What's your monthly food budget

We have a second refrigerator in the garage which allows us to purchase sale items in bulk. We spend about $100-$150 per week.

 

What's your food savings minus your additional electricity cost?

 

I would think your food budget would fluctuate wildly based on location. I live in the Northeast, and just about everything is 33 percent higher here than my home state of Texas.

Price elasticity, baby.

We go about $170 a week for four, with two kids under 11. One has a special-needs diet, but it averages out on the "special foods vs. volume" he'd eat otherwise.

We eat out too much and I drink too much (with expensive taste), though.

 

$450-550 a month for me. I never cook. Ever.

 

Our family of four probably spends between $600-$650 a month at the grocery store. That would include everything at the store: TP, detergent, vodka, beer, light bulbs, etc.

Yes, we can get liquor at the grocery store...gas stations, too! And yes, it's awesome.

 

$516.18

 

Being single and self sufficient, I've never really figured out how much I spend a month on food. I've also never sat down and wrote out a budget. I know roughly what I can spend on extras and I try to stick under it. At the meat market I spend about $35 a week and at the grocery store I spend another $35 a week. Eating out probably another $60-80 a week (usually lunch at work and then once on the weekend). I know I spend more on food than I have to, but I'd rather spend to get good quality, healthy food. I also cut back on other areas like no cable, I don't drink near as much as I did in my younger days and I don't have a lot of other toys and financial commitments outside of my jeep payment, rent, and utilities. I also know on the weeks when I need to cut back it's pretty easy to do.

 

The refrigerator runs an estimated $7 per month. My electric bill runs from $35 per month in the winter to $140 in the summer. I keep my A/C on 71-72. If I buy 5lbs of ground beef for $10 instead of purchasing at $4.99 per pound there is a net benefit of $15 with one purchase.

Easily covers the cost of running a refrigerator.

 

I keep my a/c at 79-80 and my electric bill was 150 bucks last month. I want to live where you live.

 

I spent $49 last week, but that included some stuff like light bulbs, etc. Yesterday I spent $37.45 and that will last all week. Lunch and dinner. I guess monthly, I'd say around $120-125

 

Buck beat me to it, but I'll reiterate that there is a difference between "food" budget and "grocery" budget. I have a family of four and we spend about $280 a month at the grocery store and another $200 or so a month dining out. I'm hoping both figures drop after one of the novelistas leaves for college in six weeks.

If I were single, I don't know that I'd ever darken the door of a grocery store.

Interesting fact: U.S. residents spend a lower percentage (last time I saw this statistic it was about 11 percent) of their household incomes on food than those in virtually every other country in the world. UPDATE: According to the USDA, it was 6.9 percent in 2009.

http://www.bigpictureagriculture.com/2011/09/food-as-percent-of-total-household.html

 

I miss getting takeout on a regular basis and going out for sushi weekly, but we've been super diligent about putting money away for the kids to go to college that I wouldn't trade it for anything.