Food Budget

[monster]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

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.

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

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.

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.