Tell me about your grocery / food budget - family of 4 edition
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Anonymous
| Trying to budget for the first time in my life. We have decent income, but I know we can tighten our belts in this one area of our finances. What would a reasonable monthly grocery / restaurant / fast-food budget look like for a family of 4??? Right now I would estimate we spend a billion dollars a month. |
Anonymous
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We have 2 kids, 14 and 11. They eat a lot. We have a HHI of about 300k, and we spend about $1500 month on groceries and about $500-800 on take out, restaurants, and date nights.
We shop at Lidl, Costco, and Giant. Lots of fruits, vegetables, snack food, meat and stuff for lunches. |
Anonymous
| First figure out what you are paying. Then if you want to reduce - cut back say 10% each month for a certain period of months. |
Anonymous
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About once a year I go through the "I'm spending too much on groceries" and try to shop around and check out different supermarkets, including Lidl and Aldis.
Here's the reality: switching to Lidl or whatever from Whole Foods for the *same basket of goods* will not save you very much money. You will save something, but I doubt it's going to be more than 10-15% altogether. Maybe it's worth it to you, but maybe not. For me it wasn't because I also don't really need to save the differential. What I discovered is that you save money by changing what you eat completely. Don't get the nicer cheeses at $10-12 a block but the cheap ones at $3.50 a block. Get cheap coffee, not imported ones. Eat lots of casseroles made with rice/beans/pasta, and eat the leftovers the next night. Don't buy steaks but have sausages. That's where the savings add up, not going to Lidl to pay $1 less on a specific item. In short, it's more about being smart with what you cook and eat, not being smart in where you shop. |
Anonymous
We're in a similar boat (income and family size). We spend about $1,000-$1,200 on groceries and about $200-$500 eating out. Wen the to go with less expensive meat (chicken, ground beef) and less steak, shellfish, etc. We also try to eat out only when necessary for schedule reasons or as an occasional treat or celebration. |
Anonymous
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We don't have a budget for food. We don't get fast food at all really - my kids just had In-n-Out for the first time last summer. Food is one area where I will pay to get higher quality ingredients = no shit butter for us; Kerrygold all the way. Costco sells it.
I'd rather spend less on streaming services if we had to tighten the belt. |
Anonymous
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We spend 650 per paycheck on groceries and 125 on eating out. So, 1300 plus 250 eating out a month.
Caveat being my son is dairy free and there are limited inexpensive eat out options. For example, cant order Dominos special or Costco for pizza night. We have to do Mod or Blaze or local place that does DF but it more expensive. And his milk replacement is normally 6.50 per 1/2 gallon, which he does 1.5-2 of every week. Pizza is a 40 minimum, etc. These are items that push up our budget especially since we have to buy 2 of everything (ice cream, milks, cheese) and DF anything is more expensive than dairy counterparts. We have rotation of foods but it's basically protein, starch, veg for dinner and same for breakfast and lunch. We make 95% of our meals and snacks. We buy higher end proteins and eggs- slow grow chicken, grass fed beef and grass finished if we can find it, pasture-raised. We buy lots of fresh produce. We currently have apples, mandarins, pears, plums, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, grapes, and strawberries plus salad mix, spinach, green beans, peppers, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini. Ill make raspberry lemon muffins this week and zucchini chocolate chip muffins on the weekend for school lunches/snacks. We have 2 fruits and/or veggies with basically every meal- so peppers with eggs and raspberries for breakfast. My husband thinks our budget could be lower, and it could, but not without a lot of sacrifices. We could do it cheaper with more effort on our ends- making our own stock, make sourdough bread versus buying breads, etc- but my time and energy arent worth the 200/month savings (if that). He would also have to eat less meat and that actually wont happen. The only thing I would like to do is not eat out (at all) but my husband works 12–14-hour days and I'm pregnant so that's where we are. |
Anonymous
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I recently started YNAB and so had to figure out a grocery budget too. I started by going back through several cc statements and seeing how much I was spending.
In the end, I set a monthly budget of $1600. We generally meet that (average spending since budgeting has been $1450-1600). We don’t eat out often at all, so a nice restaurant meal I put in a different category. The $1600 includes all food, snacks, and household items (TP, dish soap, etc) but not pet food. Family of 4, shop mostly at WF and Costco, but also have a dairy/egg farm delivery and a CSA for produce (both included in $1600). |
Anonymous
It’s stupid to buy Kerrygold for sautéing or baking. Like using finishing salt to salt pasta water. Learn to cook and you can save money. |
Anonymous
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Family of 4 with 2 elementary kids, so they're not at their prime eating ages yet. Spend about $1200-$1400/month on groceries (including toilet paper, dish soap, and other regular household supplies), and another $800/month on eating out (including 1-2 sit down dinners per month, fast casual [Panera type] once a week, takeout once a week, and very rarely, Starbucks run or ice cream out or something).
We shop mostly Whole Foods, Wegman's, Trader Joe's, once a month Aldi run. |
Anonymous
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Family of 4.
When now college DS was living with us, the monthly food bill was probably around 1.5K a month. Now with 2 adults and 1 teen, it's closer to $1K, I haven't tallied precisely. We shop at Whole Foods, H-Mart/Lotte, Trader Joe's, Fresh for specific sales, and rarely get take-out or lunch out. I know where we should cut back: processed meals and salty/sugary snacks that my husband keeps buying at Trader Joe's and Fresh. Drives me nuts. It's bad for his health (and our daughter's) and expensive for what it is. Restaurant food isn't great either, but we get it rarely. I buy unprocessed foods at Whole Foods, and the quality entirely justifies the price. We get our Asian fruits at Korean supermarkets, with a few Asian condiments, but I'm very careful about ingredients - I look for ones without a long list of rubbish. |
Anonymous
| Probably about $500 a week in restaurants/takeout and then another $350 a week on food groceries not including Costco/target. I don’t really track it too much. |
Anonymous
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13:04 again. I believe one major reason why we're able to buy all that for our budget is that we manage leftovers excellently. There is very little waste in our household. If we could cook from scratch more, we'd spend even less and it would be healthier. |
Anonymous
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Probably about $700/month on groceries and a couple hundred on eating out. A bit more in the summer because i like to get the good tomatoes and fruit at the farmer's market.
It's the usual stuff - we mostly shop at Aldi, try to eat mostly vegetarian, don't worry much about organic food, eat leftovers. We don't eat out much unless we're on the road somewhere (like for a weekend/vacation, not sports practice every week). |
Anonymous
| 2023 avg / mo on grocery (incl 99% of household like paper towels, tp, detergent etc AND beer store / liquor store) and eating out COMBINED was approx 1500 per mo. Looks like it might be averaging slightly higher in the new year |