Hellobee

My monthly food budget is $300 for 2 adults. That puts us in the thrifty category. We live in TX, which I’m sure has something to do with how much we spend. The grocery store I shop has the best prices in my neighborhood. I meal plan and make a list weekly, and I don’t stray from my list. We have one night a week where we usually don’t eat meat. My husband takes leftovers for lunch so that keeps our bill down too. I cook from scratch as much as possible. I do that because I enjoy it and because it is more cost effective. We also eat out one night a week and I have a separate budget for that.

what’s the budget on take-out or eat-out for liberal? anytime we eat out on the weekend, our little family of 4 usually spends about 80 to 120 bucks on each meal (yes, even brunch!) when we order its about 50 bucks a night. so technically my grocery bills are VERY low, but that’s because i only cook a few nights a week.

Ugh… Lost my comment. But I had said that I think you are doing really well for your location. I remember how expensive it was living in the East Village.

With a moderate budget we should be around $857, but we come in at about $750. I think it’s all about the cost of living where we live. That and we pretty much get everything we can and Costco, and we’ve learned when to go to Whole Foods for specific items or to our local grocery store.

FWIW, for a formula fed baby, their estimates are very low for an under 1 year old. Formula alone costs us $100/month!

for 2 adults living in the dc metro area, our monthly food budget is around the moderate cost plan. it has gone down since i stopped exclusively shopping at whole foods–one stop shopping is nice but man that place really drains the wallet. our food budget has actually gone down since we started eating mostly vegetarian–if we buy meat, it’s from the farmers market, which can get pretty expensive.

Our groceries are about $850 for my husband, LO, and me which is in the moderate category….this actually surprises me since we live in CA, buy about 50% organic, and buy very little processed foods (which tend to be cheaper than fresh ingredients).

Thanks for posting, ’cause now I can tell my husband that I’m not over-spending on groceries like he thinks I am.

i think that we’re at about $350/$400 for groceries, but I’m super surprised because we buy a lot of local and organic stuff that isn’t cheap (well, sometimes). but that makes me think that we need to stop spending so much on eating out because our overall food bill per month is much higher!

@edelweiss: The running joke is that they should rename it, “Whole Paycheck”… b/c that’s how much of your paycheck it takes!

We spend about $350/month for 2 adults. We buy a lot of food in bulk and do menu planning which really helps us cut down on costs. We don’t buy processed foods and the majority of the cost comes from fruit/veggies but we buy those in bulk as well (usually at Costco) so it’s a lot less than it could be. We live in Central California.

We spend about $400 on groceries/month for the 2 of us in Chicago. We cook from scratch about 4 nights/week, and then eat out a few times as well. So total food spending for the 2 of us might be $800 when you factor in eating out/ordering in.

Uhhhh… We go out to eat a lot (almost every day) for lunch and sometimes on the weekend too. That, plus spending about $100 at the grocery store each week, and we end up spending close to $1200 every month on food and food related items… for just two of us :-O

We spent a lot on food. Not so much on groceries but eating out. Blows the liberal plan out the water. Right now though, mil has been cooking for us, so our groceries have gone up a lil (still thrifty to low cost) but were not going out really anymore! April, we spent only a third of what we usually spend! Our babies r cheap food wise right now since we mostly breastfeed.

Wow. Grocery-wise, since I do all the grocery shopping, I know we spend about $320/month, which is about $50 below the thrifty plan for 2. Hubs typically pays if we go out, but we usually only go out once a month, which is usually about $40, and still puts us $10 under the thrifty plan. I’m shocked, but thrilled! I always felt we spent way too much on groceries!

So I guess we are in line with the liberal plan for a couple. Most of our shopping is from Whole Foods and the rest is from local farmers here in Philly/South NJ. We try not to worry about how much we pay for food, though, because ever since we started cooking everything from scratch we haven’t been getting sick! It took a while to realize that we were getting more for our money at WF by shopping around the edges of the store and only buying the fresh food.

We budget and pretty much keep to $300/month for groceries (family of 3); which puts us about $150 below the thrifty plan. Our eating out budget for the family is $70/month and then we have an additional $120/month for lunches ($15/week for both myself and DH).

We have a fairly nice sized garden in our yard but also share crop with some friends at their house although most of the crops get canned. We buy meat in bulk about once every 3 months but budget separately for that (approx $200). We try to buy household things (paper towels, toilet paper) in bulk although when we do that it gets subtracted from that month’s budget unless we need several items at once in which case we’ll budget a little more at the beginning of the month.

@mrbee: My SIL says that too! She ended up just getting a job there and now her whole paycheck literally goes to Whole Foods. She gets a decent discount for working there though. And they treat their employees so well.

We budget about $450/mo for two adults, so it’s around the low-cost option. We have one son, and he will start solids in two months, but I don’t foresee him eating enough to make a difference for at least the first year. We hardly every eat out – maybe once a month at Chipotle, Panera or Subway.

We live in the suburbs of a midwest state, so cost here is probably pretty average. We shop nearly exclusively at Trader Joes, and a few items at Costco.

Like Mrs. Bee we shop almost all organic as well.

Is it bad that I have no idea how much money we spend each week/month at the grocery store? I used to much more disciplined about this and we would spend $75-100 per week for two adults. I haven’t been cooking that much since I’ve been pregnant and we have been relying more on premade stuff from Trader Joe’s. I’ve also been eating out for lunch more often because there were too many times when I would bring something that sounded ok the night before and seemed disgusting when it was time to eat. I’ve been trying to limit food waste and this is the only solution I’ve found thus far.

This is interesting! We are a “family of two” and we spend about $400/month on groceries, so I guess we are on the “low cost plan.” However, we eat out pretty frequently… if we ate all our meals at home, we would certainly be in the higher ranges.

Looks like this chart only covers grocery/food at home. I wonder what the average household spends in eating out and how that fits into the total food bill.

Since LO is allergic to a ton of stuff, we hardly ever eat out so our grocery bill is pretty much our total food bill.

@spacegrl: @Red: i created a poll!

http://boards.hellobee.com/topic/how-much-do-you-spend-each-month-on-eating-out

@Mrs. Bee: Nice, tx!

Ugh, I don’t get it We spend about $150/week on groceries. I meal plan every Sunday, we always have leftovers for lunch, and we have at least one meatless meal per week. DH doesn’t like beans or eggs, but otherwise we don’t use pricey ingredients. We have a really well-stocked pantry, so lots of times we make recipes where all we need is chicken, etc. And we’re still spending more than even the moderate plan. I guess you could argue that our dog biscuits, paper towels and toilet paper, etc. makes the bill higher. And we eat a lot of fresh fruits and veggies. There are rarely if ever coupons available for what we actually eat. Stuff like this is such a bummer because I bust my butt to get our grocery bill down, and I just can’t. Boo.

ETA: We don’t buy snacks or soda/juices, either, or convenience foods. At all.

We don’t have a food budget.. :T I’m too scared to do the math. Hahah. Since I’m pregnant I haven’t been in the mood to cook much so we’ve been eating out a lot. :T I go to whole foods 2-3x a week to pick up fresh fruits and food for Lo and easy to throw together stuff for me and dh

@ladyfingers: this is only for food not including household items so you are probably in the thrifty category if you remove those things!

I budget about 75$ a week for 3 (Sienna is still too young to eat) on food only and I add an additional 35$-50$ a week for cleaning products/diapers/wipes

So I’d say 300$ a month. Just on food. I coupon like crazy and find I price match (but clearly its nothing like in the US)

@ChelseaRose: For one month, you should try and keep track of how much you spend on food. You’d be surprised just how much it all adds up to!!

Before the baby came, we were spending $750 a month on groceries, and about $200 eating out every month. We were pretty diligent about making lists, preparing everything from scratch, and making big batches of food to freeze. Then the baby came, and only recently at 3 months are we able to do more cooking at home. We don’t eat out at restaurants anymore, so i think we spend about the same amount.

Wow, that is NUTS! We (our family of 4) spend about $100 a week on groceries, baby items and household cleaning products combined. We live in Utah, which is notoriously cheap. I just scored a giant 16oz clamshell of blueberries for $1.50 and tasty pineapples for 99¢!

We don’t typically eat out, but my husband does for lunch. I’m too lazy to make him anything before he goes in for work. I’m sure we’d save some serious cash if I started doing that. Maybe then we could be super thrifty super stars?

I’m in CA (SF Bay Area), buy 100% organic produce (CSA), shop mostly at TJ’s and Whole Foods when I do go to the store, and we average $350/month for the two of us. That puts us below the Thrifty category, which really surprises me. We don’t buy meat all that often, so I guess that makes a huge difference?

It is just my husband and myself & we very rarely go out to eat. 3-4 times a month $30 ea. time inc. tip.

I try to keep our food budget around $100/week. We do not buy anything processed & only fresh, local fruits and produce. Organic chicken etc.

I used to bulk shop at Sam’s Club but have found the quality of their meat has gone down, so shopping at The Fresh Market is the best deal for us. kelsie