What's your monthly grocery bill?

[taubel]

DH and I have just started to keep a budget to track how much we are spending. 

I calculated our grocery bill from the past month and it was $1400! This included wine and beer and all toiletries, etc. 

We have three boys - ages 9, 6, and 3 - and we very rarely eat out. Our kids bring lunch to school four days a week and buy the lunch on Fridays. 

We are very strict about eating only whole grains, and we eat lots of fruits and vegetables (most of them organic).

We eat meat (ground turkey or chicken) only one night a week. The rest of our meals are vegetarian. 

Our grocery bill seems to be on the high side compared to others on this forum. Is there a secret we're missing out on or is this the norm for other families of five?

[Nitenites]

We have a family of 6, soon to be 7. Our budget is $475/month. We eat whole grains, but mostly conventional. We do eat meat most nights. We don't drink alcohol very often - it takes us about 8/9 months to go through a six-pack, and we don't like wine. 

If you aren't consciously watching your purchasing, it is easy to spend a lot on groceries. Our grocery budget is that low because I am very aware and purposeful about shopping. Some things I do to keep costs down:

1. Buy whole foods, and use the whole thing. I buy a whole roasting chicken. It's dinner one night, and the leftovers are made into chicken noodle soup the next night. You have no idea of the wonderful plans I have for the 57 cents/lb turkeys I have in the freezer! 

2. Stock up on good deals, even if I don't need the product right then. I know I'll need peanut butter eventually, so I'll buy it when I see a good price (on sale & with a coupon) and put it aside for when I run out. That way I have more control over the price I'll pay for things.  

3. COUPONS! For Heaven's sake, don't pay for shampoo, razors, hair products, toothbrushes - all those toiletries can be had for FREE after coupons! Get as many as you can when those free deals roll around, and build thyself a stockpile! I also save a TON by using coupons on crackers, bread (we only eat whole wheat with no HFCS), cream cheese, shredded cheese, nuts, popcorn (not microwave - yuck!), pasta, etc. We're also on the mailing list for Earthbound Farms, so I do score great prices on organic produce now & then. 

4. Compare unit prices. (The generic brand isn't always the cheapest, especially when you factor in coupons.) 

5. Substitute cloth for paper products when possible. (That's everything in this house except TP.)

6. Reduce your trash (to save on trash bags.) We compost & recycle. We'd have to pay to have our recycling picked up, so we drop it off on Sundays on our way home from church. 

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. 

[sanguine_speed]

We are a family of 6, kids ages 9, 6, 3 and baby.  Our budget is 900.  We recently raised it from 800, then 850.

I did a poll recently on MDC and discovered that many of my staples cost double where I live.  On top of that, I only buy organic animal products, and even though I do it the 'smart' way (i.e. direct from the farm, in bulk, through a non-profit buying club), it's still expensive.  No .57 cents per pound turkey here; we pay 4.50 per pound for organic and local.  But, we only have turkey once a year as a result.  

It is a real challenge to keep the budget at $900.

It does not include toiletries or alcohol.

And, where I live, there are painfully few coupons (none in flyers, few online), and no such thing as 'doubling'.

[mamaofthree]

we usually spend about $1000.00 a month, that includes all the stuff toilet paper, cat food, shampoo etc. it was much higher when we lived back east (about $1400.00) and we haven't changed how we eat at all. we eat whole foods etc and meat about 2-3 times a week. we are a family of 7. and pretty much everyone eats like an adult here.LOL even though they are 16, 12, 9, 6 and 3. lol

h

[Pumpkin_Pie]

I am usually around $300-$350 per month.  I use EBT and generally receive $300 per month, but I sometimes go over by about $50 or so.  This month because of a paperwork error, we didnt' receive any, so I borrowed grocery money from a friend who also uses EBT and she is going to shop on my card next month when I (hopefully) get back $$ for groceries.  So far this month I have spent $90.  I feel like we are living pretty close to the bone this month, but are not going hungry.  I think I could keep my food bill right at $200 if I absolutely had to, but that would be a lot of rice and beans.

[Fujiko]

We spend about $80 per week, times roughly 4.5 weeks...about $350? Doesn't include beer, which dh drinks about one a day. (sometime he homebrews, sometimes he buys it already made). We are a family of 2 adults, 1 3-year old and a baby. We buy organic milk and a few organic produce items but mostly non-organic.

[Petie1104]

We are at around $1200 a month including pet food, toiletries, and cleaning supplies. We are a family of 6 including 13 yr. old boy, 9yr. old boy, 7 yr. old girl, and 4 yr. old boy. Plus we have a large dig and a cat. That is a lot of mouths to feed.

[Drummer's Wife]

We spend about $1200 a month for a family of 6. I'd say that includes paper towels and toilet paper... but not eating out (DH does so for lunch daily and we eat out as a family 1-2 times a week.

We do eat meat pretty much every night for dinner, and I try to buy a lot of organics - so I know that's part of why the cost is up there. We buy a lot of fresh produce, which unless it's on sale, isn't very cheap. I do keep a pretty stocked pantry, so if we had to, we could eat off that and spend a little on milk and such to get by. So, sometimes money goes towards extra bags of rice or flour even though it wont be consumed that week or even month.

[coyotemist]

Our budget is between 300-400.  We buy very few processed foods (cold cereal and granola bars are the few "treats"),

I buy most everything on sale, "second hand" meat, clearance, etc. 

I do buy a few things through Azure standard each month, and we bake all of our own junk food. 

I buy bread sometimes, bake it myself other times. 

We eat meat nearly every night, but I can make 2.5 pounds go to 3 meals usually (recently bought 2.5 pounds round steak in the clearance meat for $7 dollars so at 2.33 per meal, its a bargain). 

We buy frozen, canned, and fresh veggies (from the farmers stand you can miss on 3lbs of local broccoli for $2.50).  We eat lots of bananas, oatmeal, and eggs.

The only paper we buy is TP.  We don't drink alcohol very often (I've had one glass of beer this month, my hubby and I split one beer between us).  I buy the second cheapest cat food I can, with the occasional can of wet food.

The kids both have soup thermoses and drink thermoses.  They take meals most times, but sometimes eat hot lunch. 

We eat soup at least one day a week to stretch the leftovers into something new.  I make most of my own bone broth (buy a few quarts of store bought broth a month for when I don't have time). 

We are a family of 5 (kids are 12, 9, 2) living on a very flexible income (I work on-call and sometimes work full time, and sometimes am lucky to get 1 shift per week).  On our good income weeks we are playing catch up for the short weeks.

[major_mama11]

We spend around 500 per month, for a family of 4 (2 adults, 5yo, and an 18 mo old who eats as much as me).

I include TP, diapers, cat food, etc in my grocery budget. We rarely eat out (1-2 times per month if that).

We don't eat super healthy, but we do eat healthier than we did a couple years ago- ie more foods from scratch, less convenience foods than before.

I keep an eye on the sale papers and cut coupons, and when I see a good deal I majorly stock up. I am still using shampoo and tampons from the crazy low clearance sale when a nearby grocery store went out of business 4 years ago!

We have a deep freezer, and I will freeze staples like milk cartons and bread, and frozen veggies from our garden in summer.

We go shopping only 3-4 x per month, and usually go to Kroger mostly (they double coupons up to 50 cents), and then to Aldi at least once a month for really good deals on produce, snack foods, and canned stuff.

We rarely eat meat- maybe 1-2x per week. Lots of beans and rice around here!

[Poddi]

We have a budget of about $750 a month for groceries, this include some household stuff.  This is for 5 people.  We don't drink any wine.  Actually we don't buy much beverage at all, so we save a lot of money on drinks.  We eat meat everyday.

I learned from this forum that each family is really different from another.  Sometimes I don't know how other people can spend so much until I realize they probably eat a lot more food than we do.  My estimate is that my family are all below average eaters.  As we always have leftovers when I serve a very standard 3 - 4 dish dinner, and they've never finished a roast chicken in one meal.  Your budget really doesn't sound bad for eating all organic, especially if your family are all big eaters. It's probably not too hard to watch grocery prices carefully and save $200 a month, but will probably be hard to cut back too much unless you alter your eating habit a lot or find a really cheap source of food.

[SubliminalDarkness]

Our budget for food is $650. We spent about an additional $100 on toiletry type items. 

I buy almost everything organic. All meats are organic. Dairy is local, non-homogenized(just not certified organic). We've recently stopped buying eggs because we have chickens. I make everything from scratch.... bread, cereal, snacks, etc. The only thing I buy pre-made is pasta and tortillas. 

We eat meat 3-4 nights a week, but less than a pound per meal. DH and DS1 take a packed lunch to work and school every day. We don't drink juice or soda, so no expense there. We try not to eat out often at all, maybe once a month and then it's usually a 'nice' place. I do occasionally buy a take-out pizza($5) for DS2 and I on our errand day. We eat a LOT of fresh produce(15 lbs. of apples a week, for starters). 

[nwmomof2]

A few years ago I was easily spending $1000 a month for our family of 4 (myself, DH, and daughters 7 and 4). I no longer shop at Whole Foods, and that has helped my budget! I am now down to 450-600 most months. I shop at Costco, Trader Joe's, shop sales at chain grocery stores (and stock up on usable sale items), my local food co-op for a few specalty items, and have organic produce box and organic local milk delivered (delivery is great - staying out of the stores helps me spend less). We sometimes buy organic meat, but always hormone free meat. We have our own chickens for eggs and big garden in the summer (I stop getting the produce box when our garden is producing, and my summer food costs go down to just under $400/mo). I make my own bread, pizza, applesauce, desserts, pancake mix, yogurt and granola. I do buy some snacky-type food for the kids' lunches as treats (TJ's is great for these items.) We do most cooking from scratch, and eat meat maybe 5 nights a week. (We too do the roast chicken about once a week and have the second night as something like burritos and the third night soup). DH takes his lunch to work every day(leftovers or sandwiches) and I pack DD1 a lunch and snack for school 4 days a week and DD2 a snack for preschool 4 days a week. I have been really making an effort to keep the food budget down and still try to eat well, and it is an effort.

[Alyantavid]

We're a family of 4 and spend $300-400 a month.  Which includes paper stuff, cleaning stuff, everything except pet food.

I have a garden and raise most of our vegetables and then freeze them.  We also raise our own beef and pork and we buy chicken in bulk through dh's work.  I do have to buy apples and bananas and some frozen and canned fruit.  Because of a food allergy, I make almost everything from scratch, but we do buy some snacky type foods.  We do buy milk, mostly for dh, and it's local, non-homogenized, not certified organic, but they follow all the rules for organic.

I don't use coupons very often, but I do shop sales.  When something we use is on sale, we buy tons of it.  Like bread.  A local store sells whole wheat, HFCS free bread on sale every few months for just over a dollar a loaf.  So we buy alot to last until the next sale. 

We very rarely eat out, 1-2 a month at most.  My youngest son eats lunch and breakfast at daycare, but he normally eats something at home in the mornings too.  Our oldest eats lunch at school 2-3 times a week and takes lunch the rest of the time.  I eat lunch at home, usually leftovers, as does dh.  Once a week, he's got class all day, so some of those days he'll eat out, something cheap. 

[L J]

I spend right at $300 a month for our family of 3. I feel like I do pretty good; I stock up (but not quite stockpile) when things are on sale, so I only have to buy meat and fresh veggies weekly, plus several weeks worth of whatever is on sale and I have multiple coupons for. I am learning to make more from scratch, and I have been learning to make a lot of my DPs comfort foods from childhood (Puerto Rican) and ethnic food is a lot more inexpensive to prepare, on average. A generous neighbor keeps me pretty well stocked in tomatoes, okra and all kinds of peppers from her garden.

A local grocery store does meat markdowns twice a week, always first thing in the morning, around 6am. So, I know that if I get there around 7am, I can get first pick of what has been marked down and I really save a lot of money that way. I just freeze it immediately, and its fine.

My goal in the near future is to buy a small deep freeze, because I think if I had the freezer space I could save even more money by going once a month to this farm about an hour and a half away and buying whole organic free range chickens. I just don't have the space for that right now.

Having a deep freeze would have allowed me to buy in bulk at the local farmers markets this summer - now that we are nearing the end of the season, the produce in the grocery stores just doesn't look that good, so I'm back to buying the frozen bagged vegetables of things that grow locally here.

I don't count things like washing powder and cleaning supplies in with the grocery budget - that's probably another $60 a month on an expensive month - I really do stockpile those things, and have learned to get Tide, toilet paper and shampoo for nearly free. CVS is my go to place for that stuff. I have eliminated buying things like zip lock bags and plastic wrap by buying a piece of Pyrex glassware with a lid every chance I get, hoping to one day have a pretty good stash of those.

I am also not counting out liquor store runs, since that does not come out of the budget I have to run the household, it comes out of what DP holds on to and allocates as our entertainment budget. I would say that another $100-140 a month.

[honeybunmom]

I've been budgeting $640 a month, but not tracking it.  I tracked last month and so far this month.  $1000 is more like it for a family of 4.  One of which is only 19 mos!  I think our bill is ridiculous.  We could be more purposeful and intentional to keep costs down.  Our biggest costs are eggs and bread.  We go through about 2 doz a week at the cost of $4.50/doz from the food co-ops for farm fresh eggs, and can get them for $3.19 at WF for a medium organic egg. We go through at least 2 loaves of bread a week as well.  Fortunately, we've been able to bring that cost down from $4.50-$5.50/loaf to around $2.89/loaf.  We do participate in a hormone free/grass fed beef meet co-op and I only supplement it with sale meat - normally whole chicken legs.  The meat co-op runs $93 and includes 18-20 lbs of beef (ground beef and a mix of stew meat, stir fry beef, roasts (rump or sirloin), steaks or ribs) and chicken (usually one 4lb whole and one 4 lb cut in parts) and 4 doz eggs.  We just started an organic produce co-op last Friday which runs only $35/bushel per week.  And I can opt out of weeks.  Staying out of the stores is the biggest lift to our budget and hopefully the produce co-op will help this.  A big downer is that I sometimes park for work in a lot where WF is part of the complex.  Bad, bad, bad!  Because it makes it too easy to run in there.

We eat out - actually, bring a pizza home from WF- once a week, but, otherwise, dh and I cook and we're pretty good with left overs, but there is room for improvement. It goes downhill when I experiment and we don't like it.  But, there are home runs in that department, too!

Edited by honeybunmom - 11/20/10 at 12:52pm

[mattemma04]

We are a family of 4 and I am trying to limit the spending to $100 cash per week for everything including pet care(dogs,cats,rabbit,chickens). I buy everything when on sale and refuse to pay full price. When I paid by credit card for everything I spent way more.

[mattemma04]

Originally Posted by honeybunmom 

  Our biggest costs are eggs and bread.  We go through about 2 doz a week at the cost of $4.50/doz from the food co-ops for farm fresh eggs, and can get them for $3.19 at WF for a medium organic egg. We go through at least 2 loaves of bread a week as well. 

 I felt bad charging my neighbors $1.50- $2.00 for eggs.

[Smithie]

We spent over $500 almost every month for JUST groceries - no toiletries, household items or eating out included. We are a family of 5. It makes me nuts, and I've tried various ways to cut it back over the years. Trader Joe's just opened near us, and if I can get the kids to eat their soy nuggets we really WILL go veggie in the house. 

[3 little birds]

We are a family of 7, almost 8.  The food budget has crept up to about 1500-1600 a month, when really we can afford less than 1200.  We are vegetarian, well now vegan that we gave up eggs ($3.59/dozen at 1 dozen per day).  We don't drink milk substitutes or eat fancy vegan products.  Mostly the $ goes to fresh/frozen/canned fruit and veggies (rarely organic due to cost).  Dinner is usually beans and rice or something similar.  Desserts are rare and baked at home.  We never eat out.  We do need about 4/5 loaves of gluten free bread per week and no sugar almond butter.  It amazes me how much our bill is given how simply we eat.