How much do you spend per month on groceries?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I’m single, and I"m thinking of isolating a month and tracking exactly how much I spend. I would guess about $125. I rarely eat out, but I like to shop at what I call “the dirty store”, a grocery outlet that’s sort of like Big Lots for food. 2/$1 for Philly cream cheese in the tubs! Woot! Pepperidge Farm bread for $1/loaf. Milano cookies for $1/bag.

My idea is to put $150 in cash in an envelope and use that money only for groceries, and see if I have any left at the end of the month. Spices and condiments that I already have aren’t included, but everything else must be purchased.

Animal feed is another matter. $100/month for dogfood, $25/month for horse feed and $25/month for cat food.

StG

22

Good food is what I splurge on. I spend between $200 and $300 a month on groceries, and that’s for one of me. Depends whether or not I’ve gone to Costco during that month. I also usually buy lunch at work.

23

You are my hero!

And $97 towards booze is not included, especially if everyone leaves their returnables to go towards your cheap-ass hobby.

24

I make 330 a month at my almost full time job and go to school fulltime, and rent is 300/month. 30 covers all my living expenses, and yet I still (usually) eat well, it just takes practice. Three eggs and some flour? Crepes for 3 breakfasts. One gigantic 1 dollar thing of oatmeal? Breakfast for a month. 75 cents for bread and that’s lunch for 2 weeks, with some peanut butter.

25

ZebraShaSha - Can I ask you have an “almost full-time” job and only bring home $330/mo? At 30 hours a week, that would be 120 hours per month. That’s less than $3/hour. Even just minimum wage is $6.55/hr, and after withholding, you should still have around $500, I would think. I’m not questioning your honesty, just wondering how you’re getting that amount.

StG

26

[QUOTE=ZebraShaSha;10907062 One gigantic 1 dollar thing of oatmeal? /QUOTE]

Where are you getting the 1-month thing of oatmeal for $1? At my store (Harris Teeter) that is $4.50 for Quaker and $2.67 for the generic.

27

660 euro’s a month (about 7-8 hundred dollars) for me and my husband, the baby, and our three cats. I’ve compared it to some budget sites, and this is higher then average. I’m not really sure why.

28

[quote=“Harriet_the_Spry, post:26, topic:488357”]

Most likely, Aldi (or a similar store) or a $1 store. I see it at mine.

29

I’d say I’m in this range too, just for me. I too don’t clip coupons or bargain-hunt, and go for name brands on a number of things.

My father is the champ at grocery shopping. He usually pays about 25% of the full price by bargain shopping and coupons. But like Fuzzy, he gets off on it and has time and energy to do it as a retired and compulsive person. I shudder to think if he could see how I spend and don’t record any of it. :eek:

30

$500 - $600 monthly for a family of 2 adults and two school-age kids.

I menu plan and then shop once a month for everything non-perishable. We get fresh dairy, fruits and veggies any time we need them.

31

I agree, $800 is a ridiculous amount to spend for a family of three!

At my house it’s just me, my husband, and two cats. We go shopping every two weeks, and each time we’ll spend around $130-150ish, and maybe a trip or two for $30 if there’s a special thing going on. I include alcohol in that, too.

So total, maybe $350+ a month.

32

As an aside, we have found a really easy way to reduce how much we spend on food (we have the same hobby, Fuzzy Dunlop!).

First, we saved our receipts for a few trips and then highlighted all the stuff we buy on a regular basis. We used this to build a checklist, with some extra categories for stuff like “fresh veggies (in season)” or other non-specific things we use regularly.

Then we mapped out the aisles of our local supermarket, and arranged our list by the map.

Before we go shopping, we use the list to check our inventory of the checklist items and mark what we need. When we go shopping, we go by the list in order, with no extra stops. If it’s not on the list, we don’t get it.

It’s helped a lot!

33

Family of 3, plus a very big dog. Our budget is $1000 per month, including restaurant and takeout (which is probably $200), so say $800 at the grocery store. BUT, we mostly eat low carb, so we buy a lot of good protein and fresh fruit and vegetables, and there aren’t many inexpensive parts to our meals (no potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, etc).

34

This is very similar to our budget. I try to keep it under $600/month, however, that has to include everything I can get at the superstore, so that includes groceries and things like cleaning supplies, dog food, laundry detergent, formula, and diapers. Sometimes I do go over, however, I think that is mostly due to the added expense of having a baby in the house. (There are 4 of us, with 2 kids ages 4 and 1, and a dog.)

I do shop the sales and use coupons also.

35

Those of you with lower grocery bills, have you added the costs of take out and eating out? We spend virtually nothing on that.

36

The eating out thing is tough to call. Sometimes we travel, in which case we are eating out all the time, but that also means I don’t go grocery shopping until I am sure we will be at home. (I HATE having to throw away spoiled food. Such a waste.)

$800 does sound really high. Is it all at one store? I saw a report on TV recently about comparison shopping. They went to a bunch of different stores and bought the exact same things, and it actually came out to be only very minor differences. It seems that while some stores have pretty good prices on meat, they might be high on produce, and then vice versa. However, when they visited several different stores and only bought things that were on sale, the savings were actually huge. It takes more effort to visit different stores, but it can save a bundle.

Do you buy a lot of pre-packaged food? Convenience can sometimes really add up. Even though everyone thinks of it costing more to make a nice big meal from scratch, that really isn’t the case a lot of times.

37

About $500 a month. Two adults, 10 and 11 year old and one small dog.

My number one cost reducer: buy meat when it’s on sale and freeze it.
Number two: Store brands are just as good as name brands and are usually ~ 10 - 20 % cheaper.

38

But aren’t beer and wine key building blocks of the vegetable group?

39

My brother makes around $9/hr. He pays for an apartment, groceries, electricity, everything…on that. I really don’t know how he does it, but I know he doesn’t eat much meat.

40

There are 4 of us – me, my husband, my 16 year old daughter and our 9 year old son. Daughter’s bf occasionally eats at our house, so I guess we are 4.5 people. I make breakfast, lunch and dinner for all 4 of us (on average) 6/7 days. I say on average, because weekends are sometimes fend-for-yourself, so I don’t always cook, plus we do go out to dinner once in a while. My husband and I eat about 50/50 leftovers/frozen meals for lunch during the week. I cook most foods from raw ingredients, with the only pre-packaged things I buy (besides the frozen things for lunches sometimes) being stuff like microwave sausage links, or pre-made mashed potatoes for when I make Shepherd’s Pie, or the very rare box of mac & cheese.

Whew…that was a mouthful, eh? Oh, and yet, I left out one important detail – my family drinks (and recycles the bottles, please keep flames to yourself) around 10 - 12 (24-pack) cases of bottle water per week. We have well water, and we’re all water drinkers, not pop drinkers.

With all that put out there, I spent $123 on groceries last week, $125 the week before, $152 the week prior and $148 the week before that – or about $550/month for 4 people. In honesty, though, I always buy extra stuff that’s on sale to pad my pantry. I think if I include stuff like TP, deodorant, etc. the figure is about right for our grocery needs for the month.

I could lower the costs easily, and it is the first place I look to save money if things get tight – we do splurge on good meats, fresh produce, etc. I could trim the cost to about half what I spend if I were to drive the extra miles to Aldi’s, but we get 10 cents off per gallon at Kroger for every $100 we spend there, so it works out as a huge savings for us even if we spend a bit more there – my husband drives about 60 miles/day RT, mine is about 30 – that’s without running any errands, so the savings on gas is pretty extensive. Oh, the point I was trying to make in this paragraph was that a family of 3 could do with $300/month in groceries easily if needed and still eat well – provided you know how to cook and have the 30 minutes to do so each meal.