I made a sheet that I think will help certain people budget out their grocery costs. It'll likely be best fitting for those trying to maintain a tight budget or those trying to figure out meal prep costs when it comes to being a standalone grocery budgeting tool, but as a tool I think it can be useful for anyone to add to their budgeting system if you apply it correctly. It's a bit simple but I found the principal exciting. The link is here ---> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ghiCIcTTqbOmGcYnCVkwqpuqfyEEhX9LXhGqLjicoYk/edit?usp=sharing
On the first page you make a list of your meals along with their ingredient costs and how many servings you get from those ingredients. This page is also where you will see the approximate cost of each individual meal/serving (based on the buying cost and number of servings).
On the second page you will fill out the weekly calendar with the meals you intend on having on each day/for each meal. The table will then calculate how much it will cost you in total to actually buy food needed for the meals you intend on having.
You will likely find that if you go over the number of meals you can get from one purchase that the buying price will double even if you don't necessarily want double the meals. This is because table figures that the only way to obtain those additional meals is to buy another set of ingredients. You will likely find that you need to play around with real world buying options, prices, serving amounts, sizes, # of times you eat a meal, etc until you can find the most efficient and least overflow prices and purchases.
You may also find that you need to keep a tighter track of the cost of ingredients/products at your local or preferred store. I personally have found though that after one or two times of recording prices that things on fluctuated a bit so it might be the same for you. It is after all, for approximation.
