This past Thursday, the official Project: Food Budget came to an end.

I joined PFB kind of late in the game. The other participants were about halfway through the project by the time I came around. And, of course, now it’s ending… but that’s okay!

Emily, the creator of the project, asked that in the final week participants share a little bit what we’ve learned, what we’ll continue to put into practice and anything we’d like to try in the future.

So… here are my answers to those questions:

• What I’ve learned: I’ve learned that budgeting is not as intimidating as I thought it was. Especially food budgeting. Prior to this project, I never took the time to seriously think about where all of our money went on food. It was enlightening and also exciting to see I could not only control where the money went, but also to figure out new ways to keep the budget in check.
• What I’ll continue to put into practice: meal planning! I’ve loved taking the time to sit out and plan a week’s worth of meals. It seemed like something that would take forever, but it honestly is not that difficult. Especially if you pick a couple ingredients and base several recipes off those ingredients (for example: pick several recipes that all use bread crumbs and bbq sauce or something like that). I’ll also continue to track our spending each week.
• What I’d like to try in the future: I’d like to try meal planning a month at a time instead of a week. If I could just take an hour or something and plan out an entire month, I’d save time during the week. I might also like to play around with doing a huge grocery trip for monthly staples and reserve weekly trips for produce and meat. It might save us money in the long run to do things that way.

Even though Project: Food Budget is over, it doesn’t mean I’m going to stop talking about food budgeting and recipes on the blog. I just won’t be calling it Project: Food Budget anymore! You’ll be able to check out all my budgeting, cooking and other food-related posts by going here or checking out the link in the drop down menu located under the Life tab. Hope you’ll keep following along! 🙂

Be sure to check in with all the participants of Project: Food Budget to see how their time with the project went!

• Dairy-Free Cooking
• Cook Write Heal
• Warm As Pie
• xox, b
• Project Food Budget 2.0
• That’s Just Me
• Two Eggs Over Easy
• Eat Whole Be Vital
• Four Happy Violets
• Pgh Dad
• yogabeautylife
• naMAMAste
• Six Dollars a Day
• What da Health?
• French Press
• Veggie Meal Maker
• Ignite Your Life
• Test Kitchen Tuesday
• Red Pen Mama
• Acquired Tastes
• Katy Rank Lev
• My Inner Healthy
• Little Blue Hen
• Fresh…A New Chapter
• Four Happy Violets
• Naturally {Un}refined
• The Gluten-Free Vegan
• What da Health?
• Twice the Twinsanity
• Brandon and on…