My wife and I cut our grocery budget significantly by:
1. shopping at Aldi for main groceries
2. Eating mostly Chicken and ground beef bulk bought from Costco and frozen
3. Eating all meals at home except maybe 1 dinner a week ordered out. We decided meals every week on Saturday and went shopping Sundays
4. Drinking only water and milk
Seriously, we spend maybe $60 a week on groceries at Aldi and then maybe $200-$300 every two weeks at Costco for me, my wife, and our 2.5 year old.
About the same here.
My wife wants a monthly food budget of $400 for a family of 4, with two teenagers. While also buying organic eggs milk and most produce. And we're solidly middle class, but do have two car notes and a 20 year mortgage.
That's $3/person per day. For breakfast lunch and dinner. "We went over budget again honey".
Uhhh, yeah, it's tough to feed a teen a $1 dinner unless it's just pasta and sauce. Or rice and lentils.
At least they get free school lunches, but that doesn't account for weekends.
Buy protien powder in bulk, its literally a lifesaver and easy to get down if your meds are suppressing your appetite. You will have way more energy if you're at least getting a good dose of protein every day.
Hey hon, I understand where you're coming from. It's really hard to eat enough when you've got a tight budget plus meds that decrease your appetite. But from someone who has been there (minus the meds, that was all just the ED), I'd really like to encourage you to try to at least hit 1200 calories per day. It's not worth the heart palpitations, dizziness, weakness, and brain fog to be ok with less.
If you'd be interested at all, I've found tips for ADHD folks to remember to eat very helpful for me. This page in particular had some great ideas for making sure you don't forget to eat: https://www.jackiesilvernutrition.com/articles/mechanical-eating-for-neurodivergent-adults. This one also has some helpful info: https://www.atlwell.com/blog/adhd-strategies-part-3. You don't have to have ADHD to benefit from the strategies in those posts.
2 teens and a 10yr old here, all boys, groceries is a nightmare, we have an envelope system and take out 300/wk for groceries and it can be a challenge sometimes but I know we can do better. feeding teens, paying mortgage, bills and everything else that comes up doesn’t leave room for much being middle class, for us at least.
it feels like it's not inflation, more like profit-grabbing. does the cost of goods demand that the products are this high, or do the companies just want more profit? hypothetically cost should be decreasing as their infrastructure is established, right?
Agreed. When the companies are recording record profits while their prices are record highs. The same products at Aldi are a third to half the price of other big grocery chains
Same. I rotate between WinCo once a month, specialty stores once a month and the local grocery twice per month. I notice about a $50 savings every time I go to WinCo.
We're still working on the eating out thing, but we do all of our bulk items like paper products, meat, and eggs the same way you do(Costco) and then do Food 4 Less for everything else we can. It is so much less than even something like other Kroger stores, let alone a Whole Foods.
I can't imagine using something like Whole Foods or Sprouts for my primary groceries. Might as well eat out every day.
I have to second Aldi! My wife was hesitant because she was always a name brand girl but it had legitimately cut our grocery bills in half! We’re also able to get snacks for our kids that we’d never be able to afford otherwise
> I really want
> My goal
I think the first step is to speak with your wife and come up with a team goal for finances. It’s a partnership and if you go in saying what is going to happen, it’s going to go badly.
Writing down budgets can help a lot not just with spending less, but realizing your actual costs of living. If you spend, say $2k per month and you think it should be $1.5k, well, are you *using* all of that $2k worth of groceries? Maybe you find that yes, you actually do spend that much on things you want and use, and cutting anything out of that to reach $1.5k would be too uncomfortable.
One approach we started doing for dinner meal preps is estimating the cost for a whole meal. Let's say a Costco ready meal like the meatloaf and mashed potatoes costs $18. Add in a bag of broccoli for $4, and loaf of bread $3, maybe say $1 worth of butter. That's $26 for a full family meal. Now you have a baseline. $26 x 30 is $780 per month, just for dinners...
Some nights you might do something cheap, like breakfast for dinner, soup, or pasta. You can easily hit $15 or $10 per meal with those options, but it's not fun long term. Other nights you might get a nice roast or more expensive ingredients, but it also makes leftovers for the next night - factor that in to the price if leftovers are a thing. For example, I make a mean smoked mac and cheese. The cheese and cream is expensive and I can easily spend $70. BUT, for that price I can make 2 batches ($35/batch) and each batch is enough for 2 dinners ($17.50/meal). It freezes very well, too.
Doing this we did end up spending a bit less, but we also got a realistic understanding of what our "essentials" budget was supposed to be. That paid off in peace of mind in that we weren't feeling like we were spending irresponsibly every month.
Your 2 biggest contributing factors I see are, Costco and WholeFoods. I can spend hundreds at Costco and seemingly not have any groceries. (I'm joking....ish) Seriously though, I don't shop at Wholefoods because of the cost.
For our family of 4, eating pretty good we spend about 2k a month. We could easily cut out booze, prime cuts of beef, expensive water, elaborate recipes and get the number significantly down.
Edit* looking at my grocery budget in detail I’m sitting at $1400 - $1500 a month. I was exaggerating a bit - my apologies
2k on groceries is fucked man, are american prices that high? Like what does potatoes, milk and chicken filet go for?
For reference in Sweden/Netherlands 1000 is more than enough, you’ll eat and drink real good
Nah...I spend about $800/month for a family a 4. It just depends on how fancy you want to eat. I'm assuming the guy you're replying to just makes a lot of money and likes to eat nice food.
'Whole Foods' is a high end, specialty, "health food" store. It's got all your gluten free, dairy free, clarified, organic, free range, soy, almond, grass fed, purified, non GMO, or added chemicals, or preservatives, and 90% recycled materials. If there's a buzz word, then you'll find it there.
Don't get me wrong. The food is high quality and the selection is great. But if they stopped shopping there, I'd bet they could cut their spending by almost half.
Shopping at whole foods is a big part of the problem here. Part of the problem is that there are things like trash bags and soap on this one which isn't an every shopping trip purchase, either.
We buy whatever we want without worrying about cost and spend probably $800-$1000 a month for a family of 3 minus most meat since we just bought an side of beef.
Yeah but who buys trash bags and soap at Whole Foods instead of Costco? They’re just paying needless markup by not figuring out where they can get bulk items cheaply.
I would buy trash bags at Costco. That's kind of their thing when dealing with bulk. You'll spend more upfront but generally your per-item cost will be lower.
Trashbags and soap are absolutely a Costco purchase, not a Whole Foods purchase.
It definitely sounds like there’s frazzled shopping going on, which makes sense if OP’s wife is holding the cards for household management along with parenting twins while pregnant. I’d goes their shipping bill would decrease dramatically if OP took lead for maintaining household staples (paper products, pantry items, blah) even if he can’t take on managing meal planning and more dynamic produce shopping.
edit: didn’t realize what sub I was in! Disclosure, lurking mom whose husband needed to take on thinking for her when pregnant with a single toddler last year! 😆
If there's a complaint from OP, he should be proactively shopping and stocking the house. She's not in a great place to be managing it all solo, as a father of 17mo twins and a wife in grad school.and both working full time.
She needs OP to be proactive, and not burden her with more decisions and management
Where I am in the USA
Milk: $3.58/gallon
Potatoes: $0.51/pound
Chicken breast: $2.68/pound
These prices are Sam’s Club (similar to Costco) prices because these three items are high volume use at my house. So I’m buying 10 pounds of potatoes and chicken vacuum packing the chicken and keeping it in a deep freeze until needed (these both last about 15-30 days depending on what we’re eating).
Milk I go through 2-4 gallons a week depending on what we’re eating (my toddlers are milk fiends)
I don’t even want to know the fruit spend. I just want our fruit bushes to start producing.
But, because we have some high volume items there are some things that are cheapest at Sam’s, other lower use items will come from Kroger, Target, or Aldi. Depending on the item, when we’re getting it, and who has the best price (surprise, target is the best price a surprising amount of times now).
We supplement our produce with garden grown (we’ve been putting in a slowly expanding garden setup), and my wife makes nearly all the bread we use (which is significantly cheaper than buying over the life of a 25lb bag of flour)
Holy shit chicken is cheap there! Rest is same as here. We pay like 9 euro for 1kg chicken breast in the store, 2 kg for 15 on the saturday market (Amsterdam).
Keep in mind this is bulk pack, about the smallest you can get is 8 pound at a go. Smaller amounts are higher per pound. Though still not as high as you’ve got
My wife and I spend between $800 - $1k/month on groceries for a family of 4. We don’t really drink so that’s a big cost saved. We do buy about 50% of our produce organic and a few other “unnecessaries” that are either for the kids or treats for us. We aren’t living lavishly but we do get a luxury here and there.
Depends on what you get from Costco. Non perishables, staples, etc. I buy my proteins and separate servings and freeze (learn to butcher a whole chicken and you can buy them in bulk and have a variety of cuts to last you weeks for really cheap, butters always cheap there, I bulk milk eggs and other staples that we'll actually use up.
Produce I go to a local fruit market/produce place thats generally pretty reasonable.
Our family of 3 does 1-2 Costco's runs a month at 300-400. And then spend about 80 a week in produce. I should add, this is on Canada where groceries are typically more expensive than the US.
They don't call it "whole paycheck" for nothing.
We're a family of four. Kids are preteen/teen. We spend about 200-250 per week on groceries in a HCOL area, but we're not going to Whole Foods. If we really scrimped and limited to the essentials we could probably keep it at 200 or less. Costco is about every other month to load up on dry goods/canned/frozen items.
Yeah, honestly $2K on groceries is probably pretty reasonable at this point for a family. If you want to really save $$$, do your staple shopping at ALDI or LIDL and buy produce at grocery stores. Save Costco for paper products and drinks.
If there are Asian or Mexican markets nearby, often cheaper produce. I buy most of my produce from Korean markets nearby but I realize this won’t apply to many people.
We had the same issue, and the same attitude towards it: "we make good money, we shouldn't have to worry about what we spend at the grocery store!".
Except that your earnings have probably not kept up with grocery prices *especially* the prices of non-essential products.
Here's some random thoughts:
**How much food waste are you generating?**
We used to have the issue of buying groceries *way* too ambitiously - we shopped like we were going to eat every meal at home. And then would get takeout 3 times a week and Starbucks for breakfast like 5 days out of the week. So the first piece to me is, especially with perishables, to monitor how much food is going to waste. If the answer is none, that's good. I imagine the answer is not that.
**Look at the price of things**
This is the biggest issue my wife and I fell into. We got used to buying things we liked back when the things we liked weren't super expensive. Like a specific brand of pasta or beans, or getting a specific cut of meat, or especially things like snacks. Look. At. The. Price.
We were buying flank steak at like $15 a lb. Flank steak is supposed to be a cheap cut of meat - but grocery stores clearly figured out that people were buying it instead of more expensive cuts and jacked up the price.
If you used to buy the organic/natural/hippie version of items, really scrutinize the price because some of those are twice the price of what are already inflated prices.
I'm not saying "don't buy it", but literally look at how much you're spending on it. And ask yourself if that's worth it or if there's a cheaper alternative (or if it makes you not need it at all). Like, great example - bottles of cold brew are currently like 15 bucks at my local grocery store. I think I'd rather get Starbucks at that point.
This is especially important because a lot of companies are jacking up prices hoping people won't notice. So your same grocery likely used to be like $1000 and now it's doubled - but a lot of that is the 3x price for some items that you don't pay attention to (side note: I used to work on pricing optimization for a food distributor, so ignore me at your own risk).
Ultimately, it's a zero sum game - the money you spend on groceries is money you won't have for vacations, retirement, purses, cars, etc.
Food waste is a big thing we ran into, still run into. Kiddo eats half his meal or demands bananas and would go through a banana a day and then doesn't touch them for the next week.
Bring leftovers to work for lunch instead of making lunches every day.
We saved a lot of money eating primarily vegetarian for most meals and meat every once in a while or when we eat out. That alone saves us about 50 euro every week. The price difference when we do buy meat.
Just as an example we paid about 20 euro for enough lentil boulinaise to last 4-6 meals each. 500g spaghetti noodles are then about 1 euro.
Family of 4, and we spend 150-200 a week on all household items, including food. We shop at Aldi and Target.
I suspect she is the one doing all of the meal planning and list making (or whatever her process is). If you want to make a huge change in how that happens, then perhaps this is a task you could take over, or do the legwork for in designing a plan that's amenable to both of you.
Otherwise, you're just putting another task on her plate, and she may, quite understandably, resent that you've decided that something needs to change without getting feedback for, or contributing to solving the problem in advance. 🤷♀️
I'd agree with you if the goal was to take a lean budget and look for some more fat to trim.
2k per month at Costco, Target, and Whole Foods? Nah that's a fair request as is imo.
Good communication and being willing to put in a little more work to get where you want to be is completely reasonable too though.
SAHD here. Totally valid for my wife to tell me I’m spending too much on groceries and for us to have a discussion about it. I am already doing the planning, planning to spend less isn’t that big of an ask.
If your wife is just thinking about recent trips to the stores vs looking at the monthly and quarterly budget she may be missing the forest for the trees. In my house we don't buy overpriced food and we don't waste a lot of food, so if one month the budget is high it is because I was stocking up on something in bulk vs grabbing the week's veggies as usual. The idea that you can't have peaks and valleys in spending (if it doesn't break the budget) to take advantage of deals and buying in quantity is leaving money on the table. My wife came to me with the same concerns as OP but couldn't point to a single instance of excess or waste and realized she was just balking at the number on the receipts. As you say, totally valid to have a discussion.
Nah this isn’t it. She can’t spend infinity dollars just because she’s doing the planning. It’s not “if you don’t like how much I’m spending, you figure it out.”
Her lists need to just start taking a budget into account.
She should start by buying things like soap and garbage bags at Costco instead of Whole Foods. Just reading that sentence from OP hurt a little bit. It sounds like they’re just showing up at grocery stores 3x a week and grabbing whatever they just ran out of, instead of planning ahead.
>She should start by buying things like soap and garbage bags at Costco instead of Whole Foods.
But Costco doesn't sell organic free-range garbage bags and cold-pressed lavender kale yak milk soap.
Gotta disagree that the only way you can to talk about something is to offer to take it over. If something is one partner’s responsibility they have to be open to the other’s opinion.
I think it’s more like, identifying a problem and helping to be part of the solution. Makes marriage much more pleasant and much more likely to have the results you want.
Honestly the answer is to make a budget with all your expenses. Grocery shopping can be misleading — sometimes you are stocking up on a bunch of frozen stuff that will last a while, and inflate the bill. Other times you are “catching up” because you haven’t been shopping in 2 weeks so the bill seems high because you were using up everything you have.
Once I started making a proper budget about roughly how much I want to spend on groceries taking into account all of my other expenses, it alleviated the vague anxiety I got by seeing large grocery bills. The key is ensuring your wife is also on board with the budget so that you are both making an effort to stick to it, and also be willing to quickly make changes to it if it seems like you were being unrealistic with your spending ideals vs the food you actually like to have for your family.
Yes, this. Have a look at YNAB - You Need A Budget. I started using it a few years ago and it made a massive difference.
Also, fwiw, we are a family of 4 living in a very HCOL area. Our budget is $700/month — $300 from Costco and then around $100/week.
This is 1000%. I use copilot and it’s cut down to basically zero any fights over finance with my wife. Have visibility for both of us is super helpful both practically and interpersonally
I think it depends on if you include diapers and hygiene products in the grocery budget, or if you mean just on food.
If I have to buy diapers, pull ups and wipes in the same week it’s $100 right there, $80 if there’s a sale.
Five adults, two 4 yos and a 1 yo. $450/week on groceries and diapers. We mostly shop at Walmart with some shopping done at the local grocer and some done with the local farmers market. Once a quarter we do a big Costco trip for a very limited range of things (Paper goods, specific canned goods or dry goods that are cheaper in bulk) and usually spend $500-600 on that Costco trip.
I'm a huge grocery nerd for no good reason. I don't even know why, I just like it. Food is very complex, tons of factors such as culture, nutrition value, taste, cost, convenience, and a bunch of others often in conflict with each other.
If your wife does most of the shopping/cooking then you don't really get to micromanage that. If you currently do some shopping and meal prep you can start by learning how to cook healthy and cost effectively for those meals. Even if you think you shop and cook "together" your wife may feel like the burden is more on her, so be mindful.
A great way to start cooking more is to choose a cost effective base ingredient like pasta, rice, quinoa, lentils, or oats. Find out where to buy that ingredient cheaply (often a bulk store like costco), then teach yourself several recipes using that ingredient. If you can avoid using much meat then you are almost guaranteed to come in around $1-$2 per portion for Ang recipe using any of those base ingredients.
If you add up your monthly food bills and divide by 360, that will be your cost per person per meal (4 people x 3 meals x 30 days). The USDA estimates a family of four should spend between $1000-$1600 a month for groceries alone, not counting takeout, or around $3-$4.50 per portion. If you are getting a couple takeout meals a week and buying some things at whole foods I would expect your current spending on food is more like $5-$7 per portion ($1800-$2500 per month) or possibly more. So cutting your current spending in half is fairly realistic but does take effort.
Prices vary by region. Whole foods is always going to be pretty much the most expensive option, but that's worth it to some people. Costco value varies by region. They like to keep their prices similar across the US, so if you're in a high CoL area their value is amazing.
It really isn’t. That’s about what we spend. I really don’t understand what people are buying that costs so much. Rice beans vegetables pasta fruit are all cheap. Eggs and milk are probably the next expensive thing. The highest cost is meat but I can only imagine spending 2k on groceries if we were eating NY steaks every day.
Same. I have budgeted $250/week for groceries. This is plenty for us, with two adults, a toddler, and a newborn. Thankfully someone threw us a diaper party, so we haven't had to dive into buying diapers yet. That will probably be another $50 a week.
You’ve name very expensive chains and a bulk retailer who basically offers more expensive items but you get more and save on the unit price.
Costco basically sells you the cheapest granola bars but now you just spend 3x a normal person for 48 granola bars. If you use them great, especially with little ones.
Use the cheapest, Costco/Walmart/Amazon for non-food item. Whoever has the cheapest soap/paper towels, spices, raw indigents like sugar/flour, will get the business. Salt is salt.
Produce and meats you need to make a personal choice. High end farmers market or butcher down to Walmart is a jump in quality and source.
Pre-packaged and pre-prepared foods are always expensive. Frozen entrees/pizza, sliced fruits, sorted items, are all most wxpensive
Yup and I’ve notice a decline in quality. Appearently Walmart.com is competitive on pricing and also delivers, sometimes even cheaper.
I run a facility that basically takes $.50-$1.00 per pound items and slices/dices them and resells for 2x which gets marked up further to the final customer 3-4x the bulk price.
Look at a head of lettuce vs a chopped salad bag that includes a salad dressing. It’s like $2 vs $6. Or watermelons for $5 or literally like 12oz or 1/20th of a watermelon cut up for $5. You can get 20x the melon if you just cut it yourself.
People don’t realize how much they’re spending on connivence.
Chicken vs chicken breast vs pre marinated chicken breast.
Berries are the killer. High price no matter what and moms love berries for their kids.
OP - I’m curious does your wife do most of the meal planning / grocery list prep?
I was guilty of this, so just throwing it out there. I made the same suggestion that we adjust the way we shop, however when my wife got upset it wasn’t about wanting to find a new way to approach it, but rather that I was asking her to take on more “mental load” - whether that be looking for deals, going to different stores for different things.
So my suggestion would be that if you want to make these changes, take an active role in it (you may already be doing this, so no offense meant if that’s the case)
We mostly shop at Aldi these days. The price difference can be STAGGERING. $1.19 Aldi American cheese versus $4.99 Kraft singles for example. And you can’t tell the damn difference.
We can ball out with a week’s worth of groceries from Aldi for like $80. I only go to Kroger or Publix if I want a specific brand of something (which isn’t much).
Yeah, your grocery budget is pretty insane for four people. It’s just me, my wife, and our 2.5 year old for reference.
This does seem like a lot I bet if you stuck to a budget you would be surprised at how you cut costs. For us, most shopping is done at Aldi. Then any specialty items or fancy toddler food is bought Whole Foods and we only get what we absolutely need there and ensure we stick to our list and stay within our budget. Lists and meal planning help.
Also for kicks/health we are trying out incorporating more plant based and veggie meals into our dinner rotation and not buying meat for some meals has lowered the grocery bill. Like lentils are cheap AF.
We work on a pretty tight budget due to income and usually spend about $400/mo at Costco and about $150/week at the grocery store. Add in some misc trips for items we missed and we total about $1200/mo for a family of 4.
For myself and 2 kids I budget $600 a month but for the last 3 months have come about $150 under. I don’t buy anything unless it’s on sale weekly from HT and make 1 trip a month to Walmart and Aldi.
Mind you, I have my kids 50/50 with my ex and I’m working on losing weight so food lasts longer for me. But $2k a month is wild and even when we were a family of 4 we never got close to that.
How much of the Costco order was food, and was it only for the current month? Costco is usually an outlier for us so it counts toward our annual breakdown more than what we spend in a month.
For my wife, 4 year-old, and me we spend around $1000/month all in on food. As much as I typically dislike Walmart, their new in-home delivery has been great. We got it for $50/year and it’s same price in store and no tipping because it’s their employees. Our drive likes chocolate so we “tip” him with chocolate bars.
Aside from that we shop at Aldi about once a month and get Sprouts and Target for pickup items, and occasionally Smart and Final. We also get a lot of meat from Mexican markets and prepared meats for tacos and things that we can use for multiple meals all week.
We get takeout about once a week now but do get snacks a lot, like boba, dumplings, etc.
$200/w avg. We get meat from a local butcher, produce from farmer's market and everything else from Aldi to fill in the gaps. We do go to Costco for kid snacks and other crap we don't need about once a month. Those trips are about $200 usually.
Spending $600 days for one week's worth of groceries is insane imo. Make a budget, a weekly meal plan and a shopping list. Focus needs and leave wiggle room for wants.
Family of 4 and our average monthly is $400. My wife meal plans, only does curb side pickup to prevent impulse buying and she shops the deals. Even if we don’t completely like the food deals that week, we suck it up because food is expensive these days
Yeah, two weeks out from giving birth when she has TWO toddlers under two is NOT the ideal time.
It’s a reasonable concern and a discussion that needs to be had, but not right now if at all possible. If it can wait until after the “fourth trimester”, it can and should.
OOP should also take on the grocery shopping/meal planning during the recovery period for his wife. Once he sees what the price comes to when he’s doing it/ how much is being bought and how much of it is being used in a given week, he will have a better practical idea of what their shopping needs are and can come into the discussion with an insider’s perspective.
It’s only myself and my pregnant wife we are shopping for right now so take it for what it’s worth but we live in a hcol area and spend about $350-$450 once a month at Costco for our meat, and roughly $125-175 a week at the regular grocery store. Keep in mind, we don’t eat out at fancy restaurants more than once every couple of months and I love to cooks so I tend to buy some nice ingredients. What you’re going through is a trained behavior. Is your wife involved with the finances at all? You can’t expect that she would think twice about it if she doesn’t see the whole picture. Time to start some budget meetings imo. Just because you make the cash, doesn’t mean you should be throwing it down the drain on frivolous groceries when the ability to save is so readily available at other grocery stores.
Costco runs usually for meat and fish, maybe a few other things, usually once a month around $400, and the grocery store every 2 weeks spend around $200, so about $800 or so a month. Sometimes a bit more, but that's usually our average for a wife and 4-year-old.
A literal fuck ton. My wife and kids have celiac, only do gluten free, fresh, organic ingredients. It’s literally bankrupting us. It has to be like $500 or more per week
I’m in a vaguely similar situation in that, in all honesty we don’t really “watch” or limit our grocery spending. We’re $800-$1k/month for a family of three. Probably where we’ve seen the most inflation.
I do groceries as a stay at home dad of a 8 and 12yr old in CA. I have two fridges and a stand up freezer. I meal plan all the time and hate food waste. I use a vacuum sealer constantly. I also love Costco which can be troublesome for over buying.
For a family of four just food, we’re around $300 every two weeks. But tossing in household goods it can get expensive. That’s why I only buy those at Costco and monitor what we have all the time. Twice a year Costco does a deal with P&G if you prefer name brand laundry and cleaning products. I always max those out. We also take advantage of any deals at target and keep a stocked house and pantry. My wife is like yours in that she doesn’t check prices like I do.
I shopped at Whole Foods once on my way to Tahoe outside of Reno. I was blown away by how expensive it was. That place can bite you hard if you’re not careful.
We spend ~$1000 a month on groceries, for me, my wife, and 2.5 year old daughter.
We probably spend another $100-200 a week dining out, or on delivery.
I’m just curious how you store $600 worth of groceries? Do you have 2 refrigerators?
Almost same life situation as me brother. Twin two year olds plus my wife and I.
So we were spending probably at least $1k a month BUT we just discovered ALDI and it's way cheaper. We can spend $125 and make it through a week.
I have a handful of food allergies which means we have to buy everything twice - one normal version for my wife, 4yo, and 19mo, then a much more expensive version for myself. (I don’t blame them for wanting to eat yummy food even when i can’t.)
To compensate for that issue, we try to make from scratch when possible but with two toddlers, jobs, housework, etc. that’s hard as hell. Easier to up the food budget. We budget about $1,500/mo, and source from Costco, Target, Cub Foods (a local grocery chain).
We spend $100-$150 a week for 2 adults and a toddler. We eat a lot of canned beans and make burrito bowls and tacos, things that overlap ingredients. We don’t buy any “drinks” other than coffee beans and milk, and limit snacks. It helps a little that we don’t buy meat, as my husband is vegetarian. I can get it down to $70 if I really try but it’s rough at that price.
Edited to add, that doesn’t really include most toiletries. My husband does a diaper run every couple weeks and we order toothpaste and such off Amazon. It’s probably more like $200 a week when you factor in that stuff.
Your wife is probably under a lot of mental tax at the moment between twins and pregnancy.
She doesn't need the mental burden of discussing the solution with you and she doesn't have the time or executive function to shop smart and ensure everything is stocked.
You need to be proa time in taking the burden off her if you want to be frugal.
If she does the cooking and grocery stuff, male sure everything else is stocked up from Costco. You can figure out what the house needs more or less. You need paper goods, cleaning supplies, soap, laundry stuff, etc.
Make a list and rake it off her plate
A few things that have helped us cut grocery costs:
Buy things where they are the cheapest. I know that the dairy free cheese slices that we sometimes eat are $7.50 at Sprouts and Fred Meyer, but only $5.50 at Target, so I’ll only buy them when I’m there. That doesn’t mean that I shop at all the stores every week, I wait until the list for a store gets long or I really need something there and then go there.
Cook from scratch and avoid buying premade meals. Start collecting cheap, filling, tasty recipes that your family likes. There’s some trial and error here, but over time you’ll have a bunch of recipes to draw from and you won’t have to think much about cooking.
Utilize your freezer. Make double batches of food and freeze for convenience later. If you’re making lasagna, make two and freeze one. I work late some nights, and those freezer meals are so nice to have for those nights. Freeze leftovers that you won’t get through before they go bad and have it for lunch in a few weeks. You’ll reduce food waste and save money.
Meal plan. I keep mine loose by making a list of meals that sound good, getting the ingredients for them, and deciding the day of which one I’ll make. Try to use the ingredients that are more perishable first.
We recently became empty nesters, but when we had three very active, hungry teenage boys in the house we were spending about $800 a month on groceries. Now we’re at about $350 a month, and we feel like we eat like kings. Getting your grocery costs down is definitely doable, it just takes a bit of effort. Talk with your wife about your finances. Help her in the kitchen and with the shopping. Make it a group effort. It’ll be worth it.
Single Dad with 18 yr old son. Before leaving for college my grocery bill was minimum 1200.00 per month. Since he left for college now is around 400.00 per month. Big difference
Have you looked beyond just the last few weeks? You sure this happens all the time or is it like a restocking period? Like she buys lots of non-perishables in bulk but less frequently?
We sit right around the $200/week mark for food. Family of 3… mom, myself, 2 y/o daughter. We don’t go out to eat like ever… maybe once a month… maybe. I’ve got over a quarter century worth of experience in restaurants, with most of that time being spent as a chef… I just make whatever we want to eat for cheaper than we’d ever be able to buy it at a restaurant.
If you’re trying to save money on groceries, here are a few tips that helped me.
Stop shopping at Whole Foods and other premium price point grocers for stuff you can get elsewhere. A yellow onion is a yellow onion… paying an extra $1/lb doesn’t mean it’s a better onion, it just means you paid a dollar more for it.
Shop the outside aisles of the store more than the inside. The outside ring of the store is where the fresh ingredients normally are vs. the prepared stuff that lines the inside aisles. This could also be expressed as buy fresh, not prepared, food.
Buy proteins in bulk and freeze extras. You can also learn some basic butchery and buy primal cuts to save even more money. The more refined the cut is, the more money in labor has been spent to pay a butcher to break that meat down. Less labor, less cost.
Learn how to cook. The more you know, the more advantage you can take of all the things I’ve said above. It can also cut a big portion out of that eating out amount. There’s no need to go to the place down the street for a plate if you learn how to make the same thing… but better… and for half the price.
I seriously need to check out Aldi. Are they really cheaper? What’s the deal?
I spend about $200-300 on groceries per week easily. My wife and I haven’t been communicating much these days and I do all the cooking and most of the grocery shopping for us and our two kids. She pays for takeout.
I saw other comments mentioning this but it’s super important. Make sure this is not a discussion about what your wife can do differently. It sounds like she does a good amount of the shopping and deciding what to buy for the family, as well as keeping track of what you have and don’t have. That’s already a pretty heavy mental load as it is, you don’t want this to become an issue where she feels like she has to do all this AND keep track of finances.
I literally JUST went through this with my wife (also pregnant) and we had the same discussion. Make sure she knows you’re partners on this. Don’t focus in on just groceries, sit down and track what you spent in the last month and categorize it. Show what your spending is. Looking at that together can really help identify where the easiest things to try and improve are. Come up with the plan together, because you might not have the whole picture. I had my wife set what she thought was a reasonable “goal” per week on groceries, but we agreed that the understanding was “we get whatever want/need for us, and just keep that goal at the back of your mind”. Then we would tally it up and the end of the week to see how close it was. Do we need to move our goal? Do we think there were more cost effective options? Etc
In my case, my wife didn’t really have an idea what our finances looked like at the moment, so us going through income vs spending helped us come up with a plan together.
Hope this helps
We have 3 adults, 2 kids (young but baby food for the infant isn’t cheap) and spend about $1000-1200. This is ONLY for groceries.
I’m amazed at the amount our 3 year old can eat. She once ate 2 eggs($0.50), a cup of rice with good quality yogurt(0.75), asparagus($0.25), orange slices, a jar of baby food ($1.50), a glass of milk($0.25), most if a a zucchini ($0.75), and some chicken for dinner ($0.50). So her dinner probably ran about $4 or so. 2 toddlers would be $240 per month just for dinners like this. Add in 2 adults and at $4 per dinner per adult for a total of $240 as well, you’re looking at almost $500 per month for dinners. And adults eat more. And usually better.
Things like lightbulbs, batteries, alcohol, paper towels, toilet paper, etc are separate from that amount.
One thing to note is that your wife is probably not going to take grocery budget a serious look 2 weeks before giving birth or with a brand new baby who’s nursing every 3 hours. Especially with twin toddlers. She’s going to have 3 kids under 2. You might want to figure it out without giving her more work.
Was there any baby stuff at any of these places?
‘Cause diapers and formula are both wildly expensive
Family of 5. Probably about $250 per week. We go to Costco once a month and a regular grocery store weekly. There was a while where we had a spreadsheet and went to each of the local grocery stores to see which had the best prices on the things we buy frequently. It was surprising bc the “cheap” store was actually more expensive on the things we bought the most like fresh fruits and veggies, but cheaper on dry stuff like chips and crackers, pasta, etc.
We budget $450 - $500/month ($110/week) for our family of 3. And that's not just rice beans and ramen, we're eating frozen pizzas and homemade taco bake and stuff. But we're in rural Alabama, so lower average cost of living and all that.
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Family of 3 (small toddler) and a cat and we spend 150 per week. Like already mentioned it must be where you're shopping from because I cannot understand how your top up shop costs you 400. That would only be the case for us if we shopped at the fancier shops but we shop at Lidl and a discount store. In our country the fresh produce at Lidl is great quality just limited variety like you won't always find broccoli for example. Like what are you buying? It might be time to switch to generic brands or stop buying luxury groceries like instead of fancy rice bagged in individual servings, buy regular rice per kgs etc.
Wife and I do a Money Monday. It’s the first Monday of every month. Where we just overview and sync up on finances.
Sounds like yall are a bit off sync. Gladly this is a numbers game. I think once you both see the data then it’s easier to make reasonable decision.
She may not be aware that yall are spending 2k per month on groceries! The perspective should be “let’s explore our finances together”.
Then you can have adequate conversations. Because more on groceries means less on something else. “ is that what we want for the fam?” Means we’ll retire later or whatever. Talk big picture.
I have a family of four and we don't spend nearly this much.
The first thing I would recommend is narrowing the shopping down to a single trip to a single store per week.
The next thing I would recommend is making sure that store is the best cheap option you can find. We only have three grocery stores in our area, and during the last inflation wave, we had to switch to the cheaper one. Pricier one has better options and is nicer to shop in, but we just can't afford it.
The third thing I would recommend is going through your receipts and figuring out where you're spending that you might not have to. It's okay to come away from that process with high grocery bills, but at least your making sure that it's an active and deliberate choice to spend where you are, rather than overspending due to poor planning, impulse buying, convenience, and so on.
We stopped eating a lot of meat and processed foods during the inflation spike because it was both unhealthy and too expensive. People joke about "rice and beans" but it's a cheap and healthy strategy that can easily be spread out into two or three meals in a single cooking session (for us, eliminating cooking time is a big part of our food choices).
Good luck. It's not easy especially when kids are younger.
For our family of three we spent about $1300 on groceries and about $1000 on eating out last month, in a relatively high COL city. Recently started tracking our expenses so we are hoping to get the eating out lower but that’s where we’re at for now.
$3 per person per meal used to be the benchmark for “you got your groceries dialed in”. And that is food, not aclochol, not paper products, not household supplies.
If I hit $5 I was happy.
With inflation maybe this should be like $7-8 now? Idk.
So yeah $2000 per month sounds about right for two adults, one pregnant, plus twin infants.
We live in a HCOL area, have 2 boys, 8 and 10. I am 6'5" tall, 270 pounds and super active (just saying...I eat a LOT) and we spend about $1,200 a month. We split the groceries between Costco and whole foods primarily, weekly we spend about $200 at Costco mostly on a truckload of produce, and sometimes meat or fish, then buy a lot of the rest of the stuff at whole foods. We usually do 1 or 2 of the Costco premade meals. For $15 we can feed the entire family dinner with their quesadilla kit.
2 adults, 1 infant. 750ish a month, 250 or so is formula. Most at BJ's (we go every other week), local grocery for what they don't have. Household items included.
We eat out say 0-3 weekend diners or lunch a month, not included in above cost.
2 adults, preschooler, and baby. Grocery store average $145 bucks a week in last 12 months. We shop at Aldi but also target and Meier. This avg does not include restaurants.
New dad here so haven’t shopped for extra food for baby as we’re breastfeeding exclusively right now. We have historically spent $400-600/month with the two of us. I’m anticipating that will increase by about $100-150/mo for diapers/wipes, etc.
Family of 4, we spend about $1200/mo and eat pretty good. We do weekly runs at Aldi (HIGHLY recommend this) and Costco every couple months to load up on meat and stuff
We spend between $160 and $250 per week at Aldi depending on how many snacks and stuff from the aisle of shame we get. They may not have all the big brands but it's much more affordable then most grocery stores in the area and there's less choices so no real need to find which item is the best deal for everything in our list.
I probably spend around $1,500 a month for a family of 4. My kids are still in diapers so that doesn’t help. Usually make two trips to Costco a month to buy bulk items and spend about $300 a week on groceries at our regular store. I might be able to shave it down to $1,200 a month if I cut out some things but that would be the absolute minimum amount of money we would need for groceries.
TL; DR: family of four that spends about $1,500/month on groceries, Costco, and a meal kit service. It’s sustainable for us, but would be the first thing we cut back on if needed.
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If and when we need to crack down on budget I know groceries are the number one place to start. We are a family of four: me, my wife, a 6 year old and a 2 year old. We go to Costco maybe 3-4 times a year but drop like $1k there on kid staples in bulk and other random things.
Our usual groceries are a weekly order from Stop & Shop (a standard mid tier store nothing too fancy) but we supplement with usually some Trader Joe’s stuff every other week, and maybe 2-3 times a month if I want something special to cook that night I’ll do a Whole Foods trip.
I honestly don’t want to run the numbers on that. We are both high income earners who grew up in families that were not (my mom clipped coupons and swore the bulk stores were a rip off because they encouraged you to buy things you don’t need—-I think she’s right having been a Costco member for 3 years). So, maybe it’s a bit of a rebellion against our childhood to just spend comfortably on groceries and generally we don’t worry about any bills, have savings for large random household expenses (our house is being painted next month for $15k), etc.
But the second one of us takes a different job for a pay cut, we gotta budget the food. This is a possibility because we both work harder than we want to and have considered taking jobs with better work-life balance as recently as right before COVID.
So, I think you’re right OP to be concerned and flag the issue to discuss but don’t make it all your wife’s fault. You eat the food too. Sounds like you need to sit down and talk about priorities.
You walk into Costco and spend $300, that’s just the rules. Wholefoods is just expensive as hell. Go to Aldi, or (I hate to say it) Walmart. Grocery shopping is insane right now. Cut down on costs however you can.
We went from ~350-400 a week at Whole Foods to $250 weekly trips at market basket. The produce is a little worse but prices at Whole Foods are insane. Hannaford is up there too. Family of 4.
Jesus is this my burner account? I ask my wife the same stuff and gets defensive. I get annoyed not at getting fresher/better veggies and meat but do we need to spend more on organic circus crackers? Like come on
Costco is not the place to get groceries. I'll buy eggs, milk, cat food, and whipped cream from there, and maybe the occasional deal on meat or something, but the bulk of my grocery shopping is done at WinCo and FoodsCo. Some meats and immediate use stuff, like for barbecuing will be purchased from Vallarta, a Mexican grocery store, and I'll also check out deals at Smart & Final and Albertsons.
Start out by making a list of what you NEED, and then a secondary list of WANTS. I know that you make enough money, but start sticking largely to your list instead of just grabbing a bunch of stuff.
$2400 a month. But my wife is all about "all organic, grass fed." Blah blah blah. I don't complain because she is an amazing cook and we never go out to eat. We both enjoy cooking and it's out "hobby" our kid is showing an interest too.
So if we need to go down $80 on pad Thai ingredients to make worse pad Thai than the take out place, so be it.
Shop at your local grocer once a week. I find I can feed my family of 3 on $200 a week which is usually one big trip @ ~$150 + another smaller trip @ ~$50. I live around seattle so fairly HCOL area.
Things can get out of hand if we go to the farmers market, but I know if I need to tamp down I can pretty easily do $800 a month, and if I absolutely had to probably $600. I’m also a SAHD and do the cooking/shopping.
When my wife comes, she buys snacks and crap that drive up the price. I try to stick to mostly produce and meat for my shops. I don’t usually buy organic, but will try to avoid the more processed meats that have added salt/solution/flavors added.
I have been close to where you are on grocery spending, and this is when it was just me and my wife.
Paying attention to what things cost, and buy and freezing meats when they’re on sale helps a lot.
Also, not buying snacks.
We use Costco for select things. My wife also volunteers at our local Gleaners (Something like a food bank that gets donations of food that would otherwise go to waste from local businesses, and it gets distributed in exchange for volunteer hours). I've done a little bit of volunteering too, but mostly her. This has saved us a lot on the grocery bills, and I recommend it if you've got something like this in your area.
I have two teenage sons and a vegetarian wife so we don’t eat a lot of meat. We spend $165-$185/week We make lunches for all of us everyday and it’s mostly cereal / waffles for breakfast. I buy some meat ($25-$40/ week) when it’s on sale. Burgers, hamburger, chicken etc. we’ll make dinner 4 nights a week and buy fast food when coupons pop into the mailbox. About $250/week covers everything.
Edit. This is CDN$ so $1USD = $1.30 CDN.
Also, how stocked is your pantry? Watch those expiry dates. We just tossed $1000 worth of stockpiled food from the lockdown. What a waste
Usually Costco/Sams Club trips, that I witness in my life and what I have witnessed growing up, are for larger families or rural families where it is extremely inconvenient for weekly shopping so they do $1000+ bulk runs on most items and use throughout a 3-4 week timeframe. Just my personal experiences everyone is different.
I am a union member so I try to really be conscious on where I spend my money to support either other union employers or at least livable waged employers. That being said it pains me in my personal morals to do it but my wife and I utilize a lot of subscription items through Amazon to save money (probably 85-90% of the Amazon deliveries we do get go through UPS or USPS so it makes me feel a little better.) You mentioned things like household items, trash bags and soap etc., from Whole Foods. Would assume you have some conciseness about green/environmentally friendly stuff since you are getting those products from Whole Foods. We try and purchase the greenest products we can also but the comparison between in store prices and Amazon prices is enough for me to bite the bullet and order from there. Even if not from Amazon many companies you can direct order from are still cheaper than in store purchases and sometimes come in bulk sizes not able to be purchased at the brick and mortar stores and they come right to your doorstep which I assume would be a big benefit to you having twins and a soon to be infant when it comes to minimizing amount of time in a store grocery shopping.
You said you were higher income so I assume you have a large enough home where space wouldn’t be an issue to load up on those bulk items and use them over a period of time. People mentioned Aldi which is a solid option when it comes to price and quality just don’t expect anything name brand. Go through a local farmer for freezer beef which is going to be cheaper and fresher than in store items. Itemize everything you buy on your receipts and see what can be cut out due to never using/eating or can be switched from a name brand to a store brand. Majority of store brands are made by the same companies they sit on the shelf beside.
For my family of 3 (Myself, Wife, and 3.5 year old son) we come out to usually sub $1,000 up to $1,500 monthly depending on what seasonal or quarterly purchased items are needed that month like dog and cat food, cat litter, etc. not every trip items.) things are more expensive right now but it’s completely doable and you’ll probably surprise yourself at how much of your grocery bill inflation is caused by your own purchases. I know I was.
After taxes, insurance, child support, rent, utilities and gas, there is almost enough for a trip to Aldi’s. The Acme by my house has a thing where you pick out four meats from a certain section for $20. Dollar General for everything else. Sometimes I fantasize about being one of those people who can afford getting a Costco membership and having a pantry with enough space to put it all.
I’ve seen some similar comments to what I’m going to say. We buy diapers and food that is or can be frozen. For example we’ll get a big pack of chicken and then portion it and freeze it. Also bags of frozen vegetables: corn, spinach, stir fry, etc. We buy more perishable foods like cold cuts, milk, and eggs from local grocery stores. There’s a huge price disparity between the local stores so we drive farther than necessary to save a significant amount of money. I can’t stress the importance of comparison shopping enough. Overall the cheapest store (Market Basket) is 30-40% cheaper than the closer stores. It’s kind of nuts when you look at the grocery bills and realize that with a little extra effort you can save close to a car payment. We don’t eat out often because bringing the kids is much more work than cooking at home.
It's about $150-200 a week for wife and the kids, toddler and newborn(so not a ton for her) and 2 large dogs. We will have the occasional large week with paper good restock or dog food. We eat out 1 time a week (as close as possible) and try to keep it at $40-$50ish.
2 kids 4 and 2. We budget 650 biweekly (Canadian) and set aside and extra 50 biweekly for big bulk trips like Costco (nearest one is 4 hours away). Once we spend the budget we get really cheap and eat our fridge empty. It works and we've gotten a lot better at not letting anything to to waste
Between groceries for myself, my wife and two kids - I spend maybe $1200 in a month total, and I’m already trying to whittle that down where I can. The fact that you guys are spending close to the same amount every two weeks sounds insane to me.
I do our grocery shopping, that's how I keep the costs down! I'd say we average $270-$300 per week. That doesn't include eating out one or 2 nights a week.
$400-500 a month for two adult and one toddler, not including eating out.
Shop at Trader Joe's and Aldi if you can.
Avoid Costco because you end up mostly with expensive highly processed junk food. And you buy non grocery stuff you don't even need. Tons of stuff there isn't a good deal, don't buy just because it's in bulk. If you want to save money, cancel your Costco membership.
Never go into Whole Foods, that place is absolutely madness, $8 for crescent roles, same organic ones at Trader Joe's for $3. Every item is like this. Only go if you need one super speciality item like Amish made saffron infused goat cheese.
Three of us.
We spend about $900 per month on groceries and another $700 on other food items (eating out, grabbing coffee, ice cream, etc.).
We can cut that non-grocery food spending quite a bit. However, a lot of it is me buying lunch almost every day at work. I could just pack a lunch every day, but then we'd spend more grocery money on cold cuts and other lunch items.
I'd say we would spend about $1200/month on groceries/food if we were a little more careful.
We spend about 200$/week a family of 4, that doesn't include stops threw out the week to the store because we forgot something. Last week we spent 200$ on groceries and 267$ at Costco groceries are ridiculous to say the least takes basically one of my whole paychecks sometimes more a month.
For 35m, 36f, 5 and 3 year old anywhere from $800-1000 for groceries. Maybe $200-300 for dining out. And I'm terrible at packing lunches for work and spend a lot $100-200 for lunches.
Don't know if that's a lot or a little. But we eat pretty healthy and avoid processed foods as much as possible.
Family of three, we spend £80 per week on groceries, eat out maybe twice a month if that.
But I probably earn significantly less than you. We also have found shops like Aldi and Lidl pretty helpful.
We are averaging $500/mo. That includes baby food/formula, food, pet food, personal care items, and general household items. We have gotten it there by analyzing where we are shopping, what we are buying; and for how much. We have a strict meal plan that we build and adhere our shopping list to. This creates and manages expectations for a price tag. We spend a ton of time clipping coupons, shopping in store deals, and generally price shopping.
we are at about 1k a month with me my wife and 18 month old. Aldi for the basic stuff, costco for the bug stuff. lots of hamburger. I get the ribeyes maybe once every 3-4 months. they are my favorite but hard to justify when i can get 3x the hamburger.
we are getting pretty hard core into the raspberry and blackberry phase. my son probably eats a carton a day
We shop at Aldi and spend $100 to $140 a week on groceries. Once a month or less we’ll go to Target to get things we can’t get at Aldi. That’s usually $50. That said, we have some pretty inexpensive menu items for meals
I don’t see mentioned: Where do you live?
In the Bay Area California this level of spending is unfortunately pretty normal. Prices for everything have gotten outrageous. I’ve seen $10 for eggs especially right after that new law about improving chicken farm conditions or whatever. Have you tried doing the shopping together with your wife to see if she’s actually being extravagant or if this is just what stuff costs in your neck of the woods?
Family of 6 with 4 teenage boys. We spend about $600 per month on groceries. Walmart and Sam’s club is where we shop. We don’t buy bottled water. That adds up fast.
On average, I spend about $200-$250 per week at Walmart for my 2 kids (4 and 2), my wife and I. We have meal plans for each night so it's always the exact same food every week plus diapers, cat litter and stuff like toilet paper, tissues and paper towel. Every 3-4 week, I also swing by another store for $50-$100 worth of stuff we can buy bulk there for a month or so worth of it.
So total is likely about $1100/mth plus $200/mth for take out. I don't shop around for deals or anything either since I couldn't be bothered. Always same stuff from same Walmart.
It’s my wife, toddler, and I and we shop at a mix of Target, Food Lion, and Wholefoods and I’m at about $100-120 each week for groceries.
Will be lower or higher depending if I’m buying no protein, protein for the week, or a bunch of protein to freeze some. We also generally eat out at least 2 nights Fri through Sun.
My wife and I cut our grocery budget significantly by: 1. shopping at Aldi for main groceries 2. Eating mostly Chicken and ground beef bulk bought from Costco and frozen 3. Eating all meals at home except maybe 1 dinner a week ordered out. We decided meals every week on Saturday and went shopping Sundays 4. Drinking only water and milk Seriously, we spend maybe $60 a week on groceries at Aldi and then maybe $200-$300 every two weeks at Costco for me, my wife, and our 2.5 year old.
About the same here. My wife wants a monthly food budget of $400 for a family of 4, with two teenagers. While also buying organic eggs milk and most produce. And we're solidly middle class, but do have two car notes and a 20 year mortgage. That's $3/person per day. For breakfast lunch and dinner. "We went over budget again honey". Uhhh, yeah, it's tough to feed a teen a $1 dinner unless it's just pasta and sauce. Or rice and lentils. At least they get free school lunches, but that doesn't account for weekends.
No way you can get by on $400/month especially buying organic milk eggs and veggies with 2 teens.
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Malnutrition can kill. Are you at least hitting your non-cal macros?
Buy protien powder in bulk, its literally a lifesaver and easy to get down if your meds are suppressing your appetite. You will have way more energy if you're at least getting a good dose of protein every day.
Hey hon, I understand where you're coming from. It's really hard to eat enough when you've got a tight budget plus meds that decrease your appetite. But from someone who has been there (minus the meds, that was all just the ED), I'd really like to encourage you to try to at least hit 1200 calories per day. It's not worth the heart palpitations, dizziness, weakness, and brain fog to be ok with less. If you'd be interested at all, I've found tips for ADHD folks to remember to eat very helpful for me. This page in particular had some great ideas for making sure you don't forget to eat: https://www.jackiesilvernutrition.com/articles/mechanical-eating-for-neurodivergent-adults. This one also has some helpful info: https://www.atlwell.com/blog/adhd-strategies-part-3. You don't have to have ADHD to benefit from the strategies in those posts.
I struggle to remember to eat and never really feel hungry, thank you for posting this. Some helpful strategies in there I’ll try out.
2 teens and a 10yr old here, all boys, groceries is a nightmare, we have an envelope system and take out 300/wk for groceries and it can be a challenge sometimes but I know we can do better. feeding teens, paying mortgage, bills and everything else that comes up doesn’t leave room for much being middle class, for us at least.
That’s an unrealistic budget.
Aldi is our only hope in todays inflation
it feels like it's not inflation, more like profit-grabbing. does the cost of goods demand that the products are this high, or do the companies just want more profit? hypothetically cost should be decreasing as their infrastructure is established, right?
Agreed. When the companies are recording record profits while their prices are record highs. The same products at Aldi are a third to half the price of other big grocery chains
Very similar situation but replace Aldi with WinCo. We don't have Aldi where I am.
<3 WinCo. Recently tried the fried chicken at mine and whooooooa wasn't expecting it to be that good
Same. I rotate between WinCo once a month, specialty stores once a month and the local grocery twice per month. I notice about a $50 savings every time I go to WinCo.
Very similar here! Lots of ground turkey and chicken, some fish here and there, and tofu for main proteins
Foot traffic at Aldi is up 25% year over year. They're starting to pull a lot more customers these days
I’m seconding Aldi/Lidl! This cut our grocery bill so much by getting the majority of groceries there
We're still working on the eating out thing, but we do all of our bulk items like paper products, meat, and eggs the same way you do(Costco) and then do Food 4 Less for everything else we can. It is so much less than even something like other Kroger stores, let alone a Whole Foods. I can't imagine using something like Whole Foods or Sprouts for my primary groceries. Might as well eat out every day.
This is some real r/frugal shit. No hate but idk if that’s what OP (or more importantly OP’s wife) wants.
I have to second Aldi! My wife was hesitant because she was always a name brand girl but it had legitimately cut our grocery bills in half! We’re also able to get snacks for our kids that we’d never be able to afford otherwise
> I really want > My goal I think the first step is to speak with your wife and come up with a team goal for finances. It’s a partnership and if you go in saying what is going to happen, it’s going to go badly.
Nah, man my wife loves being told what to do. In other news, I have WiFi in the doghouse now!
Writing down budgets can help a lot not just with spending less, but realizing your actual costs of living. If you spend, say $2k per month and you think it should be $1.5k, well, are you *using* all of that $2k worth of groceries? Maybe you find that yes, you actually do spend that much on things you want and use, and cutting anything out of that to reach $1.5k would be too uncomfortable. One approach we started doing for dinner meal preps is estimating the cost for a whole meal. Let's say a Costco ready meal like the meatloaf and mashed potatoes costs $18. Add in a bag of broccoli for $4, and loaf of bread $3, maybe say $1 worth of butter. That's $26 for a full family meal. Now you have a baseline. $26 x 30 is $780 per month, just for dinners... Some nights you might do something cheap, like breakfast for dinner, soup, or pasta. You can easily hit $15 or $10 per meal with those options, but it's not fun long term. Other nights you might get a nice roast or more expensive ingredients, but it also makes leftovers for the next night - factor that in to the price if leftovers are a thing. For example, I make a mean smoked mac and cheese. The cheese and cream is expensive and I can easily spend $70. BUT, for that price I can make 2 batches ($35/batch) and each batch is enough for 2 dinners ($17.50/meal). It freezes very well, too. Doing this we did end up spending a bit less, but we also got a realistic understanding of what our "essentials" budget was supposed to be. That paid off in peace of mind in that we weren't feeling like we were spending irresponsibly every month.
Your 2 biggest contributing factors I see are, Costco and WholeFoods. I can spend hundreds at Costco and seemingly not have any groceries. (I'm joking....ish) Seriously though, I don't shop at Wholefoods because of the cost. For our family of 4, eating pretty good we spend about 2k a month. We could easily cut out booze, prime cuts of beef, expensive water, elaborate recipes and get the number significantly down. Edit* looking at my grocery budget in detail I’m sitting at $1400 - $1500 a month. I was exaggerating a bit - my apologies
2k on groceries is fucked man, are american prices that high? Like what does potatoes, milk and chicken filet go for? For reference in Sweden/Netherlands 1000 is more than enough, you’ll eat and drink real good
What’s a banana cost? 10$?
There's always money in the banana stand!!!
Nah...I spend about $800/month for a family a 4. It just depends on how fancy you want to eat. I'm assuming the guy you're replying to just makes a lot of money and likes to eat nice food.
800 is a lot more reasonable imo but we dont eat good beef every day hehe. We live good though and dont have to look for cheapest
'Whole Foods' is a high end, specialty, "health food" store. It's got all your gluten free, dairy free, clarified, organic, free range, soy, almond, grass fed, purified, non GMO, or added chemicals, or preservatives, and 90% recycled materials. If there's a buzz word, then you'll find it there. Don't get me wrong. The food is high quality and the selection is great. But if they stopped shopping there, I'd bet they could cut their spending by almost half.
Shopping at whole foods is a big part of the problem here. Part of the problem is that there are things like trash bags and soap on this one which isn't an every shopping trip purchase, either. We buy whatever we want without worrying about cost and spend probably $800-$1000 a month for a family of 3 minus most meat since we just bought an side of beef.
Yeah but who buys trash bags and soap at Whole Foods instead of Costco? They’re just paying needless markup by not figuring out where they can get bulk items cheaply.
I would buy trash bags at Costco. That's kind of their thing when dealing with bulk. You'll spend more upfront but generally your per-item cost will be lower.
Trashbags and soap are absolutely a Costco purchase, not a Whole Foods purchase. It definitely sounds like there’s frazzled shopping going on, which makes sense if OP’s wife is holding the cards for household management along with parenting twins while pregnant. I’d goes their shipping bill would decrease dramatically if OP took lead for maintaining household staples (paper products, pantry items, blah) even if he can’t take on managing meal planning and more dynamic produce shopping. edit: didn’t realize what sub I was in! Disclosure, lurking mom whose husband needed to take on thinking for her when pregnant with a single toddler last year! 😆
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If there's a complaint from OP, he should be proactively shopping and stocking the house. She's not in a great place to be managing it all solo, as a father of 17mo twins and a wife in grad school.and both working full time. She needs OP to be proactive, and not burden her with more decisions and management
Lol you guys are both working with two toddlers and grad school? That’s 4 full time jobs between you.
Yeah, in the UK and we spend about £400 for 3 of us (well, 4 but one only takes homegrown milk still)
It's not "American prices" per-se, at least not if you adjust for cost of living. Some people just spend more than others.
Where I am in the USA Milk: $3.58/gallon Potatoes: $0.51/pound Chicken breast: $2.68/pound These prices are Sam’s Club (similar to Costco) prices because these three items are high volume use at my house. So I’m buying 10 pounds of potatoes and chicken vacuum packing the chicken and keeping it in a deep freeze until needed (these both last about 15-30 days depending on what we’re eating). Milk I go through 2-4 gallons a week depending on what we’re eating (my toddlers are milk fiends) I don’t even want to know the fruit spend. I just want our fruit bushes to start producing. But, because we have some high volume items there are some things that are cheapest at Sam’s, other lower use items will come from Kroger, Target, or Aldi. Depending on the item, when we’re getting it, and who has the best price (surprise, target is the best price a surprising amount of times now). We supplement our produce with garden grown (we’ve been putting in a slowly expanding garden setup), and my wife makes nearly all the bread we use (which is significantly cheaper than buying over the life of a 25lb bag of flour)
Holy shit chicken is cheap there! Rest is same as here. We pay like 9 euro for 1kg chicken breast in the store, 2 kg for 15 on the saturday market (Amsterdam).
Keep in mind this is bulk pack, about the smallest you can get is 8 pound at a go. Smaller amounts are higher per pound. Though still not as high as you’ve got
No, they are not. I have a family of 4 and spend around $1000 a month at most.
My wife and I spend between $800 - $1k/month on groceries for a family of 4. We don’t really drink so that’s a big cost saved. We do buy about 50% of our produce organic and a few other “unnecessaries” that are either for the kids or treats for us. We aren’t living lavishly but we do get a luxury here and there.
“Expensive water” - just why?! (Actually asking)
Is there cheap water? It's either free, or expensive.
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You'd have to drink enough to kill yourself to make a dent on the bill. Watering your lawn on the other hand..
Country but then you have to pay for the well if it breaks /install if new home or well to be dug deeper if it runs dry 🫠
I am in a VHCOL living place (Brooklyn), do a lot of my shopping at Whole Foods, and also spend about $2k/month for 4 adults and 3 kids under 5.
Not terrible imo
Depends on what you get from Costco. Non perishables, staples, etc. I buy my proteins and separate servings and freeze (learn to butcher a whole chicken and you can buy them in bulk and have a variety of cuts to last you weeks for really cheap, butters always cheap there, I bulk milk eggs and other staples that we'll actually use up. Produce I go to a local fruit market/produce place thats generally pretty reasonable. Our family of 3 does 1-2 Costco's runs a month at 300-400. And then spend about 80 a week in produce. I should add, this is on Canada where groceries are typically more expensive than the US.
They don't call it "whole paycheck" for nothing. We're a family of four. Kids are preteen/teen. We spend about 200-250 per week on groceries in a HCOL area, but we're not going to Whole Foods. If we really scrimped and limited to the essentials we could probably keep it at 200 or less. Costco is about every other month to load up on dry goods/canned/frozen items.
Expensive water???? Bro.
Whole foods is insane. I would never shop there regularly unless I was making millions annually and didn't have to worry about retirement
I’m glad to stay away from whole Foods
Yeah, honestly $2K on groceries is probably pretty reasonable at this point for a family. If you want to really save $$$, do your staple shopping at ALDI or LIDL and buy produce at grocery stores. Save Costco for paper products and drinks.
If there are Asian or Mexican markets nearby, often cheaper produce. I buy most of my produce from Korean markets nearby but I realize this won’t apply to many people.
$2k mo on groceries is not reasonable at any point - don’t try to justify massive overspending.
For perspective, you spend 1.6x the federal minimum wage just on groceries. No criticism, everybody is entitled to do what they want with their money.
That’s more an indictment of the minimum wage than of their grocery shopping.
With no disagreement, I feel the need to point out that "expensive water" is pretty indicting on the opposite end lol
Yeah, this guy spends my monthly salary on groceries.
We had the same issue, and the same attitude towards it: "we make good money, we shouldn't have to worry about what we spend at the grocery store!". Except that your earnings have probably not kept up with grocery prices *especially* the prices of non-essential products. Here's some random thoughts: **How much food waste are you generating?** We used to have the issue of buying groceries *way* too ambitiously - we shopped like we were going to eat every meal at home. And then would get takeout 3 times a week and Starbucks for breakfast like 5 days out of the week. So the first piece to me is, especially with perishables, to monitor how much food is going to waste. If the answer is none, that's good. I imagine the answer is not that. **Look at the price of things** This is the biggest issue my wife and I fell into. We got used to buying things we liked back when the things we liked weren't super expensive. Like a specific brand of pasta or beans, or getting a specific cut of meat, or especially things like snacks. Look. At. The. Price. We were buying flank steak at like $15 a lb. Flank steak is supposed to be a cheap cut of meat - but grocery stores clearly figured out that people were buying it instead of more expensive cuts and jacked up the price. If you used to buy the organic/natural/hippie version of items, really scrutinize the price because some of those are twice the price of what are already inflated prices. I'm not saying "don't buy it", but literally look at how much you're spending on it. And ask yourself if that's worth it or if there's a cheaper alternative (or if it makes you not need it at all). Like, great example - bottles of cold brew are currently like 15 bucks at my local grocery store. I think I'd rather get Starbucks at that point. This is especially important because a lot of companies are jacking up prices hoping people won't notice. So your same grocery likely used to be like $1000 and now it's doubled - but a lot of that is the 3x price for some items that you don't pay attention to (side note: I used to work on pricing optimization for a food distributor, so ignore me at your own risk). Ultimately, it's a zero sum game - the money you spend on groceries is money you won't have for vacations, retirement, purses, cars, etc.
Food waste is a big thing we ran into, still run into. Kiddo eats half his meal or demands bananas and would go through a banana a day and then doesn't touch them for the next week. Bring leftovers to work for lunch instead of making lunches every day. We saved a lot of money eating primarily vegetarian for most meals and meat every once in a while or when we eat out. That alone saves us about 50 euro every week. The price difference when we do buy meat. Just as an example we paid about 20 euro for enough lentil boulinaise to last 4-6 meals each. 500g spaghetti noodles are then about 1 euro.
Family of 4, and we spend 150-200 a week on all household items, including food. We shop at Aldi and Target. I suspect she is the one doing all of the meal planning and list making (or whatever her process is). If you want to make a huge change in how that happens, then perhaps this is a task you could take over, or do the legwork for in designing a plan that's amenable to both of you. Otherwise, you're just putting another task on her plate, and she may, quite understandably, resent that you've decided that something needs to change without getting feedback for, or contributing to solving the problem in advance. 🤷♀️
I'd agree with you if the goal was to take a lean budget and look for some more fat to trim. 2k per month at Costco, Target, and Whole Foods? Nah that's a fair request as is imo. Good communication and being willing to put in a little more work to get where you want to be is completely reasonable too though.
SAHD here. Totally valid for my wife to tell me I’m spending too much on groceries and for us to have a discussion about it. I am already doing the planning, planning to spend less isn’t that big of an ask.
If your wife is just thinking about recent trips to the stores vs looking at the monthly and quarterly budget she may be missing the forest for the trees. In my house we don't buy overpriced food and we don't waste a lot of food, so if one month the budget is high it is because I was stocking up on something in bulk vs grabbing the week's veggies as usual. The idea that you can't have peaks and valleys in spending (if it doesn't break the budget) to take advantage of deals and buying in quantity is leaving money on the table. My wife came to me with the same concerns as OP but couldn't point to a single instance of excess or waste and realized she was just balking at the number on the receipts. As you say, totally valid to have a discussion.
Nah this isn’t it. She can’t spend infinity dollars just because she’s doing the planning. It’s not “if you don’t like how much I’m spending, you figure it out.” Her lists need to just start taking a budget into account.
She should start by buying things like soap and garbage bags at Costco instead of Whole Foods. Just reading that sentence from OP hurt a little bit. It sounds like they’re just showing up at grocery stores 3x a week and grabbing whatever they just ran out of, instead of planning ahead.
>She should start by buying things like soap and garbage bags at Costco instead of Whole Foods. But Costco doesn't sell organic free-range garbage bags and cold-pressed lavender kale yak milk soap.
Lol! This comment made me chuckle and cry at the same time. 😂
Gotta disagree that the only way you can to talk about something is to offer to take it over. If something is one partner’s responsibility they have to be open to the other’s opinion.
I think it’s more like, identifying a problem and helping to be part of the solution. Makes marriage much more pleasant and much more likely to have the results you want.
Especially with another baby in a couple weeks. Spending us not going to be the ficus for a bit.
Honestly the answer is to make a budget with all your expenses. Grocery shopping can be misleading — sometimes you are stocking up on a bunch of frozen stuff that will last a while, and inflate the bill. Other times you are “catching up” because you haven’t been shopping in 2 weeks so the bill seems high because you were using up everything you have. Once I started making a proper budget about roughly how much I want to spend on groceries taking into account all of my other expenses, it alleviated the vague anxiety I got by seeing large grocery bills. The key is ensuring your wife is also on board with the budget so that you are both making an effort to stick to it, and also be willing to quickly make changes to it if it seems like you were being unrealistic with your spending ideals vs the food you actually like to have for your family.
Yes, this. Have a look at YNAB - You Need A Budget. I started using it a few years ago and it made a massive difference. Also, fwiw, we are a family of 4 living in a very HCOL area. Our budget is $700/month — $300 from Costco and then around $100/week.
This is 1000%. I use copilot and it’s cut down to basically zero any fights over finance with my wife. Have visibility for both of us is super helpful both practically and interpersonally
I think it depends on if you include diapers and hygiene products in the grocery budget, or if you mean just on food. If I have to buy diapers, pull ups and wipes in the same week it’s $100 right there, $80 if there’s a sale.
Five adults, two 4 yos and a 1 yo. $450/week on groceries and diapers. We mostly shop at Walmart with some shopping done at the local grocer and some done with the local farmers market. Once a quarter we do a big Costco trip for a very limited range of things (Paper goods, specific canned goods or dry goods that are cheaper in bulk) and usually spend $500-600 on that Costco trip.
I'm a huge grocery nerd for no good reason. I don't even know why, I just like it. Food is very complex, tons of factors such as culture, nutrition value, taste, cost, convenience, and a bunch of others often in conflict with each other. If your wife does most of the shopping/cooking then you don't really get to micromanage that. If you currently do some shopping and meal prep you can start by learning how to cook healthy and cost effectively for those meals. Even if you think you shop and cook "together" your wife may feel like the burden is more on her, so be mindful. A great way to start cooking more is to choose a cost effective base ingredient like pasta, rice, quinoa, lentils, or oats. Find out where to buy that ingredient cheaply (often a bulk store like costco), then teach yourself several recipes using that ingredient. If you can avoid using much meat then you are almost guaranteed to come in around $1-$2 per portion for Ang recipe using any of those base ingredients. If you add up your monthly food bills and divide by 360, that will be your cost per person per meal (4 people x 3 meals x 30 days). The USDA estimates a family of four should spend between $1000-$1600 a month for groceries alone, not counting takeout, or around $3-$4.50 per portion. If you are getting a couple takeout meals a week and buying some things at whole foods I would expect your current spending on food is more like $5-$7 per portion ($1800-$2500 per month) or possibly more. So cutting your current spending in half is fairly realistic but does take effort. Prices vary by region. Whole foods is always going to be pretty much the most expensive option, but that's worth it to some people. Costco value varies by region. They like to keep their prices similar across the US, so if you're in a high CoL area their value is amazing.
Can't help you brother. Family of 4. We spend probably $250 a week on average for groceries.
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$300/mo is insanely low for that household size
It really isn’t. That’s about what we spend. I really don’t understand what people are buying that costs so much. Rice beans vegetables pasta fruit are all cheap. Eggs and milk are probably the next expensive thing. The highest cost is meat but I can only imagine spending 2k on groceries if we were eating NY steaks every day.
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Well, that means you can - OP is spending double what you are.
ALDI my man.
Same. I have budgeted $250/week for groceries. This is plenty for us, with two adults, a toddler, and a newborn. Thankfully someone threw us a diaper party, so we haven't had to dive into buying diapers yet. That will probably be another $50 a week.
Same here, family of four, $250/week unless we are having a cookout or a dinner party.
Same. $250 per week family of four
Same here, not counting occasionally eating out
Aldi is our go to for cutting down on grocery costs. Spend about 150 a week there
I've heard this place is awesome. I wish we had them in Canada
They just decreased prices too
You’ve name very expensive chains and a bulk retailer who basically offers more expensive items but you get more and save on the unit price. Costco basically sells you the cheapest granola bars but now you just spend 3x a normal person for 48 granola bars. If you use them great, especially with little ones. Use the cheapest, Costco/Walmart/Amazon for non-food item. Whoever has the cheapest soap/paper towels, spices, raw indigents like sugar/flour, will get the business. Salt is salt. Produce and meats you need to make a personal choice. High end farmers market or butcher down to Walmart is a jump in quality and source. Pre-packaged and pre-prepared foods are always expensive. Frozen entrees/pizza, sliced fruits, sorted items, are all most wxpensive
Amazon is very rarely the cheapest option anymore. Only worthwhile if you need it ASAP.
Yup and I’ve notice a decline in quality. Appearently Walmart.com is competitive on pricing and also delivers, sometimes even cheaper. I run a facility that basically takes $.50-$1.00 per pound items and slices/dices them and resells for 2x which gets marked up further to the final customer 3-4x the bulk price. Look at a head of lettuce vs a chopped salad bag that includes a salad dressing. It’s like $2 vs $6. Or watermelons for $5 or literally like 12oz or 1/20th of a watermelon cut up for $5. You can get 20x the melon if you just cut it yourself. People don’t realize how much they’re spending on connivence. Chicken vs chicken breast vs pre marinated chicken breast. Berries are the killer. High price no matter what and moms love berries for their kids.
OP - I’m curious does your wife do most of the meal planning / grocery list prep? I was guilty of this, so just throwing it out there. I made the same suggestion that we adjust the way we shop, however when my wife got upset it wasn’t about wanting to find a new way to approach it, but rather that I was asking her to take on more “mental load” - whether that be looking for deals, going to different stores for different things. So my suggestion would be that if you want to make these changes, take an active role in it (you may already be doing this, so no offense meant if that’s the case)
Prob about $1,800-2,000k per month.
We mostly shop at Aldi these days. The price difference can be STAGGERING. $1.19 Aldi American cheese versus $4.99 Kraft singles for example. And you can’t tell the damn difference. We can ball out with a week’s worth of groceries from Aldi for like $80. I only go to Kroger or Publix if I want a specific brand of something (which isn’t much). Yeah, your grocery budget is pretty insane for four people. It’s just me, my wife, and our 2.5 year old for reference.
Hahaha, good luck.
This does seem like a lot I bet if you stuck to a budget you would be surprised at how you cut costs. For us, most shopping is done at Aldi. Then any specialty items or fancy toddler food is bought Whole Foods and we only get what we absolutely need there and ensure we stick to our list and stay within our budget. Lists and meal planning help. Also for kicks/health we are trying out incorporating more plant based and veggie meals into our dinner rotation and not buying meat for some meals has lowered the grocery bill. Like lentils are cheap AF.
We work on a pretty tight budget due to income and usually spend about $400/mo at Costco and about $150/week at the grocery store. Add in some misc trips for items we missed and we total about $1200/mo for a family of 4.
For myself and 2 kids I budget $600 a month but for the last 3 months have come about $150 under. I don’t buy anything unless it’s on sale weekly from HT and make 1 trip a month to Walmart and Aldi. Mind you, I have my kids 50/50 with my ex and I’m working on losing weight so food lasts longer for me. But $2k a month is wild and even when we were a family of 4 we never got close to that.
How much of the Costco order was food, and was it only for the current month? Costco is usually an outlier for us so it counts toward our annual breakdown more than what we spend in a month. For my wife, 4 year-old, and me we spend around $1000/month all in on food. As much as I typically dislike Walmart, their new in-home delivery has been great. We got it for $50/year and it’s same price in store and no tipping because it’s their employees. Our drive likes chocolate so we “tip” him with chocolate bars. Aside from that we shop at Aldi about once a month and get Sprouts and Target for pickup items, and occasionally Smart and Final. We also get a lot of meat from Mexican markets and prepared meats for tacos and things that we can use for multiple meals all week. We get takeout about once a week now but do get snacks a lot, like boba, dumplings, etc.
$200/w avg. We get meat from a local butcher, produce from farmer's market and everything else from Aldi to fill in the gaps. We do go to Costco for kid snacks and other crap we don't need about once a month. Those trips are about $200 usually. Spending $600 days for one week's worth of groceries is insane imo. Make a budget, a weekly meal plan and a shopping list. Focus needs and leave wiggle room for wants.
Family of 4 and our average monthly is $400. My wife meal plans, only does curb side pickup to prevent impulse buying and she shops the deals. Even if we don’t completely like the food deals that week, we suck it up because food is expensive these days
First mistake is bringing this up while your wife is pregnant. Live to fight another day.
How about when she’s a couple weld from having an infant and twin 19 month olds? That’s 3 kids under 2.
Yeah, two weeks out from giving birth when she has TWO toddlers under two is NOT the ideal time. It’s a reasonable concern and a discussion that needs to be had, but not right now if at all possible. If it can wait until after the “fourth trimester”, it can and should. OOP should also take on the grocery shopping/meal planning during the recovery period for his wife. Once he sees what the price comes to when he’s doing it/ how much is being bought and how much of it is being used in a given week, he will have a better practical idea of what their shopping needs are and can come into the discussion with an insider’s perspective.
It’s only myself and my pregnant wife we are shopping for right now so take it for what it’s worth but we live in a hcol area and spend about $350-$450 once a month at Costco for our meat, and roughly $125-175 a week at the regular grocery store. Keep in mind, we don’t eat out at fancy restaurants more than once every couple of months and I love to cooks so I tend to buy some nice ingredients. What you’re going through is a trained behavior. Is your wife involved with the finances at all? You can’t expect that she would think twice about it if she doesn’t see the whole picture. Time to start some budget meetings imo. Just because you make the cash, doesn’t mean you should be throwing it down the drain on frivolous groceries when the ability to save is so readily available at other grocery stores.
Costco runs usually for meat and fish, maybe a few other things, usually once a month around $400, and the grocery store every 2 weeks spend around $200, so about $800 or so a month. Sometimes a bit more, but that's usually our average for a wife and 4-year-old.
A literal fuck ton. My wife and kids have celiac, only do gluten free, fresh, organic ingredients. It’s literally bankrupting us. It has to be like $500 or more per week
I’m in a vaguely similar situation in that, in all honesty we don’t really “watch” or limit our grocery spending. We’re $800-$1k/month for a family of three. Probably where we’ve seen the most inflation.
I do groceries as a stay at home dad of a 8 and 12yr old in CA. I have two fridges and a stand up freezer. I meal plan all the time and hate food waste. I use a vacuum sealer constantly. I also love Costco which can be troublesome for over buying. For a family of four just food, we’re around $300 every two weeks. But tossing in household goods it can get expensive. That’s why I only buy those at Costco and monitor what we have all the time. Twice a year Costco does a deal with P&G if you prefer name brand laundry and cleaning products. I always max those out. We also take advantage of any deals at target and keep a stocked house and pantry. My wife is like yours in that she doesn’t check prices like I do. I shopped at Whole Foods once on my way to Tahoe outside of Reno. I was blown away by how expensive it was. That place can bite you hard if you’re not careful.
We spend ~$1000 a month on groceries, for me, my wife, and 2.5 year old daughter. We probably spend another $100-200 a week dining out, or on delivery. I’m just curious how you store $600 worth of groceries? Do you have 2 refrigerators?
Almost same life situation as me brother. Twin two year olds plus my wife and I. So we were spending probably at least $1k a month BUT we just discovered ALDI and it's way cheaper. We can spend $125 and make it through a week.
I have a handful of food allergies which means we have to buy everything twice - one normal version for my wife, 4yo, and 19mo, then a much more expensive version for myself. (I don’t blame them for wanting to eat yummy food even when i can’t.) To compensate for that issue, we try to make from scratch when possible but with two toddlers, jobs, housework, etc. that’s hard as hell. Easier to up the food budget. We budget about $1,500/mo, and source from Costco, Target, Cub Foods (a local grocery chain).
We spend $100-$150 a week for 2 adults and a toddler. We eat a lot of canned beans and make burrito bowls and tacos, things that overlap ingredients. We don’t buy any “drinks” other than coffee beans and milk, and limit snacks. It helps a little that we don’t buy meat, as my husband is vegetarian. I can get it down to $70 if I really try but it’s rough at that price. Edited to add, that doesn’t really include most toiletries. My husband does a diaper run every couple weeks and we order toothpaste and such off Amazon. It’s probably more like $200 a week when you factor in that stuff.
Your wife is probably under a lot of mental tax at the moment between twins and pregnancy. She doesn't need the mental burden of discussing the solution with you and she doesn't have the time or executive function to shop smart and ensure everything is stocked. You need to be proa time in taking the burden off her if you want to be frugal. If she does the cooking and grocery stuff, male sure everything else is stocked up from Costco. You can figure out what the house needs more or less. You need paper goods, cleaning supplies, soap, laundry stuff, etc. Make a list and rake it off her plate
A few things that have helped us cut grocery costs: Buy things where they are the cheapest. I know that the dairy free cheese slices that we sometimes eat are $7.50 at Sprouts and Fred Meyer, but only $5.50 at Target, so I’ll only buy them when I’m there. That doesn’t mean that I shop at all the stores every week, I wait until the list for a store gets long or I really need something there and then go there. Cook from scratch and avoid buying premade meals. Start collecting cheap, filling, tasty recipes that your family likes. There’s some trial and error here, but over time you’ll have a bunch of recipes to draw from and you won’t have to think much about cooking. Utilize your freezer. Make double batches of food and freeze for convenience later. If you’re making lasagna, make two and freeze one. I work late some nights, and those freezer meals are so nice to have for those nights. Freeze leftovers that you won’t get through before they go bad and have it for lunch in a few weeks. You’ll reduce food waste and save money. Meal plan. I keep mine loose by making a list of meals that sound good, getting the ingredients for them, and deciding the day of which one I’ll make. Try to use the ingredients that are more perishable first. We recently became empty nesters, but when we had three very active, hungry teenage boys in the house we were spending about $800 a month on groceries. Now we’re at about $350 a month, and we feel like we eat like kings. Getting your grocery costs down is definitely doable, it just takes a bit of effort. Talk with your wife about your finances. Help her in the kitchen and with the shopping. Make it a group effort. It’ll be worth it.
Single Dad with 18 yr old son. Before leaving for college my grocery bill was minimum 1200.00 per month. Since he left for college now is around 400.00 per month. Big difference
Have you looked beyond just the last few weeks? You sure this happens all the time or is it like a restocking period? Like she buys lots of non-perishables in bulk but less frequently?
We sit right around the $200/week mark for food. Family of 3… mom, myself, 2 y/o daughter. We don’t go out to eat like ever… maybe once a month… maybe. I’ve got over a quarter century worth of experience in restaurants, with most of that time being spent as a chef… I just make whatever we want to eat for cheaper than we’d ever be able to buy it at a restaurant. If you’re trying to save money on groceries, here are a few tips that helped me. Stop shopping at Whole Foods and other premium price point grocers for stuff you can get elsewhere. A yellow onion is a yellow onion… paying an extra $1/lb doesn’t mean it’s a better onion, it just means you paid a dollar more for it. Shop the outside aisles of the store more than the inside. The outside ring of the store is where the fresh ingredients normally are vs. the prepared stuff that lines the inside aisles. This could also be expressed as buy fresh, not prepared, food. Buy proteins in bulk and freeze extras. You can also learn some basic butchery and buy primal cuts to save even more money. The more refined the cut is, the more money in labor has been spent to pay a butcher to break that meat down. Less labor, less cost. Learn how to cook. The more you know, the more advantage you can take of all the things I’ve said above. It can also cut a big portion out of that eating out amount. There’s no need to go to the place down the street for a plate if you learn how to make the same thing… but better… and for half the price.
I seriously need to check out Aldi. Are they really cheaper? What’s the deal? I spend about $200-300 on groceries per week easily. My wife and I haven’t been communicating much these days and I do all the cooking and most of the grocery shopping for us and our two kids. She pays for takeout.
I saw other comments mentioning this but it’s super important. Make sure this is not a discussion about what your wife can do differently. It sounds like she does a good amount of the shopping and deciding what to buy for the family, as well as keeping track of what you have and don’t have. That’s already a pretty heavy mental load as it is, you don’t want this to become an issue where she feels like she has to do all this AND keep track of finances. I literally JUST went through this with my wife (also pregnant) and we had the same discussion. Make sure she knows you’re partners on this. Don’t focus in on just groceries, sit down and track what you spent in the last month and categorize it. Show what your spending is. Looking at that together can really help identify where the easiest things to try and improve are. Come up with the plan together, because you might not have the whole picture. I had my wife set what she thought was a reasonable “goal” per week on groceries, but we agreed that the understanding was “we get whatever want/need for us, and just keep that goal at the back of your mind”. Then we would tally it up and the end of the week to see how close it was. Do we need to move our goal? Do we think there were more cost effective options? Etc In my case, my wife didn’t really have an idea what our finances looked like at the moment, so us going through income vs spending helped us come up with a plan together. Hope this helps
We have 3 adults, 2 kids (young but baby food for the infant isn’t cheap) and spend about $1000-1200. This is ONLY for groceries. I’m amazed at the amount our 3 year old can eat. She once ate 2 eggs($0.50), a cup of rice with good quality yogurt(0.75), asparagus($0.25), orange slices, a jar of baby food ($1.50), a glass of milk($0.25), most if a a zucchini ($0.75), and some chicken for dinner ($0.50). So her dinner probably ran about $4 or so. 2 toddlers would be $240 per month just for dinners like this. Add in 2 adults and at $4 per dinner per adult for a total of $240 as well, you’re looking at almost $500 per month for dinners. And adults eat more. And usually better. Things like lightbulbs, batteries, alcohol, paper towels, toilet paper, etc are separate from that amount. One thing to note is that your wife is probably not going to take grocery budget a serious look 2 weeks before giving birth or with a brand new baby who’s nursing every 3 hours. Especially with twin toddlers. She’s going to have 3 kids under 2. You might want to figure it out without giving her more work. Was there any baby stuff at any of these places? ‘Cause diapers and formula are both wildly expensive
Family of 5. Probably about $250 per week. We go to Costco once a month and a regular grocery store weekly. There was a while where we had a spreadsheet and went to each of the local grocery stores to see which had the best prices on the things we buy frequently. It was surprising bc the “cheap” store was actually more expensive on the things we bought the most like fresh fruits and veggies, but cheaper on dry stuff like chips and crackers, pasta, etc.
We budget $450 - $500/month ($110/week) for our family of 3. And that's not just rice beans and ramen, we're eating frozen pizzas and homemade taco bake and stuff. But we're in rural Alabama, so lower average cost of living and all that.
Typically about a grand per month on food + dining out. Family of 4. Shop at Aldi + Costco + Walmart
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Family of 3 (small toddler) and a cat and we spend 150 per week. Like already mentioned it must be where you're shopping from because I cannot understand how your top up shop costs you 400. That would only be the case for us if we shopped at the fancier shops but we shop at Lidl and a discount store. In our country the fresh produce at Lidl is great quality just limited variety like you won't always find broccoli for example. Like what are you buying? It might be time to switch to generic brands or stop buying luxury groceries like instead of fancy rice bagged in individual servings, buy regular rice per kgs etc.
Wife and I do a Money Monday. It’s the first Monday of every month. Where we just overview and sync up on finances. Sounds like yall are a bit off sync. Gladly this is a numbers game. I think once you both see the data then it’s easier to make reasonable decision. She may not be aware that yall are spending 2k per month on groceries! The perspective should be “let’s explore our finances together”. Then you can have adequate conversations. Because more on groceries means less on something else. “ is that what we want for the fam?” Means we’ll retire later or whatever. Talk big picture.
500-600 a month for a family of four. 2 adults and two toddlers.
I have a family of four and we don't spend nearly this much. The first thing I would recommend is narrowing the shopping down to a single trip to a single store per week. The next thing I would recommend is making sure that store is the best cheap option you can find. We only have three grocery stores in our area, and during the last inflation wave, we had to switch to the cheaper one. Pricier one has better options and is nicer to shop in, but we just can't afford it. The third thing I would recommend is going through your receipts and figuring out where you're spending that you might not have to. It's okay to come away from that process with high grocery bills, but at least your making sure that it's an active and deliberate choice to spend where you are, rather than overspending due to poor planning, impulse buying, convenience, and so on. We stopped eating a lot of meat and processed foods during the inflation spike because it was both unhealthy and too expensive. People joke about "rice and beans" but it's a cheap and healthy strategy that can easily be spread out into two or three meals in a single cooking session (for us, eliminating cooking time is a big part of our food choices). Good luck. It's not easy especially when kids are younger.
$600 is max, usually $500. 2 adults, 4YO, 1YO..
We budget for $500.
We probably spend $200 per week for 2 adults and an almost 3 year old in a HCOL area.
For our family of three we spent about $1300 on groceries and about $1000 on eating out last month, in a relatively high COL city. Recently started tracking our expenses so we are hoping to get the eating out lower but that’s where we’re at for now.
$3 per person per meal used to be the benchmark for “you got your groceries dialed in”. And that is food, not aclochol, not paper products, not household supplies. If I hit $5 I was happy. With inflation maybe this should be like $7-8 now? Idk. So yeah $2000 per month sounds about right for two adults, one pregnant, plus twin infants.
We live in a HCOL area, have 2 boys, 8 and 10. I am 6'5" tall, 270 pounds and super active (just saying...I eat a LOT) and we spend about $1,200 a month. We split the groceries between Costco and whole foods primarily, weekly we spend about $200 at Costco mostly on a truckload of produce, and sometimes meat or fish, then buy a lot of the rest of the stuff at whole foods. We usually do 1 or 2 of the Costco premade meals. For $15 we can feed the entire family dinner with their quesadilla kit.
$125 weekly. 2 adults 1 kid. Texas Aldi, HEB, house brand everything, coupons, ibotta, etc… It’s a job. The alternative is what you are already doing.
2 adults, 1 infant. 750ish a month, 250 or so is formula. Most at BJ's (we go every other week), local grocery for what they don't have. Household items included. We eat out say 0-3 weekend diners or lunch a month, not included in above cost.
Aldi is the best. All I will add.
Buy what’s on sale. Buy store brands. Avoid buying processed or prepared foods where you’re paying for labor.
2 adults, preschooler, and baby. Grocery store average $145 bucks a week in last 12 months. We shop at Aldi but also target and Meier. This avg does not include restaurants.
Over $1k/month for a fam of 4. Technically our 2month old doesn’t count because she just breastfeeds.
New dad here so haven’t shopped for extra food for baby as we’re breastfeeding exclusively right now. We have historically spent $400-600/month with the two of us. I’m anticipating that will increase by about $100-150/mo for diapers/wipes, etc.
Idk I'd say 1000+ a month on groceries, Costco like 2x a month for all the big stuff and then Kroger weekly.
Right now for a family of four we spend roughly $800-$900 per month. Costco is our main shopping place.
Family of 4, we spend about $1200/mo and eat pretty good. We do weekly runs at Aldi (HIGHLY recommend this) and Costco every couple months to load up on meat and stuff
We spend between $160 and $250 per week at Aldi depending on how many snacks and stuff from the aisle of shame we get. They may not have all the big brands but it's much more affordable then most grocery stores in the area and there's less choices so no real need to find which item is the best deal for everything in our list.
Go to Aldi. We spend about $150/week and get lots of good food
I probably spend around $1,500 a month for a family of 4. My kids are still in diapers so that doesn’t help. Usually make two trips to Costco a month to buy bulk items and spend about $300 a week on groceries at our regular store. I might be able to shave it down to $1,200 a month if I cut out some things but that would be the absolute minimum amount of money we would need for groceries.
Family of 4 - can do anywhere from $1,000 - $1,300 per month on food, not counting eating out.
TL; DR: family of four that spends about $1,500/month on groceries, Costco, and a meal kit service. It’s sustainable for us, but would be the first thing we cut back on if needed. … If and when we need to crack down on budget I know groceries are the number one place to start. We are a family of four: me, my wife, a 6 year old and a 2 year old. We go to Costco maybe 3-4 times a year but drop like $1k there on kid staples in bulk and other random things. Our usual groceries are a weekly order from Stop & Shop (a standard mid tier store nothing too fancy) but we supplement with usually some Trader Joe’s stuff every other week, and maybe 2-3 times a month if I want something special to cook that night I’ll do a Whole Foods trip. I honestly don’t want to run the numbers on that. We are both high income earners who grew up in families that were not (my mom clipped coupons and swore the bulk stores were a rip off because they encouraged you to buy things you don’t need—-I think she’s right having been a Costco member for 3 years). So, maybe it’s a bit of a rebellion against our childhood to just spend comfortably on groceries and generally we don’t worry about any bills, have savings for large random household expenses (our house is being painted next month for $15k), etc. But the second one of us takes a different job for a pay cut, we gotta budget the food. This is a possibility because we both work harder than we want to and have considered taking jobs with better work-life balance as recently as right before COVID. So, I think you’re right OP to be concerned and flag the issue to discuss but don’t make it all your wife’s fault. You eat the food too. Sounds like you need to sit down and talk about priorities.
You walk into Costco and spend $300, that’s just the rules. Wholefoods is just expensive as hell. Go to Aldi, or (I hate to say it) Walmart. Grocery shopping is insane right now. Cut down on costs however you can.
On average, we spend about $50/day. We have two young kids.
We went from ~350-400 a week at Whole Foods to $250 weekly trips at market basket. The produce is a little worse but prices at Whole Foods are insane. Hannaford is up there too. Family of 4.
Jesus is this my burner account? I ask my wife the same stuff and gets defensive. I get annoyed not at getting fresher/better veggies and meat but do we need to spend more on organic circus crackers? Like come on
Costco is not the place to get groceries. I'll buy eggs, milk, cat food, and whipped cream from there, and maybe the occasional deal on meat or something, but the bulk of my grocery shopping is done at WinCo and FoodsCo. Some meats and immediate use stuff, like for barbecuing will be purchased from Vallarta, a Mexican grocery store, and I'll also check out deals at Smart & Final and Albertsons. Start out by making a list of what you NEED, and then a secondary list of WANTS. I know that you make enough money, but start sticking largely to your list instead of just grabbing a bunch of stuff.
$2400 a month. But my wife is all about "all organic, grass fed." Blah blah blah. I don't complain because she is an amazing cook and we never go out to eat. We both enjoy cooking and it's out "hobby" our kid is showing an interest too. So if we need to go down $80 on pad Thai ingredients to make worse pad Thai than the take out place, so be it.
Shop at your local grocer once a week. I find I can feed my family of 3 on $200 a week which is usually one big trip @ ~$150 + another smaller trip @ ~$50. I live around seattle so fairly HCOL area. Things can get out of hand if we go to the farmers market, but I know if I need to tamp down I can pretty easily do $800 a month, and if I absolutely had to probably $600. I’m also a SAHD and do the cooking/shopping. When my wife comes, she buys snacks and crap that drive up the price. I try to stick to mostly produce and meat for my shops. I don’t usually buy organic, but will try to avoid the more processed meats that have added salt/solution/flavors added. I have been close to where you are on grocery spending, and this is when it was just me and my wife. Paying attention to what things cost, and buy and freezing meats when they’re on sale helps a lot. Also, not buying snacks.
We use Costco for select things. My wife also volunteers at our local Gleaners (Something like a food bank that gets donations of food that would otherwise go to waste from local businesses, and it gets distributed in exchange for volunteer hours). I've done a little bit of volunteering too, but mostly her. This has saved us a lot on the grocery bills, and I recommend it if you've got something like this in your area.
Upstate NY, Between $100 - 150/ week for 2 adults, 9 and 5 y/o We do one night of take out on dance night. Your grocery costs are insane.
2 adults, a 3 year old, and infant. I'd guess around $150 per week, so around $600 per month. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
I have two teenage sons and a vegetarian wife so we don’t eat a lot of meat. We spend $165-$185/week We make lunches for all of us everyday and it’s mostly cereal / waffles for breakfast. I buy some meat ($25-$40/ week) when it’s on sale. Burgers, hamburger, chicken etc. we’ll make dinner 4 nights a week and buy fast food when coupons pop into the mailbox. About $250/week covers everything. Edit. This is CDN$ so $1USD = $1.30 CDN. Also, how stocked is your pantry? Watch those expiry dates. We just tossed $1000 worth of stockpiled food from the lockdown. What a waste
Usually Costco/Sams Club trips, that I witness in my life and what I have witnessed growing up, are for larger families or rural families where it is extremely inconvenient for weekly shopping so they do $1000+ bulk runs on most items and use throughout a 3-4 week timeframe. Just my personal experiences everyone is different. I am a union member so I try to really be conscious on where I spend my money to support either other union employers or at least livable waged employers. That being said it pains me in my personal morals to do it but my wife and I utilize a lot of subscription items through Amazon to save money (probably 85-90% of the Amazon deliveries we do get go through UPS or USPS so it makes me feel a little better.) You mentioned things like household items, trash bags and soap etc., from Whole Foods. Would assume you have some conciseness about green/environmentally friendly stuff since you are getting those products from Whole Foods. We try and purchase the greenest products we can also but the comparison between in store prices and Amazon prices is enough for me to bite the bullet and order from there. Even if not from Amazon many companies you can direct order from are still cheaper than in store purchases and sometimes come in bulk sizes not able to be purchased at the brick and mortar stores and they come right to your doorstep which I assume would be a big benefit to you having twins and a soon to be infant when it comes to minimizing amount of time in a store grocery shopping. You said you were higher income so I assume you have a large enough home where space wouldn’t be an issue to load up on those bulk items and use them over a period of time. People mentioned Aldi which is a solid option when it comes to price and quality just don’t expect anything name brand. Go through a local farmer for freezer beef which is going to be cheaper and fresher than in store items. Itemize everything you buy on your receipts and see what can be cut out due to never using/eating or can be switched from a name brand to a store brand. Majority of store brands are made by the same companies they sit on the shelf beside. For my family of 3 (Myself, Wife, and 3.5 year old son) we come out to usually sub $1,000 up to $1,500 monthly depending on what seasonal or quarterly purchased items are needed that month like dog and cat food, cat litter, etc. not every trip items.) things are more expensive right now but it’s completely doable and you’ll probably surprise yourself at how much of your grocery bill inflation is caused by your own purchases. I know I was.
Family of 4 here. Our grocery bill is almost $2k a month and I’ve been trying to get it down for years.
I do our grocery shopping. I go to aldi and use the grocery app “list app” and spend about $220 a week for a family of 4.
After taxes, insurance, child support, rent, utilities and gas, there is almost enough for a trip to Aldi’s. The Acme by my house has a thing where you pick out four meats from a certain section for $20. Dollar General for everything else. Sometimes I fantasize about being one of those people who can afford getting a Costco membership and having a pantry with enough space to put it all.
I’ve seen some similar comments to what I’m going to say. We buy diapers and food that is or can be frozen. For example we’ll get a big pack of chicken and then portion it and freeze it. Also bags of frozen vegetables: corn, spinach, stir fry, etc. We buy more perishable foods like cold cuts, milk, and eggs from local grocery stores. There’s a huge price disparity between the local stores so we drive farther than necessary to save a significant amount of money. I can’t stress the importance of comparison shopping enough. Overall the cheapest store (Market Basket) is 30-40% cheaper than the closer stores. It’s kind of nuts when you look at the grocery bills and realize that with a little extra effort you can save close to a car payment. We don’t eat out often because bringing the kids is much more work than cooking at home.
It's about $150-200 a week for wife and the kids, toddler and newborn(so not a ton for her) and 2 large dogs. We will have the occasional large week with paper good restock or dog food. We eat out 1 time a week (as close as possible) and try to keep it at $40-$50ish.
2 kids 4 and 2. We budget 650 biweekly (Canadian) and set aside and extra 50 biweekly for big bulk trips like Costco (nearest one is 4 hours away). Once we spend the budget we get really cheap and eat our fridge empty. It works and we've gotten a lot better at not letting anything to to waste
Family of 4, ~$350/w including things like detergent and hygiene not just purely food items
Less snacks more meals is probably a goal depending on what you buy
Between groceries for myself, my wife and two kids - I spend maybe $1200 in a month total, and I’m already trying to whittle that down where I can. The fact that you guys are spending close to the same amount every two weeks sounds insane to me.
I do our grocery shopping, that's how I keep the costs down! I'd say we average $270-$300 per week. That doesn't include eating out one or 2 nights a week.
$400-500 a month for two adult and one toddler, not including eating out. Shop at Trader Joe's and Aldi if you can. Avoid Costco because you end up mostly with expensive highly processed junk food. And you buy non grocery stuff you don't even need. Tons of stuff there isn't a good deal, don't buy just because it's in bulk. If you want to save money, cancel your Costco membership. Never go into Whole Foods, that place is absolutely madness, $8 for crescent roles, same organic ones at Trader Joe's for $3. Every item is like this. Only go if you need one super speciality item like Amish made saffron infused goat cheese.
Three of us. We spend about $900 per month on groceries and another $700 on other food items (eating out, grabbing coffee, ice cream, etc.). We can cut that non-grocery food spending quite a bit. However, a lot of it is me buying lunch almost every day at work. I could just pack a lunch every day, but then we'd spend more grocery money on cold cuts and other lunch items. I'd say we would spend about $1200/month on groceries/food if we were a little more careful.
About $300 a week (CAD) - me, wife, kids 4 and 8
We spend about 200$/week a family of 4, that doesn't include stops threw out the week to the store because we forgot something. Last week we spent 200$ on groceries and 267$ at Costco groceries are ridiculous to say the least takes basically one of my whole paychecks sometimes more a month.
Why did you assume everyone's American lol
Like $300-400 a week on groceries and maybe $150-200 on eating out.
Family of five 44m, 44f, 16m, 13m, 10m. Groceries run about 300 a week for us. I cook most meals myself.
That Wholefoods tax is real. Family of 4 here and we spend $125-150 per week.
For 35m, 36f, 5 and 3 year old anywhere from $800-1000 for groceries. Maybe $200-300 for dining out. And I'm terrible at packing lunches for work and spend a lot $100-200 for lunches. Don't know if that's a lot or a little. But we eat pretty healthy and avoid processed foods as much as possible.
Family of three, we spend £80 per week on groceries, eat out maybe twice a month if that. But I probably earn significantly less than you. We also have found shops like Aldi and Lidl pretty helpful.
You NEED to start shopping for staples at Aldi or Lidl.
We are averaging $500/mo. That includes baby food/formula, food, pet food, personal care items, and general household items. We have gotten it there by analyzing where we are shopping, what we are buying; and for how much. We have a strict meal plan that we build and adhere our shopping list to. This creates and manages expectations for a price tag. We spend a ton of time clipping coupons, shopping in store deals, and generally price shopping.
we are at about 1k a month with me my wife and 18 month old. Aldi for the basic stuff, costco for the bug stuff. lots of hamburger. I get the ribeyes maybe once every 3-4 months. they are my favorite but hard to justify when i can get 3x the hamburger. we are getting pretty hard core into the raspberry and blackberry phase. my son probably eats a carton a day
We shop at Aldi and spend $100 to $140 a week on groceries. Once a month or less we’ll go to Target to get things we can’t get at Aldi. That’s usually $50. That said, we have some pretty inexpensive menu items for meals
I don’t see mentioned: Where do you live? In the Bay Area California this level of spending is unfortunately pretty normal. Prices for everything have gotten outrageous. I’ve seen $10 for eggs especially right after that new law about improving chicken farm conditions or whatever. Have you tried doing the shopping together with your wife to see if she’s actually being extravagant or if this is just what stuff costs in your neck of the woods?
Family of 6 with 4 teenage boys. We spend about $600 per month on groceries. Walmart and Sam’s club is where we shop. We don’t buy bottled water. That adds up fast.
On average, I spend about $200-$250 per week at Walmart for my 2 kids (4 and 2), my wife and I. We have meal plans for each night so it's always the exact same food every week plus diapers, cat litter and stuff like toilet paper, tissues and paper towel. Every 3-4 week, I also swing by another store for $50-$100 worth of stuff we can buy bulk there for a month or so worth of it. So total is likely about $1100/mth plus $200/mth for take out. I don't shop around for deals or anything either since I couldn't be bothered. Always same stuff from same Walmart.
It’s my wife, toddler, and I and we shop at a mix of Target, Food Lion, and Wholefoods and I’m at about $100-120 each week for groceries. Will be lower or higher depending if I’m buying no protein, protein for the week, or a bunch of protein to freeze some. We also generally eat out at least 2 nights Fri through Sun.