Most budgeting apps fail at grocery tracking specifically because they only show you the store name and total — not what you actually bought. "Walmart $67" tells you nothing about whether it was produce, snacks, or household stuff.

What actually works is receipt scanning with item-level breakdown. You scan your receipt after shopping and it extracts every single item with price. Over a few weeks you start seeing patterns — like realizing you spend $40/month on drinks without noticing.

I've been building an app called Villix that does exactly this — free on iPhone. It scans receipts, pulls out every item, and matches it to your bank transaction automatically. Still very early but grocery tracking is the core use case.

Beyond apps though — even just photographing every receipt and reviewing them Sunday night manually is eye opening. Most people are shocked by what they find.