Create Your Own Grocery Savings Spreadsheet

I am a spreadsheet junkie. There, I've said it. I created spreadsheets to track wedding expenses when I got married and to compare home prices when looking for a house. It should come as no surprise that I've created a grocery savings spreadsheet to track my grocery savings as well. Just because I've created a grocery savings spreadsheet does not meet that I use it after every trip now, although I did religiously use my grocery savings spreadsheet for three months.

My results? Well, using the grocery savings spreadsheet for three months showed that I saved over 33% on my groceries during this period. Not bad, considering that I counted milk, raw vegetables, and other items which are never discounted towards this total. I know that some people separate detergents and paper products from their grocery savings totals, but I kept these in since I used coupons and sales to considerably lower my costs for these items.

Creating your own grocery savings spreadsheet is easy. In the first column of the grocery savings spreadsheet, put the shopping date. The next three columns of the grocery savings spreadsheet are the coupon amount saved, the sale amount saved, and the total bill amount. The final column of the grocery savings spreadsheet is the total savings amount, which is the coupon amount saved added to the sale amount.

After you complete your grocery shopping, you can enter the values in for each of the columns of the grocery savings spreadsheet. The final row of my grocery savings spreadsheet includes the totals for each of these columns (you can the Insert Row command to add a row after each shopping and the sum function in Microsoft Excel to add everything up). I also added a section which shows the percentage saved for coupons and sales (this would be the coupon amount saved divided by the sum of the coupon amount saved, the sale amount saved, and the total bill amount).

The great thing about using the grocery savings spreadsheet is that it allows you to quantify your savings. Once you know what your grocery savings are, you can reward yourself accordingly (i.e. if your coupon clipping allowed you to save $200 over three months, then you can spend part of the savings on something fun, knowing that you saved your family even more).

Grocery savings is a great way to cut your expenses without a lot of sacrifice. The grocery savings spreadsheet is a way to help you in keeping track of your savings efforts.