Food Budget
 

For the average American family...

In the 1950's food was the largest budget item at 29.7%.

In the 1960's it was 24.3%

In the 1970's it dropped to 19.3%

In the 1980's only 15%

In the 1990's 13.8%

In the 2000's a meager 13.1%

How can that be, when it costs so much to go to the supermarket these days?
Because the average income went from $4,287 to $50,302.

Just wait.

The Federal Reserve is in the process of forcing inflation to go up,
and income of working folk will too. For others, things will just get harder.

Wow. According to that chart, the average family is now spending $445 a month on groceries. Less than $15 a day for a family? That's just absurd.

It's not even remotely true, those numbers are fantasy. easily $200 a week for four of us, prolly more, and we don't buy pre-made food.

That's average, you high-on-the-hoggers. :lol:
And from the sources, I'd bet that doesn't include soap, paper, and all the other non-food you drag home from the supermarket.

What I would like to see is a comparison between 4 main budgets in a family, namely :
1) food
2) housing
3) transportation
4) kid's education

I usually end up buying a fair amount of non-foodstuffs, including laundry detergent, which is darn expensive stuff.

I also buy a lot of TV dinners, which are much more expensive than raw ingredients. I spend around $75 each time I hit the store, unless I've really, really tried to eat everything that's not nailed down before I go back (in which case there are Wawa visits to replenish milk and bread).

We don't usually spend more than $15 a day for 5 big eaters. We don't buy expensive cuts of meat, we don't buy much organic or out-of-season. We do buy in bulk when there's a good sale. We live in a city where there are many grocery stores and therefore more competitiion to keep the prices low. We could easily eat for less if we chose to (cutting out fresh fruit and veg, for a start.....) Also, I guess we eat to live rather than live to eat.

here an example:

breakfast: cereal or toast. Max 50c per person (I only buy cereals at $2 or less per box (yes, i wait for the sales), main cereals are generic brand cornflakes, rice crispies, oat loopy things....), Bread is $1.80 italian loaf from supermarket (unsliced)

lunch: brown bagged for the kids and beest, same for me out of the fridge, up to $1 each, maybe. bread, pasta or rice or home-made pizza, piece of fruit, fun size candy bar, cheese or meat, go-gurt, milk to drink (decanted from gallon jug), hebe, beest and I sometimes have leftovers instead.

dinner: choosing something mid-range expense: Spaghetti Bologneise (sauce will make two-three meals). about a buck for 1.5lb pasta (always bought on sale, never pay more than 67c/lb), around $5 for ground chuck (just under 2lb usually) $2 for tinned tomatos, $1 bacon, 50c onions/garlic, 50c-$1 for accompanying vegetables -so around $3-4 per meal for the sauce, so around $5 for the whole family

tea coffee coke snacks etc might add another couple of dollars to the daily bill.

so that's just about $15 I guess. sometimes we might have steak for dinner -if it's on sale- or fish (ditto) which will make the cost higher, But sometimes we just have pasta with a tuna sauce and peas and that's much lower.

I think it would be hard for us to live on much less than $15/day, but I don't think that statistic is unreasonable. Generic mac n cheese in a box is pretty cheap if you can stomach it. Some people have to.

If we don't include soap, paper towels, pet supplies, adult beverages and that expensive shampoo my daughter makes us buy for her lovely platinum blonde hair . . . :yelgreedy I'd guess we spend an average of $80 a week just on food at the grocery.

This does not include the kids' lunches bought at school, which I need to work on decreasing --my son can easily spend $7 a day in his cafeteria, which is astounding to me. It also doesn't hubby's lunch every day; he refuses to pack because he's so damn picky (he's a mail carrier, so not someone who has access to an office fridge/microwave). Doesn't include all the pizzas and the fast-food and sit-down dinners we get because I really hate cooking and, though I usually do it anyway, I look for any excuse not to. :)

However, we do sit down as a family and have meals together most nights, which I've heard only 20% of U.S. families do on a regular basis (I'm too lazy to look up the exact stats or source) so I think we're doin' something right anyhow.

In my grocery store, the cheapest ground chuck is $4/lb. The kind we buy is $6/lb. A dollar in the (non-organic) produce section will get you one red onion, or 2 cucumbers, or 1 1/3 bell peppers. Pasta's about the same around here as what you were saying, though. Maybe it's just because you live closer to viable farmland than we do. :)

could be. but that's exactly my point, it really depends on location. I forgot to add that we grow some of our own veggies in the summer. That helps too. Cheapest ground chuck here is just over $2/lb, I buy the stuff that's priced nearer $4/lb, but I wait until it's on sale at nearer $2-3 then buy tonnes and freeze it*. I buy onions in the pre-packed 3lb bags for less than $3. A bag will usually last me until the next time they go on sale at around $2 per bag :)

*(Well to be accurate, I buy tonnes and beest freezes it while rolling his eyes at me because it's gonna be a squeeze in the freezer.......)

It's simple market economics. You grow the beef in Texas and ship it to Michigan... that lowers the cost :confused:

I'm sure there are commercial beef ranches in Texas somewhere... but the only ones I know of are of the all-natural, grass-fed, hoity-toity variety. I'm pretty sure our cheap beef is shipped in from Mexico.

Does this budget include fast food, going out to eat at restaurants and/or convenience store shopping?