Since I happen to have Quicken open at the same time I am posting this, I see that we have spent $6,624 so far this year on food. That includes groceries, resturants, school lunch program for the kids, coffee at work, everything.
So let’s see…we are 272 days into the year, so that’s an average of $24.35 per day. Divided by five people, that’s $4.87 per person per day. Not too bad I guess, but I know we can definately cut out some things if we had to.
Like, for instance, I am appalled to see how much we have spent at McDonalds and Subway this year. Yeesh.
Breakfast- Shake $1, Fruit bar, 50 cents = $1.50
Lunch - Skip always (eating makes me sleepy)
Dinner - Usually sandwiches and cereal. $5ish?
Night Snack - Shake $1
Cigarettes (if you count them, I do) $2
In recent weeks I have totalled around sixty dollars per week, or in other words between eight and nine dollars per day. I shop at Harris Teeter, an upper class grocery store with prices higher than the Winn Dixie’s and Krogers’ of the world. Lately I’ve purchased a lot of spices and other fairly expensive stuff (eight dollars for hlaf an ounce of Mexican oregano, and well worth it), which drives up my total. Due to scheduling, I have to eat at a restaurant once a week on Tuesday nights, and that usually costs around ten dollars.
I only eat a meal once a day, in the evening. I drink two or three cups of tea a day, which are 3 cents each for the tea bags, and a cent or two each for the sugar and milk. My wife eats lunch some days, usually a frozen entree that she microwaves at work. That’s $4. We’ll both drink a Coke or three - that’s our vice, but we always get it on sale. That works out to about 20 cents each. The various things we have for supper probably average $6. If it’s spaghetti, $3. Steak, $12. So that’s normally around $11, for the both of us, per day. Of course, that figure goes out the window if we eat out, but we try not to do that too often because when you realize that two nights out a week costs us more than we spent on groceries for the entire week, it’s just sick.
I think we spend between $100 and $200 AUD for food per week for a family of four.
Thats $18 - $30 USD PER WEEK for one person which seems quite a bit lower than what your spending. Then again, practically all our meals are from scratch but we don’t skimp on quality.
You spend six dollars a day on vegetables?! What are you buying, and how much?
Organic kale here, for example, costs about two bucks a pound. I can’t imagine eating three pounds of kale every day, especially if I was eating other things.
Are you sure on those prices?
Also, what sort of entree are you eating on a daily basis that costs four bucks?
I’m thinking about my eating. On a day that I don’t eat out, I typically have:
-A slice of bread with peanut butter, as well as a cup of coffee with cream and sugar, for breakfast;
-A bowl of leftovers for lunch (e.g., today I had tofu-kale stuff over brown rice, leftover from Monday’s dinner), and coffee.
-A granola bar at lunch from a value-pack box ($5.00 for twelve bars)
-A dinner that includes fish about 1/3 of the time, and the rest of the time is vegetarian, but made with quality organic ingredients.
-A glass of wine, or a beer, running about 1-2 bucks.
I’m guessing the bread comes out to about a quarter a slice the peanut butter I’ve got no idea on. Maybe a quarter?
Coffee is ten bucks a pound fresh; how much does that work out to ? Half&half is trivial, maybe a nickel; sugar isn’t even a penny.
The lunch leftovers cost about as much as a dinner, since I’m eating the same stuff. Hold off on that.
-Forty cents for the granola bar.
-Tofu is about fifty cents for four ounces. Rice isn’t too much, maybe a quarter-cup organic brown rice costing a quarter. A bunch of kale will serve for four meals, at $2 each; fifty cents for it. I use about an eighth of a jar of peanut butter, give or take, in the peanutbutter kale stuff; maybe fifty cents a serving? Tamari probably works out to about a dime per serving. The olive oil, ginger, garlic, and hot peppers cost a trivial amount, maybe a quarter total per serving.
We’re looking at roughly $2.10 for a dinner. Double that for lunch, we’re at $4.20. Add in two bucks for wine, $6.20. Add in snack and breakfast and we’re at $7.15, not counting coffee.
Huh. More than I expected. I wonder if I did my math right?
Here at colege, it’s all pre-paid, and I have avout 2,000 a semester, that is non-refundable. Usually I spend about $15-$20 a day on food and beverages.
Yeah, 'cause I don’t cook, I buy prepared foods. For instance, today I had half a pound of brussel sprouts for lunch which are $5 a pound prepared. For dinner, I’ll have half a pound of kale which is $6 a pound. And I’ll probably have either veggie potstickers ($4.79) or the Kung Pao tofu ($7 a pound) as well. It’s the precooked take-out foods (I love Whole Foods) that’s really killing my budget (although, it seems from the responses, I’m less outta line than I thought). I gotta start cooking…
It seems that this thread is filled with vegetarians/health food people. Wonder why? When I was out on my own, I spent maybe 40ish a week on food, but that was as often as not for two. Maybe a little more than that, but we’re talking about 3-4 dollars person. Then again, food consisted of storebrand cereal, sandwichs that were pb&j unless we could find meat for under three dollars a pound that wasn’t bolona, a lot of hot dogs, rice and noodles, and the occasional chicken or ground beef dish. Oh, and tuna noddle cassarole. Also, we learned that banannas are a king among fruits, as they are 33 cents a pound on sale.
I usually spend about $6, give or take, per person per day. For me, that includes three meals per day since I work from home and eat almost all my meals here. For my husband, that’s only two meals since he works in a more traditional environment and usually eats lunch out.
I do the grocery shopping about once every week and a half and spend about $100 a pop. This also includes any cat food or litter, plus any cleaning items we may need. We also make a quarterly trip to Costco for things like detergent and bulk food, so it’s probably more like $7 - $8 a day, but it’s still quite cheap. It used to be much more expensive, but I was living in a much poorer neighborhood, couldn’t drive, and was buying a lot of pre-packaged things then. The vegetables and fruit at that market were unbelievably expensive! And most of them were rotten, too. I’m glad I can drive again. Also, it’s much cheaper to just buy a bunch of broccoli heads or a head of lettuce or bunch of carrots and clean them up yourself rather than paying the extra money to buy prepackaged fresh stuff.
Hmmm. Well I grocery shop once a week, and average $50. So divide by 7 days and 2 people and that’s …$3.57. But we both buy lunches at least 4 days a week, generally in the $5-7 range. So $6X4/7… call it another $3.50, or $7/person/day.
And then there’s cokes and hubby likes the vending machines for snacks… OTOH, the $50 includes catfood, cleaning supplies, and other non-edibles. And we do sometimes indulge in take out. And dinners out maybe 3-4 times a month. And then there’s the food we buy to bring to meetings and such. And…
You know what? I have no idea what we spend on food.
This is probably a bad thing.