Grocery bill

[Anonymous]

We are a family of 4 (dad, mom, 2 small skinny growing girls).
We eat like birds and don't waste much. Our grocery bill is about $1200/month. We don't typically buy alcohol or organic food, and don't use coupons. Is this a normal bill? Is it possible to lower this without sacrificing good quality fresh veggies and meat? What do other families spend?

[Anonymous]

That seems high. Where are you shopping at?

[Anonymous]

If that includes cleaning products and paper goods I think that’s about normal

[Anonymous]

$300 a week without any organic food? Are you including toiletries and takeout/eating out/coffees in that $1200?

[Anonymous]

Normal. We spend between $1200 and $1500 per month. That includes other groceries store items that are not food (toilet paper, laundry and dish soap, etc). 2 adults 2 teens.

We cook/eat at home most of the time. Maybe we do takeout 3 times in 2 months.

[Anonymous]

I try to spend around $100 a week before prices raised so much. I'm probably at $125 a week or so. I do shop at Aldi and Lidl. I make most things from scratch. I buy meat at other grocery stores that is discounted because it is close to the (or on the) sell by date. I often buy bread that is also discounted (today, for example, was $.80 for English muffins as they were 30% off because the sell by date is tomorrow). I hit grocery stores only when they are near another task (today was a sports practice). I also get the produce on sale that week.

[Anonymous]

$300 a week for a family of 4 doesn't sound like that much particulaly if you eat most meals at home and pack lunches and include paper goods and cleaning supplies. Some basic strategies to save money without changing the quality of foods:

-when items you eat regularly go on sale, buy enough for 6 weeks (obv not for foods that will go off)
-look at sale flyers and plan at least a couple weekly meals around what is on sale
-buy at least some of your groceries from a limited assortment grocery store like Aldi (Pricerite in my area)
-I go to a butcher for meat, which allows me to get high quality meat at a lower price than I would pay for high quality meat at a grocery store

This takes more time than just going to one store and getting what you need, so whether it works for you will depend on your priorities. I'm fortunate to have a regular grocery, discount grocery, butcher, and h-mart type grocery within a half mile radius.

[Anonymous]

That sounds right actually for a family of 4. We spent 230 on our last grocery run to Wegmans and that includes vitamins/toiletries and paper products--those were at least 50 in total. I estimate 1k each month with groceries. Take out I put at 400-500 or so if I am being honest.

[Anonymous]

Normal. We spend $250-300 weekly for a similar family. We cook almost everything from scratch and do 90% of our shopping at Wegmans. Since we hardly do takeout or eating out we don’t skimp on grocery items. I do meal plan so we don’t waste food.

[Anonymous]

Normal. We are now at about $500+/week. We eat pasta, ground meat, chicken breast, and eat steak once a week. We cook dinner 6 days a week. Groceries have simply increased in price like crazy.

[Anonymous]

Similar family, and that's about what we spend- including things like foil, ziplock bags, vitamins, etc, in addition to food. Although when I do the math, it is $10/pp/day, which seems high. We do take-out maybe once a month or so.

[Anonymous]

According to the USA this is what you should be paying at 3 different budget levels.

https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/media/file/CostofFoodJan2022LowModLib.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:According to the USA this is what you should be paying at 3 different budget levels.

https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/media/file/CostofFoodJan2022LowModLib.pdf

This is interesting. We are in line around 1200/mo for a moderate family 4 kids (2 teen boys) thr only readers we aren't high is because of all our eating out wr do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I try to spend around $100 a week before prices raised so much. I'm probably at $125 a week or so. I do shop at Aldi and Lidl. I make most things from scratch. I buy meat at other grocery stores that is discounted because it is close to the (or on the) sell by date. I often buy bread that is also discounted (today, for example, was $.80 for English muffins as they were 30% off because the sell by date is tomorrow). I hit grocery stores only when they are near another task (today was a sports practice). I also get the produce on sale that week.

Me again: tonight we had tilapia fillets from Aldi. They were 50% off. They expire on Tuesday. I bought three packages, each had 3 filets in them. Each package was around $4 before the discount. So 9 filets for $6. Of course, this means that you have to do flexible with what you will make, have freezer room (I bought 1 more package and froze it), and be an okay enough cook that you can pivot from usual rotated meals to ones that have things you found on sale.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to the USA this is what you should be paying at 3 different budget levels.

https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/media/file/CostofFoodJan2022LowModLib.pdf

This is interesting. We are in line around 1200/mo for a moderate family 4 kids (2 teen boys) thr only readers we aren't high is because of all our eating out wr do.

OMG. That's when our food bills began skyrocketing. Teen boys will eat you out of house and home, especially if they're into sports.