Five years ago, I posted the first-ever “Ask the Readers” question here at Get Rich Slowly. “How much do you spend on food?” I asked in a short post (the likes of which one never sees around here anymore). For five years, people have been posting their food budgets for others to see.
Shauna wrote earlier this week asking for an update:
Would you consider doing an update to the “How much does your household spend on food?” post from 2006? This is a constant point of contention in our household budget.
- On the one hand, my husband and I are sort of “foodies”: We love to cook, experiment with new ingredients and recipes, share that food with others, etc.
- On the other hand, it’s a significant part of our budget and I feel like the general theme of most of the food-related posts on GRS is on how to spend the absolute minimum on food.
Many of our friends have cut back in other areas of their life (cheaper housing, cars, etc) in order to be able to spend more on food. They budget for eating out at new restaurants once a month, shop at the farmers market because they enjoy the experience, etc. None of those things are possible for us, even though we are supposedly spending more on groceries than most of the other folks on GRS, if the comments from your 2006 posts are right.
Our “groceries” budget is $750 per month, but that includes food, household items like paper towels and laundry detergent, personal hygiene items, etc. Basically everything we would buy at a grocery store. We live in the inner downtown core of a medium-sized city. We both work, and we take our lunches with us every day. We cut coupons where we can. We maybe eat out once or twice a month at low-cost places (pizza, happy hour, etc). We do grow some of our own produce (lettuce, tomatoes, etc) but there’s really only a four-month window when we harvest significant amounts.
My question is: Are we really spending a lot more on food than most people? Or are we just using a budget that doesn’t tell the true story? I’d love to hear what number others come up with, and the factors that influence it (eating at home vs. eating out, living in a city vs. a rural area, both partners working vs. one staying at home, buying organic vs. regular, etc) so we can actually compare apples to apples.
If I weren’t vacationing in Alberta with Kris’ family, I’d share our food numbers too. Looking at the most recent summaries of my discretionary spending (2008 and 2009), I’d guess we spend about $500/month on groceries and $300/month on dining out. That’s for two “foodie” adults in Portland, Oregon. These numbers are both about $100/month more than what we were spending five years ago.
The restaurant dining is an ongoing issue, and one that I’ve tried unsuccessfully to address. On paper, we can afford to spend that much dining out, but I don’t like it. It feels wrong. I’d rather use that money for something else. On the other hand, I’m okay with our grocery budget. Like Shauna, that number includes various household goods. It also reflects an increased focus on healthy foods in the past eighteen months. I used to buy junk food from Safeway. Now I buy things like organic chicken sausage from the local health-food store.
So, five years farther on — and facing ongoing price pressure at the supermarket — let’s look at the same questions I asked in 2006.
What does your family spend on food in a month? How much of this is for groceries? How much for dining out? Do you make an effort to control food spending, or do you simply buy what you feel like? Do you use coupons? Do you grow your own food? Is eating organic important to you? What other considerations do you make when spending on food?
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We are a family of 3, 2 adults and one ~19 month old. This is a an area of our budget I am constantly trying to wrangle so I am glad it is being addressed again here at my favorite finance blog. In the last few months, my food/grocery budget seems to have creeped up about $100 partially due to my toddler eating more solid food and partly due to rising food costs. We consider ourselves sort of “foodies” also, and how that manifests for us is mostly in the form of buying organic fruits and veggies for those that are part of the “dirty dozen”, plus an occasional splurge of a dinner when we have relatives in town or a birthday to celebrate. We live in a suburb of LA, probably one of the most expensive zip codes outside of Beverly Hills, and we are renters. We live here as it is close to my husband’s work and used to be close to mine, before I became a SAHM (who is now re-entering the work force, albeit part-time, slowly, and mostly from home). It is also a safe neighborhood relatively with a good public elementary school.
According to our online budgeting/checkbook software, for 2011:
We have spent an average of $717/mo for food/toiletries/papergood/cleaning items (spent at Costco, Trader Joe’s,Diapers.com, the occasional Ralph’s or Vons if we have something that is on coupons or something we can’t get at Costco or Trader Joe’s. We also get a box every other week from a CSA like outfit that costs ~$35 with fresh fruits and veggies)
We have spent an average of $329/mo eating out. (This includes our weekly $22 Friday night date of mediterranean food from our favorite restaurant, plus an additional 2-3 times out on weekends, plus clearly some other things that need to be eliminated!)
Our typical week looks like this:
Saturday: Breakfast and lunch in, dinner out
Sunday: Breakast in, lunch out maybe, dinner in or pizza night ($24 for 2)
Monday-Friday: Bfast, and lunch in, maybe a frozen prepared meal one night from Trader Joe’s, and then I tend to cook one day a meal that will last us 3 nights for dinner. This will be a whole wheat pasta with organic broccoli and grilled boneless skinless chicken breasts or a crockbot tex-mex tacos, or turkey meatloaf.
Breakfasts in are usually oatmeal with organic milk for my daughter, oatmeal or greek yogurt for me and cold cereal for my husband. We choose regular milk for ourselves, but once our daughter is off whole milk we will go organic as well.
Lunches are cold cut sandwiches or frozen Weight Watcher meals that have been bought on sale or the reduced guilt ones from Trader Joe’s.
We go to Costco about once every 6 weeks and purchase cold cuts and cheese that we will freeze if necessary plus bread to freeze. We don’t have a lot of space to buy too much in bulk but we do what we can.
From what I see, what needs to be eliminated for us is the little impulse buys we make at store (menu planning has helped this immensely), plus bringing our own food to outings we do that are not in restaurants (zoo, beach, etc.).
I totally admire those who live on $30 bucks a week for food, but I truly could not do it. My husband is a carnivore and would not be happy in the least if beans and eggs were his staple foods. I would not be happy if I had to make every single meal we ate with no breaks. I will be doing everything I can however to get my actuals to meet my budget ($500 for food $250 for eating out)
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I live in the ACT, Australia. During the 2010-11 financial year my household (two adults, two cats) spent an average of $520 on grocery items (bathroom, cleaning, toiletry etc included – but not pharmacy medicines) and $200 dining out, over a 28 day period ($AUD). We bring out lunches to work every day and cook almost every night per week.
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We spend $1000/month for a family of 3 adults & 2 young children. This includes most of our toiletries. We live in Brooklyn NY and shop weekly at Costco, Trader Joe’s (which is considered cheap for the items we buy), our amazing food coop, and every few months at Target for stockpiling veggie burgers, protein bars (which I eat a lot at my 80-hour/week-and-often-no-break-for-lunch job), and a few toiletries. We are vegetarian, buy organic as much as possible, eat tons of fresh produce and organic dairy, and buy fairly pricy frozen meals for me for lunch (though they often go untouched for several days at a time :p). This does not include the cost of the help we hire to assist my mom with cooking and cleaning in the afternoons. I adore eating out (which comes from out personal allowances, not our grocery budget), so we typically eat out for most meals on my 1 day off per week, and I will sometimes stop at a local gourmet deli on my way home if I get off too late to eat with the rest of the family. Well actually, my husband just lost his job, dropping our income by 2/3, so eating out is now reserved for my stockpile of Groupon (and other) vouchers, and we’re cutting back on the help, but our grocery bill has stayed the same so far.
We spent $800/month on groceries before I graduated from school last year, but also didn’t eat out much at all back then. With my super long work hours- which don’t include all the preparing presentations and studying and such I have to do for work outside of those hours- I get much more value out of spending my free time playing with my 3- and 6-yo than cooking and shopping.
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My boyfriend and I spend about $400 a month on groceries, which includes the other household items like paper towels, windex, etc (I want to keep it closer to $300 but it seems I struggle to succeed here). We also spend about $150 – $200 a month going out, and this is after cutting our expenses here quite a bit. I occasionally cut coupons (usually I bring a $5 or $10 off competitor coupon, as the store I got to accepts those from other stores). I have been trying to be a more avid coupon searcher online, but it seems like a lot of work for a little pay off ($.50 off $8.00 paper towels). I would like to eat more organic and more local farmers market food, but feel its out of my budget right now. We occasionally entertain about twice a month with a few (no more than 4) friends.
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We are in the same boat, wondering if we can cut back, but we spend a MINIMUM $800-$900 per month on groceries / household. This might include a set of curtains or vase etc.or other misc. household items inc. food and cleaning, supplies, etc. The MAIN reason is that we eat NO processed food and we spend alot at the natural food store. Coupons are nearly nonexistent for what we buy (we dont’ get the paper anyway and it takes 20 hours of scouring the web to land that one $1 off a box of organic dumplings…) — when our daughter was on a no gluten diet for a time, we spent $1,200. This is a family of 2 adutls, VERY VERY light eaters and 1 9 year old child in Central Maine.
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I don’t know if anyone will actually get down this far, but I just added up the food costs for the last 4 months. This is for a household of two adults in the US. This generally only includes food and toilet paper, as I don’t usually buy toiletries at the grocery store.
Apr–groc, $143.40; dining, $11.21
May–groc, $209.71; dining, $11.79
Jun–groc, $225.95, dining, $16.00
Jul–groc, $31.76; dining, $183.38
This does not include a once a month eating out experience which is our Christmas present from my MIL. Our grocery costs could be reduced by $25/mo or so if we stopped buying organic granola bars and the like, but they are a luxury we enjoy since they are convenient for hiking. And also for snacks while we are out and about, which cuts down on stops for snacks.
We shop at grocery outlets, farmers markets, and the local fish store for most of our food, and use mainstream grocery stores mainly for dairy and sometimes eggs, and loss leader sales (tuna steaks, yum). We are ‘pantry principle’ shoppers so don’t buy to a specific planned menu. So, for instance, the last 4 mos spending does not reflect the 1/2 pig we share with my parents every 8 mos or so and store in the freezer, although we ate homemade sausage several times in the last month.
June saw the opening of a new grocery store near us with lots of super loss leader sales, so we bought in quantity for the freezer. July we went on vacation, so the eating out costs went way up, and we also did about half of the grocery spending while we were on vacation for breakfasts and lunches.
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Wow, I’m amazed how some of these families can spend so little. I literally can’t figure out how some of you can do it. For a family of 2 adults and 2 kids ages 3 and 6 we spend $800-1000 month for food, cleaning supplies and toiletries. We are in the greater Boston area which is fairly expensive. Alcohol is separately budgeted, that’s $20-$40/month. We’ve cut way back on the amount of meat we eat. We do eat some processed stuff such as crackers, boxed cereals, pretzels, granola bars, etc, although I try to keep that to a minimum. We hardly ever buy juice or soda. We do buy lots of fresh fruits and veggies which I think is a big part of our budget. We try to buy paper goods, toiletries, and whatever food we can at BJ’s or Target. I rarely do coupons. I’ve tried several times to get into it but haven’t been able to make the time investment pay off.
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No kidding!! Your budget is like ours- we are 2 adults and a 5 yo and 8 yo. I have yet to keep our costs at $800/mo (including eating out, which is never true meals). We live in Midcoast Maine. I shop a variety of places, from group co-ops (where i buy flour/sugar, etc.. in bulk) nat. food stores, reg. grocery stores and we raise our own chickens, buy a 1/4 grass fed cow (cheaper than any supermarket price at $5/lb. for all cuts) and this year a 1/2 pig. we do get mostly organic, though i will often buy conventional fruit because i won’t pay $4 for one nectarine.
i know we could shave more if i was more diligent, but i can’t imagine getting it below $750 and not just be eating what i consider to be low quality food- processed white flour, factory farm meat and dairy, etc…
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Definitely don’t underestimate the wide variation in food costs from state to state, and city to city. Living in Spokane, WA, we spent about $280/month on meals for two adults, and that definitely did not include many “foodie” type ingredients. At that time, I was clipping coupons and shopping at discount/bulk stores heavily. Now, we live in central Ohio, and spend maybe $180/month on food–and I’m no longer clipping coupons or shopping at discount stores. We also buy more fruits and fresh vegetables than we used to. I’m amazed that our food budget dropped so dramatically, especially since I’m not trying to get “deals” the way I used to, but food is just cheaper in this part of the country. I guess my point is, don’t beat yourself up thinking you can spend as little on groceries as someone in Kansas or small-town Ohio if you’re living in a city where food just costs more to begin with.
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My husband and I spend $600/month. We only eat grassfed beef, poultry, fish, veggies, fruit and nuts. We don’t eat grains/wheat due to a gluten allergy. The $600 includes pet food, household items, etc just like you. I don’t think your budget is too much considering you don’t eat out ever, just like us. We choose to spend more on groceries b/c we want to eat healthy. We don’t buy processed anything- none of our food comes in a box which would of course be cheaper.
We may cut a few coupons if I see something I know we’ll use but we tend to be brand loyal.
We eat every meal at home- very rarely eating out except for a special occasion like a friend’s birthday or something. It’s just me and my husband (no kids); people tell us we spend a lot but if other people combined their “eating out” budget with groceries, I think they’d spend more.
What else? Oh, we don’t always buy organic except sometimes apples (for example) are the same price so why not?).
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We (two adults) spend $600 per month at the grocery store. That amount includes cleaning supplies, paper goods, vitamins, wine, beer, pretty much anything you can purchase at the grocery store or Costco. I should try breaking it out for a month to see what’s really food. We also grow our own vegetables during the summer. I make pesto from the basil and freeze beans when we get too many. I also can or freeze applesauce. Our eating out budget is $100 per month, but it’s come in at $150 a month so far because we had family that we took out. I try to use restaurant.com coupons or coupons from the paper. We use our personal allowances to eat out sometimes, which we don’t count in our dining out budget. We’re in Boise.
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I think between five adults living in the same household we do fairly well. I think we buget about $400.00 average/month on food and stuff from the supermarket,
we don’t dine out as a family often but we do dine out with friends maybe 8 times in a really active month.
I pretty much do all of the garden for the house.. I can produce a fair amount but certently not enough for the whole year… durning the glut of the season I produce enough veges for a couple dinners a week. But i don’t bother bugeting it much… Its only a $30.00 investment for maybe one hundred on a good year…haha
I only grow organic.. and we only buy what we need really and we don’t use coupons.. we do keep an eye out for sales though
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I am a single professional. I buy all my bulk supplies (flour, rice, pasta, canned food, sugar, spices) as well as meats to freeze (chicken, beef) 3x/year at costco, which costs me about $400/trip or $1200/year. I then spend around $40 per week (or $160/month) on groceries – mostly just the basics like fruits/veggies, bread, eggs, milk. I make most things from scratch and I tend to eat pretty well (ie. healthy). So I spend an average of about $260/month of home cooked food. I eat out at nice restaurants ~1x/week, mostly for social reasons, so I spend an average of $100 a month dining out. I know I could spend less eating in, but eating out is a major part of my social life, so I practically consider that entertainment/socializing rather than food.
That’s a total of $360 on food a month.
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My husband and I live in a semi- rural area that is a tourist town with some inflated prices. We typically spend $450 per month on groceries (not including toiletries and rarely including paper goods), and $200-$300 per month on eating put. That is probably high for a family of two, but we value quality food, typically fresh and organic. Our expenses are often higher in the summer when we stockpile food in season and pay for our half cow. Conversely, the expenses decrease in the winter.
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I spend $800 per month for a family of 8, we have six children, they are all under the age of 8, however, two of my boys already eat more than my husband and me.
That includes all household products as well as diapers for 3.
I make most everything from scratch and hardly anything processed. It is a rare occasion when a box of cereal crosses our threshold.
My husband works, I stay at home with the kids, homeschool them and moon-light as a free-lance writer.
I buy a lot of our produce at the farmer’s market. What I don’t buy there, I buy organic at Costco.
I’d say we buy about 60% of our meat organic, and I milk goats for our milk. I actually really enjoy the goats, so even when we increase our grocery budget, I’ll still do it. I make a mighty fine chevre.
We eat out only occasionally, and it comes out of the grocery budget.
Ashley
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Our family of three spends $400 a month on food bought at the grocery store and our community supported agriculture share, which lasts for 6 months of the year. We also spend about $120 a month on eating out.
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We don’t track exact amounts any more (all of our spending on not bills comes out of one cash pot every week), but we typically spend between $60 and $80 per week, more often leaning to the high side, so close to $300. Most of the time, we don’t buy cleaning products or toiletries at the same time/place as we buy food. The amount we spend eating out is determined by what else we spend money on that week, as we rarely eat out during the week.
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Our budget for 2 people is $150/month for groceries and we spend another $75-$100 eating out together once a week. I could probably get it lower if I were better at getting my hands on coupons. I have categories of items with price-points that I will not buy things over. For example, if we want cereal we go in the store and see what is for sale for $1.99 or less. If there is nothing that cheap, we just don’t buy anything and wait until the next week. .99/pound for fruit, 1.99/pound for meat, etc. When something is well below the price-point we stock up and freeze it. I’ve learned the cycle of my local supermarket pretty well, so we rarely have to forgo something we want for longer than a week before it goes on sale below our price-point.
I could afford to not worry about it so much (along with a bunch on nicer things in my life), but I’m trying to pay off my student loans as fast as humanly possible. At this rate I’ll be able to pay off over 50K in loans in less than 2 years (over halfway there!).
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Wow, actually reading all these replies makes me feel BETTER about our budget. I’m always reading about people who feed a family of 20 on $10 a week and feel guilty.
We are a family of 3 (2 adults plus a 4 year old) in central MA (suburban).
I just pulled up a report in Quicken and we spend on average $350 a month for groceries and $220 eating out. For groceries, we shop mostly at Trader Joe’s. If there’s a super awesome coupon deal I’ll hit up one of the regular grocery stores for items that are free or almost free. I didn’t include HBA’s or paper products since we get those at either Target or CVS, and I can’t pull that from Quicken with any accuracy. Those figures also don’t include alcohol (we buy it, but not very often) and eating out lunch at work. If either DH or I choose to eat out at work, it comes out of our allowances. This figure also doesn’t include stops at Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks.
I’d like to say that we eat all organic and cook from scratch, but I’d be lying. I tend to purchase organic about half the time but don’t worry about it. I also buy a fair amount of prepackaged foods – TJ’s has a family sized vegetarian lasagna for $6. Sure it’s a convenience food, but it fairly healthy and cheap. We both work, and cooking isn’t a really big thing of mine, so there’s a lot of nights of hot dogs and beans, or fish sticks and fries, so I try and at least buy the healthier versions. We do buy our milk from a local dairy, and I’d like to do a CSA or at least buy from a local farm stand, but honestly, right now I really have been focusing my time and efforts on other areas of our lives.
We do eat out maybe twice a week. Mostly small pizza places or local sit down family restaurants. I’d like to cut this down to maybe once a week. I use coupons when possible.
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I must admit I don’t track our food budget as closely as I should but it’s high.
Reason one: both adults in our house purchase lunch at work. But that’s one of those trade-off things: I’m buying myself some time. Once I am not working too much while trying to be a creative parent, I will go back to planning lunches. Fortunately we have healthy & not too badly priced options.
Reason two: we’re eating our consciences. I firmly believe that the people who grow and process the food that sustains me and my family deserve to earn a living wage. If it would break my heart to see my son working for a producer, I think twice about buying their product. That means fair-trade. That means choosing the independent natural foods store who pay their employees well, provide them with benefits, and screen their suppliers, or, better yet, buying straight from the farmer. That means trying not to support ginormous agribusinesses with questionable ethics, no matter how enticing the price (that part is a work in progress).
That means, more money. But I’m ok with that. We balance the budget by not buying alcohol or junk.
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I’m impressed with how little a lot of people spend on food on this blog–<$200 for 2+ people! I'm a single woman household and spend $275 per month on food, including household but not drugstore items or alcohol. I have been tracking my food spending to the penny for about 3 years and have never been able to get it substantially lower. I would call myself a health-oriented eater so buy a lot of fruit, veggies, organic milk but rarely buy meat or processed food. I bring my lunch every day. It seems like my bill should be lower than it is.
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I’m a single college student living downtown in a medium/large city. I give myself $30 a week for groceries and always get everything I need. I eat out, at most, once every two or three months. I would actually love to eat out for every meal because there’s nothing I can make that competes with a nice Chipotle burrito or a huge slice of Brooklyn-style pizza, but I’ll take the cheap pasta and rice dishes and quesadillas (and a heftier bank account) for now.
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We are a couple in our mid-30s, no children, two dogs, both working full time and living in Grand Rapids, MI (~775K in the MSA). We separate our food items from toiletries, household goods, dog food, etc., in our expense tracking system. Our food costs average about $350/mo, and our dining out averages about $200/mo. (dog food ~$80/mo) We brown bag our lunches every day and eat breakfast and dinner at home at least 4 days/wk. We don’t drink much alcohol, maybe 1-2 bottles of $12 wine a month, if that. For stuff like vodka and scotch, we buy a bottle or two in Chicago once or twice a year because it’s so much cheaper than MI, even with Chicago’s 9.75% sales tax.
We are semi-foodies and I love to cook. We do try to buy organic fruits, veggies, and meat whenever possible but there isn’t a lot of that in our stores. We’re fine with buying store-brand stuff IF it tastes good. We do buy some things at Costco if the price is better. I’ve noticed the cost of groceries has gone up quite a bit in the last three or four months.
I tend to work more than 40 hrs/wk so I am not able to spend as much time cooking as I would like. I think if I worked only part time our grocery bill would come down considerably from being able to cook in larger quantities for freezing and not buying as many prepared items.
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Single professional here, spending about $200/month on groceries, with maybe an additional $50 eating out if I’m in the mood. My grocery bill has definitely decreased ever since I spontaneously stopped buying frozen dinners as my default grocery item.
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I live in a small town in Central Oregon. My wife and I both work full time and do not have good cooking habits. I am dedicated to lowering eating out expenses. Our numbers are the following:
2011 Food expenses (7 months)
Groceries – $2636 / $377 per/mo.
Fast Food – $1381 / $197 per/mo.
Restaurants – $1089 / $156 per/mo.
Work Breakfast – $118 / $17 per/mo.
Alcohol – $64 / $9 per/mo.
Monthly Food = $756 per/mo.
Summary
I have been trying to cut impulse food buying but it seems to be my big weakness. I detest other types of wasteful impulse shopping. Still I find myself struggling regarding spending in the eating category. The next milestone in my finance goals is understanding the psychology of impluse eating/spending and changing that behavior.
I am certain my wife and I could live on $400-500 per/mo in groceries without much loss in quality of life.
Open to ideas/reading/advice on impluse eating.
K
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J.D., I LOVE LOVE LOVE this type of reader question–so very helpful. I’d love to see more of this on various topics (% of mortgage to income, electric, clothing, hobbies, etc). It’s really interesting.
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We have a grocery budget of $350 for two adults and one 11 month old. That includes all toiletries, baby food, paper products, and pet food for two cats.
We use mostly cloth diapers, when we do buy disposables, we usually buy in bulk from amazon and use “free” gift cards from credit card rewards or swagbucks, so that doesn’t count in the grocery budget.
We budget $26 a month for “date nights” which includes eating out and movies, etc. We usually also use credit card reward gift cards or purchase Groupons for eating out. Apparently we use our credit cards a lot, because we still have plenty of rewards available. Or maybe we just don’t have time/energy to go out much with the little one.
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I have been using Mint to track this for my household of 2 that are moderate foodies, with a CSA for veggies. Husband is avid cyclist which is capable of cleaning out a fridge if left to his own devices.
Category/YTD/Monthly
Grocery Store $3,464/ $494
Restaurants $2,176 /$310
CSA $742/$106
Fast Food $586/$83
Alcohol $458/$65 (Wine clubs etc…beer is under grocery)
Other Coffee Shops $240/ $34
Total Per Person Per Month $546 or if we assume 3 meals a day for 30 days $6.06 per meal
My goal is to get grocery + CSA to be $500 so working on reduce the purchase of chips, beer, wine. Budget for restaurants is $150 a month but the two trips this year to the east coast did not help..lobster tastes so good
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We are a family of three with one cat living in the Northeast. Up until recently, I thought I spent around $400 a month in groceries-including cat food, pullups for my son, detergent, etc. I checked my budget with Mint.com and realized that I was over by $100 for the month of July! We don’t eat out much, so this covers lunches for me at work as well (hubby is part time and eats at home before and after his shift).
So, I will be keeping a close eye on my grocery budget and see if we can get it back down.
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I used to shop regularly for food. Now I do not because I do not eat alot and therefore I used to throw away more food. Now I save by spending only 25 dollars a week.
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We spend about £350/$570 a month for two foodie adults – about £250/$410 for groceries and about £100/$160.
We both work from home so the groceries covers all our meals (three meals a day), drinks and snacks.
About nearly half our grocery budget goes on “premium” products – my boyfriend likes fancy coffee and spends about £20/$30 on freshly roasted coffee beans each month and we also have a “meat box” delivered each month, which costs £90/$145 – all the meat we eat in the month, raised organically at a local welfare-driven farm. We “justify” these by saving in other areas – cooking nearly everything from scratch, minimising food waste and growing our own veg/keeping chickens for eggs.
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Great question! I am looking forward to reading the comments. Sorry for the long answer below. This is an area that really interests me!
We are a family of 4: 2 adults, and a set of 3.5 year old twins. Depending on what’s offered, each child will eat an amount between half an adult serving to the same amount as an adult. We live in rural New England.
Groceries: $500/month
Eating out/food bought out: $40/month
non-food (paper goods, cleaning supplies, etc.): $80/month (I’m not sure this is an accurate number any longer–haven’t tracked it for a while)
We have 2 chest freezers and a basement that is adequate for storing potatoes, onions, and winter squash. Last fall we acquired a second fridge (nearly new, good price), also kept in the basement. It was ostensibly for occasional use, but it’s on all the time for fridge overflow, including up to 3 gallons of milk and 3 half gallons of OJ, as well as produce waiting to be cooked/frozen. The second fridge has allowed us to limit our grocery trips to 1 or 2 a week. We drink 3-4 gallons of milk a week, so storage is an issue. I’d like to further explore the cost of this storage, although the time savings is very important to us right now.
We do use coupons, shop some at Sam’s Club (paper goods, cereal, toiletries, deli items, some meat), use some discount stores, and try to watch grocery store sales carefully. (One of the higher-priced local grocery stores has some very good buy-on-get-one sales. But we try not to do any other shopping there, or else we lose the savings.) Careful comparison shopping and coupon use can fall by the wayside if the kids are restless.
We have some preferred products and brands for which we do not substitute, but we go for low/lowest cost on many other items. I have really noticed the rise in grocery store prices lately.
We also have a large vegetable garden and store and freeze some produce. So, we purchase minimal vegetables during the year. Despite being in New England, we are working to grow most of our own vegetables. That involves some season extension techniques, crop choices, and changing how we eat.
We seldom drink wine or beer these days.
We will sometimes purchase things like a bakery coffee cake, good bread (to eat with fresh tomatoes!), or good cheese.
Time and energy to plan, shop, and prepare is our biggest challenge. We do like to cook and eat, but with our schedules we find that we cook very simply these days. We avoid prepared foods, but will often cook large batches to simplify life. Cooked meat from the freezer (bought and cooked in bulk, frozen) saves us lots of time and stress at 5:30 on a weeknight.
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2 adults, living in an expensive city. We are foodies.
We spend about $600/month on groceries, including paper products and pharmacy items. We shop at the farmer’s market, and mainly buy organic food. We pack our lunches most days. We don’t cut coupons. We don’t eat a lot of meat. We don’t buy a lot of alcohol. We don’t buy much processed food. We rarely try to be ‘frugal’ when it comes to food, because we can afford $600/month and we don’t want to be bothered at this time in our lives.
We did take certain steps to cut our bill down to $600/month, though. I’d say our biggest savings come from the fact that, while we buy veggies and meat from the farmer’s market every week, we buy everything else at a discount grocery store in the suburbs every two weeks. There’s something about reducing the number of trips to the grocery store (we used to go every week) that has cut about $200 off our monthly groceries bill.
Our eating out expenses fluxuate wildly. For a long time we were good about eating out once a month, but we’ve fallen off the wagon lately.
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2 adults, medium sized city
2011 monthly average
Food-grocery: $431
Restaurant: $148
Alcohol: $193
Average total: $772/month
- Grocery includes weekly CSA and household supplies
- Alcohol includes going out with friends and beer/wine we buy at grocery store
We pay more in food/alcohol than any other budget category, including rent. I am impressed by how little some can spend. I cook most meals from scratch using “whole foods” and we like high quality fruits and veggies. We eat meat ~2x per month. If I eat meat, I want it to be a decent, high quality cut.
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My husband and I are both graduate students living in Columbus, OH. We were lucky to start our marriage little debt (a few hundred dollars on a credit card) and a small nest egg of $7,000 in the bank. While we are young, we live pretty frugally (blame our childhoods, lol). Our grocery budget for the two of us per month totals around $250. We buy organic on things that are important to us (meats and eggs) but for the most part we shop as much as we can at the discount store Aldi. Most other things (that can’t be found at Aldi) end up being store brand from another grocery store or in bulk from Costco. We are fairly frugal, but we still splurge on things we really like and manage to keep our bills under $250 a month.
We also limit our restaurant eating to about $50-75 per month…which we both consider to be a lot.
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We budget $500 a month for groceries for two adults inside the City of Chicago. We shop first at the farmer’s markets though so that is why it is so high. What we can’t get @ the markets, we spread between Aldi, Jewel, Whole Foods and Costco. We have it down pat about what we comfortable buying from where. We focus on source of product as priority on some things and price on others. We are price aware but also aware of trying to eat healthy and environmentally sound as well.
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I keep my budget really tight because while I qualify for IBR/ICR plans for my student loans…god I want to get out of debt. I give myself about $100/mo allowance for food, and this includes eating out (like, pizza or happy hour or lunches I buy at work). Most of the food I buy is organic, and also bulk rather than pre-packaged. I’m not vegetarian, but I rarely buy meat. Eating organically is probably easier because I work part-time at a co-op and get a discount. Some months I might spend a little bit more on food, if I decide to use my ‘having a life’ (yes, I have envelopes with these budget titles on them
) allowance to buy beer or get popcorn at the movies or something. I live in a high-density urban area, but it is one of the less expensive big cities in the US.
Of course, if I had more money, I would probably spend more on food because I do love it and I think that eating locally and organically is important, and I don’t think I get enough fruits and veggies. That being said, I’m not sure why any one person would need more than my monthly income to buy food.
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the dude and I spend about $150 per month on food, if that, in New York City. We belong to a CSA, so our produce is taken care of upfront (but even if it weren’t, it would be about $20 a week) and because he’s a professional chef, he is like the MacGyver of the kitchen–he can make ridiculously long-lasting meals out of ANYTHING. We almost never shop for groceries unless one of us has a specific craving–pretty much the only thing we ever get from the grocery store is rice and/or beans, milk, and occasionally cereal. We just get our produce, and pick up whatever meat is on clearance at the butcher shop, and there you have it.
Dog food I buy in bulk but the dog has her own bank account, so it doesn’t come out of our food budget. Either way, it’s maybe $40 every four or five months.
It actually began as a challenge for us–we jokingly decided to see how little we could spend on food in this city and then it was so much fun, we kept doing it. We eat a LOT of leftovers and rarely eat out except for occasional takeout from our favorite Indian place (where you can get a full meal for $8), so those are two major factors. We could spend more money on food, but most of the time, we just don’t need to.
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we have an $80/week grocery budget (so $360/month) for two people. we use cash, and tend to build up a bit of a cushion, which we spend on things like stocking up on natural meats for the freezer, or a crate of tomatoes to can (though not this year-the heat’s pretty well done in the tomatoes).
that doesn’t include eating out, which we do way more often than i like. but we’re halving our income this week, so that’s out the window now. that said, i had no problem 5 years ago with a $40 budget and no eating out.
i suspect it’s all pretty dependent on location, though.
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oh, and as the wife doesn’t drink, alcohol comes from my allowance, not the family food budget =)
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These comments are making me feel a LOT better about my household budget. My DH was complaining the other day about our budget of $500/mo for groceries/farmer’s market/Costco. We are a family of 2 adults in an extremely HCOL area (milk is $8/gallon, if that means anything). I work F/T, but do as much sale shopping and couponing as possible. However, I cook from scratch and am extremely picky about what goes into our bodies, so 50%+ of the food I buy is organic. $80-$100 of the budget is for local produce/organic meat/honey from the farmer’s market. The Costco part of the budget includes non-food-items such as TP, dish liquid, Ziplocs, batteries, toothbrushes, tupperware, etc (I don’t separate out food & non-food items).
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We are a family of 5 but my youngest is strictly tube fed so really we can just count 4. We spend about $400 a month on groceries and about $120 a month on eating out.
We don’t use paper products at all so that cuts the expenses down. We also don’t eat out much at all. It’s hard being vegan in the midwest to eat out!
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Two adults, a 3-year-old and a 1 1/2 year old comes to about $400 – $500 per month in groceries (no household products included in that figure). Going out/buying take-out costs us on average $100/month.
We live in Northern Indiana. I have a garden where I grow small amounts of kale, lettuce, turnips, tomatoes, green pepper, cucumber, and some green beans, which helps a little bit.
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Oh, and another $100 for my husband who eats out for lunch sometimes when he’s at work.
So, per month: $400 – $500 in groceries, $100 for family meals out, and $100 in occasional lunches out. I would love to bring these figures down further by growing more food, and am trying to learn to cook with more fresh produce so that I can do that.
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For my wife, 2 toddlers, and I:
We spend ~$200/week on groceries, $30/week dining out, and $10/week for my lunches. I only eat out for lunch once a week, the rest of the week I pack.
We were only spending ~$120/week last year but have since found out both boys have some allergies to dairy, soy, wheat, and rice. Therefore we’ve had to go almost organic and I now shopping at Whole Foods and other grocery stores rather than a Wal-Mart or Meijer.
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Single Male living in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. I live downtown, no car, but I’m in an area where I am a 15 minute walk from approximately 4 different grocery stores and a pharmacy that might as well be a grocery store.
I follow a strict-ish “Slow-carb diet” or even what some would refer to as a “Paleo diet”. I mostly each fresh vegetables and all types of meat. I eat the same things all the time and I have a huge freezer that I use to freeze meat when it goes on sale (I never pay more than ~$3/lbs for any type). I don’t eat much seafood unless it is on sale.
Weekly Cost: $30-35 CAD
If I substituted more of my meat for lentils/beans I imagine I’d spend $25-30/week.
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We have a family of 5 which lives off of 1 income, which includes 2 adults, a boy will be 11 at the end of the month who eats like an adult, a 28 month old and a 4 month old who is exclusively breastfeed. The younger two are in diapers, but we use cloth diapers. We live in Southern Illinois, in a town of 25,000 not including the students from the University.
On groceries alone we spend $320 a month. We eat very little meat. Due to allergies we have to get hormone & antibiotic free meats & dairy products. We stick to the dirty 15 on fruits/vegetables. Most of our meals are made from scratch, every now & then I will spring and buy junk food for the family. If I do I use coupons for it. I rarely find coupons for the products that we buy and tend to buy in bulk.
On toiletries, supplies to make detergents and supplies to make our cleaning products (vinegar, baking soda & essential oils when needed) we spend $75 a month.
Dining out for us comes out of our entertainment budget. We spend a max of $100 a month on dining out.
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For my family of three+ (two adults, 4-year old child, plus senior cat), we’ve spent an average of $750/month in 2011 for food. This includes most of our sundries (paper goods, toiletries, minor first aid, etc), and also includes specialty canned cat food & litter ($40/month). Dining out averages below $50/month. We live in a suburban area just outside Sacramento in central California.
We get most of our meat, fruit, and vegetables at farmers markets, and buy everything else organic at our local Co-op, Trader Joes, and supermarket. Difficult to use coupons for most of our staples. Our grocery bill also includes alcohol, maybe a cheap bottle of wine or 12-pack of beer each week.
For reference, our food bill has increased in the past few years. In 2009 it was $550/month, in 2010 it was $650/month. I suspect most of the increase is due to focusing more on the farmers markets, especially for meat; we try to reduce quantity, but still have a little meat with nearly every meal. All in all, I’m satisfied with our numbers — in 2008 (before we had a family budget) we regularly spent over $1000 per month for groceries living in Los Angeles, buying much more packaged food, not to mention many more meals out.
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I find this all very surprising. I understand that, depending on where you live/size of your family/type of meals you eat, your costs will vary. However, based on the people I saw closest to our situation, I am aghast at the amount of money spent. My situation: 2 person household, my husband and myself. We spend between $150-$175 dollars on groceries and between 0-50 dollars for toiletries/cleaning supplies (this varies because we buy in bulk so we rarely have to buy them). We eat meat at least 3 nights a week, cook all our meals at home and take our lunches. We rarely eat out (once or twice a month, maybe) so that’s budgeted as entertainment, not in our groceries. Our groceries on the other hand are fresh, organic/local, include meat from a butcher, include our lunches, and we still manage to have a very varied menu. He cooks a lot and I bake everything from scratch, so I know those factor into it as well….but i’m still surprised by the difference in responses. Very interesting.
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Our grocery budget is $ 80.00 a week including cleaning supplies and paper products. This is for a family of four, it provides breakfast and brown bag lunches for three of us and dinner for all four of us plus friends and extended family members on many occasions. I am also a bit of a baker and love to take treats to work to share with my coworkers. I buy fresh fruit and vegetables every week and cook from scratch most of the time, keeping prepackaged food to a minimum.
We also allow for a $ 50.00 dining out budget per week, it usually provides us lunch out after church on Sunday plus a treat or two during the week……..like a vanilla coke or scoop of ice cream
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I spend an average of $280/month on food – $182 on groceries and $97 on eating out, for one person. I don’t try all that hard to control my food spending, but I do make and pack all my lunches. I tend to pick up the tab more often when I’m out with my boyfriend because I’m in a better financial position than he is. I avoid processed crap and try to eat lots of produce (not worried about organic food) and make meals mostly from scratch.
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I am a semi-recent grad working full-time in a small city (11k pop) outside of Sacramento, CA. I spend approximately $400/month on food (probably 50/50 groceries and eating out), and it’s just me!! I blame it on the lunches with the coworkers. Prior to graduation, I worked full-time during summer months with a good number of people who brought their lunches practically every day and only ate out occasionally as group. I do not cook very well so I subsisted on a lot of fruit during the work day and forewent dinner. Now, the size of the office I currently work at is substantially less and, for the most part, do not brown bag their lunches.
I find I really only eat out socially, hence the blame, and/or possibly to compensate my lack of cooking skills. My goal, for the sake of my bank account and my waistline, is to stop the lunches and sodas and semi go back to the fruitarian diet. If I just went on weekly sales, $20-$30/week on fresh produce, meats, and the occasional dry grain/bean/pasta for one person seems more than doable.
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