I usually pay cash for everything and buy each night’s dinner that same night so it’s hard to come up with exact figures. I’d guess:
-Coffee each morning Mon-Fri: $1.50x5 = $7.50, Starbucks on the weekend, and with the occasional donut let’s say $15 per week.
-I buy lunch each day Mon-Fri, ranging from $1.19-$10, typically around $4-6 though if it’s more than $4 there’s usually enough to last for 2 days. Including weekends, I’d estimate $30-35.
-For dinner I will usually either make chicken breast ($2-4 for two pieces which go for two nights), penne ala vodka (sauce is $6, noodles are $1.69 though that can last a couple weeks), pizza ($3.25) or steak ($4-6 for filet mignon. I know I know, it’s funny how someone mentioned it upwards in this thread as being very pricey, but since I am only buying for me and a quarter pound is plenty for me, it’s actually a better deal for me to buy that cut than get a larger piece of a poorer quality steak, which I wouldn’t even finish and wouldn’t be as good.) So I have no idea what that would be on a per week basis. $15-20?
So around $60-75 per week, plus beverages & snacks, I’d say I spend between $250-300 each month.
This thread inspired me to make some inquiries, resulting in my discovery that my food budget is pretty healthy, even if the food itself isn’t.
I’m currently in school, and paying for everything with loans. When I stared the year, I was too lazy to write up an actual budget for myself, and instead I just resolved to do everything as cheaply as possible. My only concession is that I hate packing a lunch every morning, so I buy my lunch every day. I usually get a $3 sandwich, and have water to drink. Sometimes I’ll splurge and get the $4.50 option, so let’s call that an average of $3.75/day for lunch. I’ll buy a $1 coffee about every other weekday.
So I spend about $4.25 in cash every weekday.
For breakfast and dinner, I eat at my apartment every day. (I eat out maybe once a month.) And the food I prepare for myself is mostly of the nasty-processed-prepackaged variety. Stuff that’s easy for a bad cook to do. Lots of canned and frozen food. Lots of pasta.
When shopping for my home cookin’, everything I get is the store brand. If I have a choice of products, I’ll go for the one on special. I always pay with my debit card. Here are my last six trips:
12/5 $86.27
11/13 $44.32
11/2 $52.00
10/17 $71.22
10/11 $35.69
9/24 $47.33
So that’s an average of $56.14 per trip, and I make a trip an average of every 14.4 days. That’s $3.90 per day for at-home meals.
Here we go. I average $8.15 per weekday and $3.90 per weekend day. That’s $48.54 per week or…
$208.02 per month for a poor male 25-year-old student not eating very healthfully.