I'm analyzing my 2017 credit card statements, and the biggest part that stuck out to me was food spending.
Using the credit card's spend analyzer tool, I spent approximately $300 a month in restaurants, and $200 on groceries. A chunk of the restaurant bill was expensed on my work, so it's marginally lower.
I'm approximately $450 a month on food. Is this particularly problematic? I could be on my school's meal plan which goes for about $2K a semester, so I'm still doing better than what most other students are doing. Food accounts for about 33% of my "discretionary" spending (not including rent or bills etc.)
Obviously there's a lot of room for improvement since I see many people promoting the $300/month guideline. But I'm very into fitness and as an above-average sized male, it's fairly reasonable for me to go beyond that. I could go on the rice and chicken diet, but sometimes school pressure just drags me towards diners or semi healthy fast food options. If I'm running late for class I'll just end up grabbing brunch from whatever's on campus. My TDEE is 2800 cals a day, so that is 40% more than the standard 2000 benchmark.
Should this be a particular concern for me? This cost hopefully will go down if I split it with a SO and start packing my own lunch + cooking breakfast more often. For what it's worth, I still have over 15% of my gross income set away for retirement.
Submitted February 11, 2018 at 10:34PM by idungoofedcx http://ift.tt/2EkJV13
