really like this program and want to share it with you!