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.

[Juniper]

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 . . . 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.