I’m curious if you add up the total food expenditure for your household (groceries, restaurants, bars etc.) and the total housing expenditure for your household (rent, mortgage, utilities etc) and compare them, what it would be.
edit: post monthly figures in the thread if you’re comfortable.
I assume that #3 was supposed to be “I spend between 1.5x & 5x more on housing than food.” I’m not sure exactly how much I spend on food (I buy other things at the store), but assuming I subtract my flatmate’s share from the rent, I’m somewhere between 5x and 10x. No bars or restaurants, but I do occasionally indulge in snacks or takeout.
I don’t have a mortgage or pay rent, but I’ve added up council rates, water rates, electricity costs etc. Even so, they’re still less than food costs. My quick approximation gives a ratio of food costs to housing costs of about 3 to 2.
Technically, I spend an infinite amount more on food than housing: I own my house free and clear and am not paying a mortgage. If you factor in taxes, though, they’re both about equal.
We spent between 1.5x and 5x more on food than on housing. The mortgage on our house is paid off, all we pay is the real estate tax (which isn’t peanuts).
Mrs. Homie and I aren’t very efficient with regard to our food spending. We eat out way too much, we aren’t very good shoppers, etc. So we probably spend more on food than we should.
Still, it’s not that expensive. About $50-75 per week for the two of us, not counting eating out.
I don’t spend a lot on food, and if it weren’t for going out to eat once or twice a week, it’d be even considerably less. Only two of us to feed, and almost no packaged, processed stuff makes groceries cheap. I think avocados (currently expensive) and ribeye (always expensive) constitute half of my grocery spending.
Expenses on housing, including rent, gas, electric, cable, water, is approximately three times expenses on food, including groceries, eating out, bars, and keeping my liquor cabinet stocked.
Crud. I messed up the math, going the wrong way. We spend half as much on groceries as the house payment, and the utilities double housing, not the food. I spend 3 or 4 times as much on housing, not the same amount.
Each month we spend an average of $1800 on bills–mortgage, home insurance, internet, netflix, car insurance, minor repair bills, etc, and $1000 on groceries/entertainment/dry goods etc. Further breaking it down would be more complicated. But I do think our housing costs are a lot lower than many people (yay for flyover states!)