How much do you spend on food each month?

coasterqueen wrote: Dh and I were talking yesterday on our way to the IL's and he informed me that we spend over $600 a month on food! He said it was like $250 every two weeks at grocery store and at least $100 a month at restaurants.

Oh my freakin' gosh!!! I so have to find away to cut that budget line down. I about blew a gasket on the way to IL's over that. I was almost embarassed to say how much we spend. Geesh! No wonder I'm fatter than a cow.

DansMom replied: It's shocking to me when I balance my account every month how much we spend on food. What your DH says is just about what we spend too. I buy organic meat usually, which adds to it, but even so it seems like that's our biggest expense after the mortgage.

coasterqueen replied:
You know our food expense went way up Dh said when I went on the dairy elim diet because a lot of vegan food and other specialty food store food is EXPENSIVE. I bought a soy cheese pizza last week that was $7 alone! Yikes!

kit_kats_mom replied: Ok, this is unbelievable! I just looked it up on quicken and I'm really good about sorting out our receipts and only putting food items under groceries. Paper goods/cleaning supplies etc all go under a different heading. Dining out includes my DH's lunches when I don't pack them...that means' most days. I'm so slack!

Average spending on groceries from January-May $759.79/mo
Average spending on dining out/Lunches for DH-$294.45

OK, that's absurd & somewhat embarassing. I'm going to have to bring this to DH's attention. We could send our kids to college and pay for both weddings (big lavish affairs) with that! Must be all of the lean cuisines we've been eating lately. Easier that way to keep track of calories.

mummy2girls replied: me its about 150 every 2 weeks. but thats because its just me and jenna and i can live on kraft dinner if i wanted to ...LOL

SOUTHERN MOMMY replied: I spend around $200.00 a week on groceries (junk food) and i swear we eat out 5 out of 7 days a week and that is at least $20.00 bucks a pop there (i'm crazy)

A&A'smommy replied: we spend around 250 dollars a month it would be more if we could afford it

amymom replied: I spend about $150 every two weeks, Family of five, on a really tight budget. $25 a month eating out and I would have to add kids school lunches to that. Even so, my grocery bill almost doubled when I added my MIL to it last year. Boy she can eat! .. but that is a whole other story

Ok total would be about $350 per month total. I shop the meat on sale and stock up in freezer, splurge on fresh veggies & fruits and use coupons, coupons and coupons and rarely prepacked foods.

gr33n3y3z replied: we spend about 600.00 amonth on food could be more could be less
but we have 6 ppl. in the house and no coupons are used maybe I should start again.

~KARA~ replied: I spend close to $75 a week $300 a month of food. My dh spends 220 on eating out a month. The girls and I dont eat out that much cause dh eats our 5days out of 7. WE also spend 40$ a month for school lunches. Total on food=$560 for a family of 4(for now)

amymom replied: Oh another cost saving device: We use up all leftovers. It is pathetic but we eat it all. Freeze leftover veggies then put into soup or stew when making it but it really helps to stretch the food dollar.

Hillbilly Housewife replied: with our current living situation, we spend about 250$ a month on food - but we buy mostly milk, fruit, veggies, yogurt and jusnkfood. (We get our meals included withour living arrangment - if we choose to eat it)

BEFORE though, we'd spend about 50$ a week on food.

Why? Because I was anal.

our biggest expense, believe it or not, was milk. Second came meat - we got one of those organic meat orders - we paid 259$ for 10 months, but we have 18 months worth of meat....we haven't paid anything for about 3 months now, and we still have a 9 cubic foot freezer full of meat, as well as the freezer in 2 fridges full of meat. It's garanteed not to have freezer burn, or refundable/exchangeable.

Anyhoo...so that, we buy pretty much everything on sale. For example - Sidekicks noodles packages - regular, they're 1.29$. On sale, they can come down to either 99 cents, or 79 cents, depends on the time of the year. We buy about 40 of them when they're on sale for 79 cents, and about 20 of them when they're on sale for 99 cents. They're great, because we buy the cheap noodles (99cents for a huge package) and mix them in with the sidekicks. It dilutes the sauce a bit, which is great for the kids, and it fills us up quick, and we usually have leftovers for the next day, for the kids for lunch or whatever.

We buy fruit also on sale - we get the 5 pound bags of apples - 2.99$. The kids have no choice but to have an apple as a snack... lol oh well, they don't know any better!

Oranges - we buy them by the bagfull too. They last baout a month in our fridge drawer.

Bananas - I refuse to buy them if they're over 39 cents a pound. Where I live now they vary between 59 cents and 79 cents a pound - back homw (which we go at least every 2 weekends) they go down to 19 cents a pound, and are usually at about 31 cents a pound. So we buy lots when we go down, and we freeze them as soon as they start getting spotted - they make a cool treat on a hot day anyways, and it's not like the kids eat the skin - so they don't know it's all black and gross looking.... (i don't eat bananas if they're started to spot - I personally find them too mushy. but I like banana bread)

We do buy a lot of grapes. It gets expensive, but it's worth it for us - the kids love them, they eat their fruit rather than junk food (which we rarely buy anyways) and they make a graeat portable snack.

We splurge on the yogurts, and we get the minigos - they're the perfect size for the kids, are make with cheese as opposed to milk, so they're thicker and easier to stay in the spoon - and they're so good! We buy those by the boxfull too, because they'er cheaper per yogurt if you calculate. So we always have like 36 yogurts in the fridge.

We also buy 2 kinds of cheese - a cheap kind, which is still pretty good, which is used mostly to add to kraft dinner, or to grate on mashed potatoes or whatever - and the good kind of cheese, which we eat by the slice.

We buy the cheap kind of bread - since most of it is used as peanut butter sandwiches when the kids are being picky....no use buying the texas toast breas I love so much... but we do get a "special" loaf once in a while.

We buy a lot of no name brand stuff. For example - a box of brandname eggos will cost about 7$ for 24, and the no name brand will cost about 3$ for 24. So we can get double the eggos, and the kids don't know the difference. I eat them maybe once a month, when I'm really pressed for time, and once a month really isn't enough to push me to pay twice the price for them. KWIM?

FOr milk - since we do buy a lot of it, we get the 1% milk - it's cheaper. DH hates it - but that means he drink s more water, which he should anyways.

We buy rice by the 10 pound bag - it's way cheaper than minute rice (although more of a pain in the butt - but you get like 10 times the rice for the same price.

Also - in our walmart, they have a discount shelf - stuff that is going past date, or whatever - a lot of the time, I'll find some bags of mixed beans that are awesome in soups and stews. So I stock up - they're still good if they're a week past date - they're dried beans for crying out loud!!!

We also buy fresh veggies as opposed to frozen veggies. 2 lb of carrots, a celeri bunch, s head of brocolli (with stems) will run us about 6$ for all - which comes out to about 3 packages of frozen mixed veggies - which are about 3$ each - not MUCH savings, but tat least the food is fresh, and I can use the carrot peels in compost.

Canned food - I don't buy a lot of canned stews or what not - I do buy a lot of cream soups when they come on sale - they can come down to 59 cents each for campbells soup. The no name is regular 79cents, so when THOSE come on sale, I eally stock up. Like 40 cans (mixed) The can really add variety to a meal!

Like I said, I buy the no name pasta - nobody really knows the difference anyways - except my mom. So when SHE comes over, which she hasn't yet since I moved in March, I'll buy the Catellini brand, because she CAN tell the difference. Go figure. But I buy spaghetti sauce canned - in those big glass jars - they come down to 99 cents a jar, which is WAYYYYYYY cheaper than making my own. I can just add ground beef or whatever to it - it tastes great.

Shop around - it seems really anal - but when I first started living on my own, I was 15, part time job, and in school - I made an excel spreadsheet with the foods I typiocally bought - and went to some different stores in my area (including 2 big grocery stores, giant tiger and walmart) and entered in my spreadsheet the cost at each store for each food type - Turned out that milk was about 30cents cheaper at walmart. Bread was 20 cents more expensive at walmart than at giant tiger - so I'd get some things at one store, and other things at another store. I got to k now the list pretty well - and if you update it fairly regularly, you can stay on top of the prices.

I'm also a big coupon clipper - I can save up to 20$ a month with coupons - although it's important not to clip a coupn for savngs if you weren't intending on getting that item in the first place, because even though there is a saving, you weren't going to spend that money in the first place, so you actually spend more. A lot of people forget that. So I go through flyers, newspapers, whatever has coupons in it - and put them on the fridge - so that the next time I go grocery shopping, I have my coupons ready to go.

Also - meal planning can help with wasted food - If you have fried rice on day, and you have leftover - keep the rice, but only for one day (rice has a very fast growing bacteria that can grow quickly in leftover rice and make you extremely sick - my caterer told me that at my wedding... lol) and make soup for luinch - add the rice to it with some chicken and some noodles, some leftover veggies - yum!

ANyways - that's how I save on food....... I hate to waste food. Even a scrap of meat - I save - it's enough to put in a stir fry for the kids - or I mix it up with more meat in a stew.

amynicole21 replied: We spend about $400/month at the grocery store, but we eat out a lot ($300/month? with lunches and dinners). Yikes! Neither one of us has much time to cook, so we tend to get LOTS of prepackaged foods.

lisar replied: Me and my DH buy everything in bulk cause I ate the grocery store. So when we do go we spend about $400.00 but that will last me over a month. Except that I have to go every now and then and buy Milk, Bread, Etc... But I dont spend that much and we eat very well. Now eating out I spend about $100.00 a week. We eat out every friday and saturday night and we go to really nice places like red lobster, and things like that. So thats where I spend the most money.

Lisa

iluvmysweetiepies replied: We spend about $450-500 a month on food. Which isn't including formula for the twins. I try and buy in bulk and use most of our food up before buying more. We hardly ever eat out, so I save a lot of money there. I also use lots of coupons.

My2Beauties replied: We probably spend about $300 a month on groceries, if that! We eat out a lot though and probably spend about $300 alone a month just eating out - that is ridiculous!

Maddie&EthansMom replied: Scotty and I were just talking about this. I can't remember how much he said we spent last month on groceries/eating out, but it was RIDICULOUS!!! I really need to do something about that. That money could be well spent somewhere else and yah...no wonder I'm so FAT!!

Cary...ITA! Those frozen meals are so much easier for tracking calories. I'm so lazy when it comes to that.

TANNER'S MOM replied: About the same amount. Sometimes more and sometimes less.

It has gotten to a point of argueing at our house. We might eat out twice a month..but I always COOK COOK and then CLEAN CLEAN

It's awful!
Mel

5littleladies replied: We spend about $300 a month for groceries and then probably $100 or so on eating out, but we are trying to not eat out so much.

3xsthefun replied: We spend around $300-$400 a month that includes eating out, pet food, house hold stuff, and other stuff.

We use to eat out a lot but we have cut back some, Rob does go out and get his lunch everyday.

Kaitlin'smom replied: hummm lets see I would guess $300 with eating out just depends on how often we go out. Which is not much (espically now since we get schwans) and usually we take turns paying out of our money allowence.