Monthly Grocery Budget

I spend roughly $150 - $200 per month in groceries for two people.

I buy groceries once every two weeks. Here's some tips that help me save:
• Make as many things from scratch as possible. Of course this cuts down cost but you'll be sacrificing time. An example would be making your own salad and vinaigrette over store bought salad kits and dressings.
• Buy in bulk, especially items such as oats, rice, pasta, potatoes, eggs, meat and beans.
• Dried beans over canned for cost
• Buy things that are on sale (While still making healthy choices) Meats are a big one. I buy meat that is on sale and freeze extra for later use.
• For me I find that meat is a big expense so I buy kess than I used to and eat more plant based meals. When buying meat, opt for cheaper cuts such as skirt steak, chicken thighs and breast and pork chops. Ground turkey has become relatively cheap over here (Southeast US), so it's a staple for me.
• Frozen vegetables can not only be cheaper but also preserve a lot of the nurtrients that are lost in the processing time of fresh veggies.
• Buy fruit and vegetables in season

I never buy any soda, juices, alcohol, or snacks.
I usually have 3 meals a day. If I'm in the mood for snacking I'll have some yogurt and nuts, fruit, veggie sticks, oat date bites or a smoothie.

My typical grocery list:
• Chicken breast / thighs
• Ground turkey
• Another meat of choice. Pork chops, sausage or a cheap steak on rare occasions (Pun intended!)
• Frozen broccoli, brussel sprouts and corn
• Produce: lettuce, tomato, cucumber, squash, zucchini, mushrooms, carrots, russet and sweet potatoes, avocado, onions, spinach, etc.
• Bananas, strawberries, blueberries, apples
• Beans
• Whole grain pasta, bread and rice
• Toritllas
• Off brand cereal
• Lots of eggs
• Goat cheese, feta or cheddar
• Almond milk
• Lots of Greek yogurt
• Any condiments I may need. Mustard, hot sauce, etc.
• Peanut butter
• Almonds

I would recommend looking up what grocery stores are around you. If you can find one that sells for cheap but is a little while away, it may be worth it to take a trip to do your grocery shopping.
I buy my groceries at Aldi. They are a chain which has very low prices for a few reasons:
• They do not provide bags. You must bring your own.
• You put a 25¢ deposit to use their shopping cart. When you return the cart, you receive your 25¢ back.
• The ones by us don't have very many employees. This cuts down their costs but lines can be long.

If you have anything similar by you I would recommend it 100%. Aldi's prices are literally half that of other chains in my area.

Sorry for the horrendously long post!

$160-200 a month for me. I don't do anything to save other than buy store brands and use digital coupons.

aylajane wrote: »

IsabeausRose wrote: »

I can only afford $150 dollars a month for groceries for just me. That gives me barely 1200 calories a day. That's all I can afford right now. I'm shocked at all of you spending hundreds.

How much you spend has absolutely no bearing on how many calories you can eat. You can spend $3 on a jar of peanut butter and eat the whole thing for over 2000 calories, or you can spend $3 on a bag of sugar free popsicles and eat the whole thing for under 100 calories.

"Healthy" food doesnt cost more. Eggs are under a dollar for a dozen and I get breakfast for 5 days. I get 12 salads worth of lettuce at costco for $4. etc.

This.

Beans, lentils, whole grains, frozen veggies, in season fresh veg/fruit, frozen meat (bulk bags), eggs etc are inexpensive, nutrient dense foods. And many of them are fairly low calories as well.

aylajane wrote: »

IsabeausRose wrote: »

I can only afford $150 dollars a month for groceries for just me. That gives me barely 1200 calories a day. That's all I can afford right now. I'm shocked at all of you spending hundreds.

How much you spend has absolutely no bearing on how many calories you can eat. You can spend $3 on a jar of peanut butter and eat the whole thing for over 2000 calories, or you can spend $3 on a bag of sugar free popsicles and eat the whole thing for under 100 calories.

"Healthy" food doesnt cost more. Eggs are under a dollar for a dozen and I get breakfast for 5 days. I get 12 salads worth of lettuce at costco for $4. etc.

Oh - and if this were true, poor people would all be skinny

For a family of 3, we budget $125/week, so about $500/month. I always make a list of what meals we'll be making for the week and then make a grocery list of the items that we don't have but that we need from the store for those meals. And then stick to the list! I use coupons some, but not enough to make it significant. I've also just recently started pulling out cash to go to the grocery store with and not using my debit/credit card. You'd be surprised at just how much this one act saved us. I now shop with a calculator and add things up as I go through the store and it makes me realize that at times I have to choose one item over the other because if there's not enough cash, you can't get it!

IsabeausRose wrote: »

I can only afford $150 dollars a month for groceries for just me. That gives me barely 1200 calories a day. That's all I can afford right now. I'm shocked at all of you spending hundreds.

You should be able to get a wide variety of foods and many more calories for that budget. At least in the US.

I lived on about $100 or often less a month for food 20 years ago. I bought things like rice, pasta, beans, fresh and frozen vegetables and more. But things like meat were a treat.

Even now, I rarely spend more than $200 on food a month for me and I eat comfortably.

With a family of four in the midwest we spend between $900 - $1200 a month (kitchen, bathroom, cleaning products and protein powder included). It's bonkers, I know. We don't eat out but my husband and I work full time with a crummy commute so we don't shop around or spend time clipping coupons.

cmtigger wrote: »

IsabeausRose wrote: »

I can only afford $150 dollars a month for groceries for just me. That gives me barely 1200 calories a day. That's all I can afford right now. I'm shocked at all of you spending hundreds.

You should be able to get a wide variety of foods and many more calories for that budget. At least in the US.

I lived on about $100 or often less a month for food 20 years ago. I bought things like rice, pasta, beans, fresh and frozen vegetables and more. But things like meat were a treat.

Even now, I rarely spend more than $200 on food a month for me and I eat comfortably.

Yeah - soup can be done immensely cheap (probably the quickest way to throw together everything you just listed into a large batch of many nutritious meals). - it is my go to when I am particularly stretched for time (toss random stuff in electric pressure cooker, leave a while, cover and throw pot into fridge, later scoop into bowl and microwave). I do normally add either ham (at time of initial cooking; Price Rite has very lean ready-to-eat boneless ham quarters at $2.49/lb - usually $4.40ish for the chunk; I dice and freeze it after grocery shopping) or rotisserie chicken (added right before microwaving)(Wegmans has them for $5 if you manage to score 1 before they run out. the last few yielded between 1.5 and 1.8 lb of final cooked meat after removal of bones and most of the skin - not including most of the wing meat which generally does not survive me during the carving & chopping stage before weighing and freezing).

IsabeausRose wrote: »

I can only afford $150 dollars a month for groceries for just me. That gives me barely 1200 calories a day. That's all I can afford right now. I'm shocked at all of you spending hundreds.

We're at around 250 per week +/- but it's also a family of 4 with two young and growing boys.

Before kids and in our early years before our careers took off, we lived on much less and ate a lot of beans from the bulk section, rice, soups and stews (which we still do in the winter), pasta, lots of PB&J sandwiches, etc. We ate whole chickens that we would roast rather than getting parts or boneless and skinless breasts, etc. Red meat was mostly ground beef.

We made it a point to become more financially stable before we had kids. We are fortunate that a number of things have gone our way over the years...bought our house at the right time and have an insanely low mortgage and interest rate...careers went in the right direction, etc...lots of years, lots of work...and a bit of luck thrown in...

I spend about $210 per month on groceries/toiletries/cleaning supplies. If I add restaurants, and food eaten in hotels/other countries (multiple days a month), that total food figure is closer to $550 for one person each month. Yes, it's a lot.

For a cheaper grocery bill, review the sale flyers that come in the mail or check online sales/prices for your nearby stores. Keep track of what things cost so you know when you see a good price. See if you can find coupons for any items you want to eat. Make a weekly meal plan based on the most inexpensive items. Plan about 5 days of meals. Make a grocery list. Buy only from that list unless you see some fabulous price on something else. Cook the meals from the meal plan. For 2 days during the week, eat leftovers or make "clean out the refrigerator stirfry." When you're familiar with regular prices, when something you use regularly goes on sale at a great price, stock up.

When you're familiar with prices, you know what to buy. I see people buying stuff at the dollar store all the time that costs less than a dollar at regular grocery stores. Or I see sale prices at Ralphs that are much higher than regular non-sale prices at Whole Foods. I love their 10 for $10 sales where they include things that normally cost less than $1. Don't be taken in. Some things are cheaper to make from scratch and some aren't. Yogurt is, if your batch turns out. It isn't if it doesn't culture and you end up throwing it out. Big cartons of yogurt, however, are significantly cheaper than buying individual servings. Just portion it out. Powdered milk is more expensive than fresh milk. Every frugal living website will tell you chicken thighs are cheaper than chicken breast, but that is not necessarily true anymore...the stores have caught on and raised the prices significantly.

When I was in the earlier Dave Ramsey baby steps, my budget for all that stuff (including restaurants/coffee/business meals) was $110 a month and I stuck to it carefully. That was a few years ago when I lived in the south and the midwest. I could not do that now in SoCal with the way prices have risen. The smallest grocery budget I've managed is about $125/mo, but that doesn't include any items beside food eaten at home and it would be too restrictive to keep up long term. Now that I'm in the last baby step, my food category of my budget is my freest one. I like to spend money on food, restaurants and room service, I like to grocery shop, and I can afford it.

Most of my food tends to be pricey. I like pastured eggs at $6-8 a dozen, but eggs can also be found for $1 a dozen. I like $15/gallon raw milk, but regular milk is only a couple of dollars. Grassfed beef prices have come down very low, often $4-5/lb. I've recently discovered the 99 Cent Store has a fabulous selection of vegetables. I've loosened my standards as organic has become so expensive lately, most of my produce comes from the 99 Cent Store. It cuts about $40-50 out of my monthly budget to do that.

I did eat a lot of beans, rice and pasta during my frugal days. That was dried beans I soaked, not those fancy luxurious canned ones. And I couponed (free cans of tuna or bags of pasta are a budgeters best friend) and shopped sales and planned meals and worked from a grocery list of frugal items. I bought one whole chicken a month and stretched that out with casseroles, stirfries, soups and stews.

My stores, in order of general priciness: H Mart, Trader Joe's, Sprouts, farmer's markets on weekdays (weekends they jack up the prices), Costco, Ralphs, Vons. Aldi's is cheaper, but is a long, long drive so I go only about twice a year.

$200-$250 a month for just myself, but that also includes over the counter meds/toiletries/paper products/kitty litter/ etc. Most likely about $150 per month of that is actual food.

I can easily spend $100 per month on groceries (for one person though). It’s more if I include my husband. But for one person, it’s easy. This excludes household items like paper towels, etc. and alcohol. But for food? Easy.

People should really, really find out when their local supermarkets put meat on sale. Since this costs the most money the majority of the time, it’s really beneficial to find this out. Doesn’t matter the grocery store or what area you live in, you can find meat marked down. Even the expensive stores near me (Wegmans, Publix) mark their chicken and hamburger meat to $2 a pound sometimes on sale days. And definitely pork products - I can get a small pork loin for a couple of dollars. I can also find cheaper produce at Aldi’s and it’s good. Aldi’s by us has tortillas for $0.64 per pack and I stocked up.

I cannot eat beans, lentils and soups to fill up. Even if could, I don’t like them so there’s that. I find eating on the cheap to be very easy. Jut takes a little time and effort and you can stock up. It doesn’t mean you can buy whatever you want (cereal, desserts, prepackaged items), but you can definitely meet your nutritional and calorie goals.

ETA: This includes not just dinner but leftovers and sandwich items for lunches (I pack my lunch everyday for work). Also to add that you don’t need to eat organic or grass fed to get nutrients or healthy food. I used to eat that way and found it was completely unnecessary unless you have an ethical issue regarding it, which I totally understand.