What is your budget for food?

[Leo]

Hello all,

Recently married, my take home is around $3800 per month. Southern California area. My wife just graduated from college and she’s now looking for a job.

My wife cooks almost everyday and we try not to eat out as much as possible. We probably go out few times in a month.

Currently. I set up our budget to $450/month and that includes Groceries and Eating Out. In the past few months, we always go over the budget around 30%. = $585/month which is 15% of my take home.

Now my question are, what are the typical budgets for food for two people? Well, I am expecting her to have a job and that should make me comfortable spending more than $500 per month but I just wanna see other’s suggestion and advice.

Thank you.

[rennigade]

We dont have a food budget. If I had to guess we average less than $300/month between groceries and dining out.

[disneysteve]

We don't budget either but I'm sure we don't spend over $500 unless we eat out a lot for some reason.

I'd suggest taking a look at your spending. How much of that $585 is dining out? Restaurants are really expensive compared to cooking at home. Most meals cost at least 5 times as much in a restaurant as they would cost to prepare yourself. Add if dining out involves an alcoholic drink (or even a soft drink) or two, the markup is insane. They'll charge $2.50 for a single glass of Coke when you can buy a 12-pack of cans for the same price. Or $7 for a glass of wine when you can buy a bottle of the very same wine for $5.

As for cooking at home, are you buying a lot of brand name products? How about processed foods? The more store brands you buy, the less you'll spend. The more you buy ingredients rather than finished products, the less you'll spend.

[humandraydel]

Our grocery budget for 2 people eating organic is $400 per month in a relatively low COL area. We typically only spend $300 per month. But, we don't eat out at ALL and eat meals at home probably 360 (out of 365) days per year.

[Leo]

Eating out is probably around $100-150/month. Our groceries is like $80-100/week. Well actually when I say Groceries, that includes supplies like paper towel, toilet paper, etc, not only food.

[snafu]

I like to cook and prefer to eat at home mostly because restaurants use so much processed stuff full of sugar, salt, fat and unpronounceable chemicals. I plan to spend $ 100. per week on food and keep costs down by buying store brand ingredients when it doesn't matter. We eat out with friends and family for social occasions and like Dr. Steve pointed out avoid the cost of alcohol and soda.

In my opinion, non edibles like paper goods, cleaning supplies, housewares etc are better buys at discount stores, liquidators or restaurant supply outlets since they are the biggest profit margin of food stores. I pay these from the 'household' budget.

[Leo]

Thanks for the reply. I think if we can limit our dining out to around $100/month and not include non edibles supplies in groceries, I think we will not go over the budget of $450. Do you guys think my budget is fine?

[ESMonitor]

Hi Leo,

This one is a budget concern for me too, also around $500 a month and I am single but a big guy. On my Excel spreadsheet budget I have three (3) columns for food: GROCERIES, WEEKDAY LUNCH, DININIG OUT OFF WORK

I just did an inventory with paper and pen what I am lacking in my food pantry, fridge and freezer.
I'll go to Wal-Mart first Thursday of the month on a spending rampage...like bear gorging during the salmon run before hibernation. I'll try to buy a month's worth of food, pack up my freezer and try to make it work as much as possible. That keeps my GROCERIES cost category in budget.

I don't like doing it but taking a lunch with you to work or taking advantage of Subway value sandwiches can help. Don't get the combo, just get the sandwich for just $5. Bring a banana with you or a yogurt to complete the lunch.

If you have room you might consider getting a small chest freezer.

You can get a bag of chicken breasts, cut them up, grill or sautee them mix with a rice and you have leftovers for family for at least another day. Same with making a pot of chili or jambalaya.

Unfortunately for all of us the food product makers are getting pretty good at cutting corners with their bags and boxes rather than raising the prices which means we are paying the same amount and getting less

Hope this is of help. The monthly inventory / grocery run may be your best bet.

[Leo]

Thanks ESMonitor for the reply. I might try that in the future. But starting from now, I’m going to check if we can limit our weekly food grocery to $80 and eating out per month to less than $150. I will put non edibles to Household and see if we can reach our goal of $450/month for Food for two people. $450 not too bad right?

[cougs4bcs]

girlfriend pays the grocery bill. i cover the electric, water, gas, garbage, cable. she covers groceries and home expenses. we eat pretty well, so i feel it's a pretty fair trade off. i honestly don't want to know what she spends, as she probably doesn't want to know how much all my bills are!

[ANewHorizon]

Our food budget is $500, in a lower cost of living area. We were living on $350 for a while, but made the decision to dump the processed food and eat significantly healthier.
Therefore I buy a lot of produce, organic as often as reasonably affordable. Plenty of meat - not organic or anything like that, as the prices are insane. We did save up and buy a side of organic beef, much cheaper than the grocery store and it tastes amazing! We also eat dairy, and plenty of fruit if it's in season like now.
We rarely eat out, that aspect of the food budget is $30 or less a month.

That said, I think $500 as your upper limit should feed you quite well, even in California. I'm just guessing that you may have better prices on seasonal items there, and probably don't eat as much protein as we do.
As you probably already know, the best way to stretch your food budget is to prepare your own breakfast, lunch and dinner even though it requires more time in the kitchen.
Also I encourage you to avoid processed food as the cost per pound/ounce is really high and it isn't good for you anyway.

[bzbee]

We are family of 5. We don't have a food budget, but I am trying to get best deals and use coupons as much as possible. I buy all the food. I spend anywhere between $20 to $80 a week. There are times when I don't have to buy anything for almost 2 weeks if we have enough milk in the fridge. Sometimes there are no good deals anywhere in my area during a week, so I would only buy milk, or buy nothing at all. I usually stock up when I find a good deal, so my pantry is always full of rice, pasta, oatmeal and other non-perishable food. Before I leave the house I usually check my freezer space, just in case I find any good deal on meat, so I would know how much to buy. So, I guess it averages to about $250 a month.

We are trying to eat healthy, so I barely buy any junk food and processed packaged food. We have about 25 hens for eggs, and occasionally we would kill some roosters or chickens for meat. I also hatched some chicks in the incubator (also sold some for $$), so now I have about 22 little chicks that should start laying this October, or will become meat, if they are roosters. The chicken food costs us about $400 a year for the grain we bought from a local farmer, we purchased it last summer and still have plenty. I would like to have a milk goat, but we would need to fence some part of the backyard and build a shed for it. I would also need to learn how to care for it, because me and my husband don't have any farming experience and never had any animals except cats and dogs, so it is a learning process for us. We have almost one acre of land, but the front yard is kind of big, and the grass there is useless, except that we can park some extra cars there when we have visitors. We have a few fruit trees and a big organic garden, so right now we are starting to have lots of squash, some cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes. I also freeze or dehydrate the excess produces for winter. The main reason we grow our food is because we want to eat healthy, but can't really afford anything organic.

We don't eat out, I pack my husbands lunch. We also eat lots of soups and salads, egg salad too, because we have lots of eggs and we don't eat a lot of meat. We don't buy sodas, except for b-days or other holidays, we drink 100% juice or I mix lemonade or ice tea. I make my own buttermilk, yogurts, smoothies, and other food that most people buy processed and in small expensive packages.

[jackmiller]

Family budget for food is $300 every other week.

[steveMQ]

500 USD for whole family (4 members + dog)

[TheMom]

We have a dining out budget of $60/month and a grocery budget (includes toiletries and paper goods) of $800/month. We are 2 adults and 3 kids. We rarely go out to eat, but do order pizza 1-2 times a month. We go out to a restaurant maybe 4-5 times a year. The kids and I do grab drinks and snacks out at times, and that is what a lot of the $60 goes to.