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I'm just curious how much other couples spend on groceries per month for just the two of you.
Also, how often do you eat out? Does this include your seperate lunches or do you take your lunch to work?
The Hubby and I hardly cook, (the place we are in now is so tiny its hard to cook) So we eat out quite a bit, yes that kind of makes me sound lazy, but I try to cook at our current place. We spend so much money eating out $25 at least 4 times a week can really add up!! We do not pack lunches, we will as soon as we get moved into our new house. :)
We spend about $60 each trip to the grocery store (about 3 times a month). We eat in during the week, and we'll go out to eat on Friday and Saturday (dinners only). We pack lunches to work.
Generally, right around $300/month, but we cook A LOT! Sometimes it's a little more, sometimes a little less, but I'd say that's average.
Um, you need more options!!!! Who spends under $100 on groceries?! I want your secrets. Unless you're living off Ramen =]
We spend about $500/month on groceries between the two of us. We don't eat out very often. I go out for lunch every other week (maybe $10-$15) and he goes out every week with his mom and sister and we eat out at a restaurant about twice a month for dinner.
We average around 100 (sometimes 120) a week for groceries and essentials (includes dish soap, toilet paper, soda, batteries, etc..). This will include the occasional bottle of wine, greeting card, beer for a party, just about everything we need.
We eat all three meals at home, just about every day. Occasionally I'll have a lunch n' learn at work, sometimes we'll go out to dinner with family - but it's basically all meals made by us. It works out to just over 2.40 per meal, per person - pretty good if you ask me.
We would love to go out to eat more... we love enjoying a good meal, with good wine and good company, but unforch - with my reduced salary, and his non-existant one, it was one thing we had to cut back on.
Because of saving money for the wedding, we cook at home pretty much every night. (I know, that's strange for a New Yorker!) Our budget for groceries is $360 per month...but keep in mind this is in Manhattan. Right now, we eat out maybe once a week (tops) and that's usually takeout or brunch, not dinner.
I bring my lunch to work with me...FI is a private school teacher and gets free lunch.
I'm really good at shopping the ads and saving money at the grocery store. One week I save $60 on the bill!
I go to the grocery store way too often (2 to 3 times per week) and spend anywhere from $25 to $70 each time. We eat out fairly often too, I guess...or I guess we don't eat out that often, but we go to expensive places. But that's usually on Fridays and Saturdays, and it's often with other people. As for lunches, I usually pack my own. FI has his lunches ordered in by work, so we don't pay for that.
We spend about $120 every week. We very rarely eat out, maybe once a month! We both take packed lunches to work :)
I spend about $60 a trip, two times a month, so around $120 a month. However, it depends on what I am getting. When chicken breasts and ground turkey go on sale I stock up on it, thus making by bill super high. When I have a lot of meat in my house, my bills are lower.
We eat out maybe once a month. It isn't so much for many reasons as much as health reasons.
@EJS: my secret is a grocery store called Sprouts (kinda like a cross between a Trader Joes and a farmer's market). I can get all my fruits, veggies, and dairy for the two of us for two weeks for about $20. I also refuse to buy an prepackaged convenience foods which tend to be pricey :)
hotchildinthecity: I'm a coupon & add watching pro too. We used 27 dollars in coupons last weekend & with the card savings (things on sale) we saved over 50 dollars..
I have a crazy grocery system - First I go thru my coupons and see what is about to expire - I read the ads and circle what we get a lot - on the back of a piece of paper, I'll break down Breakfast, Lunch, Snacks, Misc & Dinner - and I plan the meals for 2 weeks out based on what's on sale & what we are in the mood for. Then when I'm done, I write all the ingredients in categories on the front of the paper: fruit/veg, grains, canned, frozen, meat/dairy & misc. Then I go thru my other coupons to save a little extra.
I also will not cut out coupons of stuff that we won't normally use - no icky foods that we wouldn't normally eat. Most of our coupons are for toiletries, dairy, frozen veggies/meals (viola or bertolli for the FI), and grains (cereal, bread, bagels, etc)
I'm totally ocd about it, but it works really well!
@ella: I am insane about it as well and rarely admit such to my friends ;o) I grew up learning how to shop that way from my mom and it saves us a lot of money!
Normally we spend over $300 a month on groceries, because we usually cook dinner every night. Funny enough though, now that it's close to the wedding and we have major things to pay for, we have been eating out a TON because we simply do not have the time or energy to food shop and cook. I'm anxious for things to get back to normal so I can start cooking regularly again.
I don't take my lunch to work, but I purposely eat small lunches anyway, so I don't waste a lot of money on that.
Same here! My mom always had the little card box full of coupons!
I would go the extra step and go to two different stores to get a better deal, but I usually don't have the time. We have a place here called Marc's (it's an Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan thing) where they have super discount prices. You have to watch, somethings might be expired, but they keep their prices down by not using credit card machines.
If I'm feeling really motivated, I'll hit that place first, but the FI comes shopping with me, and would rather just hit Giant Eagle... plus we get the gas points, so that's cool too!
Because of the wedding, we have budgeted $75 per week, which averages about $325 per month. This amount includes cat food for our cat, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, other essentials, and food. Sometimes, it is a little more, sometimes a little less. I work from home, so I don't need to pack a lunch or eat out, and I pack FI's lunch for him, so he doesn't have to eat out. The extra gets put toward the wedding or other bills. The incentive to pay toward the bills and the wedding keeps us on track.
We've gotten to the point where we eat at home for majority of our meals. I make my own breakfast and 99% of my lunches and then supper to boot. We'll eat out maybe 1 time a week and it's usually on the weekends.
I usually go to 2 stores every week if they have decent sales and I could stick to my list and come out fairly cheap but it's when we go off our list where the money adds up!
Since we plan on keeping eating at home a habit, I'm wondering what is average for everyone else. I do use coupons...I'm not as obsessed with it as we use to be but I try to group coupons and sales to get the most for our money. I'm guessing we spend about $200 each month. In all honesty I could get away with not going so often but we usually try to stock up when we can.
I would like to buckle down on the spending though but maybe we're doing good.
We cook almost every night, so we spend a lot. We go shopping every weekend and spend anywhere between $80 - $100 depending on what we plan on cooking. So, between $300-$400 a month, I guess.
We got out to eat maybe twice a month.
Depending on the month we spend about $150-$200. We have both of our moms who stock our fridges for us with random goodies weekly, our freezer outside has every meat product and steamed veggie you could possibly think of, so we only go out to get fresh fish, eggs, fruit, veggies, etc. when necessary! :)
We pack our lunch everyday and rarely eat out. We'll get a pizza or thai take-out 1 a week or so.
We are also HUGE coupon cutters :) FI went last night to pick up some groceries... totaling $125 and walked out only having to pay $80! :) yup COUPONS!
I eat at restaurants a couple of times a week and so does my partner. Together we spend about $400 a month on groceries. I know it's obscene, but we are both trying to eat healthy and also both have a love of good food!
i use a lot of coupons i spend about 130 a month on groceries! i clip like crazy and kroger does double and triple coupons.
I cook every night and we try not to eat out for breakfast or lunch especially during the week so we can save our spending money for the weekend. I spend $100-$150 each week. This also includes all lunch stuff so we can pack our lunches.
We spend anywhere from $200-$300 a month. We cook all the time and rarely eat out. And I love left-overs!! They're great for lunches :]
Noritake- we were the same way. The closer it was to the wedding, the less I wanted to do anything so we would eat out quiet a bit.
I love Sprouts when I have the chance to go. We have one in the next city over but not here :(
This thread is making me feel better, I thought we were doing something wrong! We spend on average, $80/week on groceries, bringing us to just over $300/month. For just the 2 of us!
I do clip coupons, but I've been bad lately at using them and I think my organizer is full of expired ones now. I've got to check out Sprouts, because they just opened one and it's right on my way home.
One other thing is that we have meat in almost every single meal and that can add up. We do try to buy the meat that's on sale but it can still get expensive. I want to start having meatless nights or cutting back on the amount of meat in our dishes.
Ok maybe we just spend an exhorbant amount. Oye. We can easily blow $150 at Sam's Club. And we do buy in bulk, or go to trader joe's.
Healthy food is SO expensive!
Well, DH and I aren't living together yet, but I budget about $120 and he budgets the same, so I figure once he's here, we'll probably budget about $150 (beings a lot of the stuff now we're buying doubles beings we dont' live together). When I grocery shop, I try to plan my meals around what's on sale and find ingredients that I use in multiple recipes. That really helps me on the budget!
As for eating out, we really don't eat out a lot when he's in town. He says he prefers my cooking and I LOVE to cook, so we usually just stay in. And once he's living here, I'm sure we really won't eat out then because we'll be on a super tight budget with him being in school.
@Pendola: Sprouts has totally saved my grocery budget! I bought 7 lbs of chicken breasts, 1 lb chicken thighs, lettuce, tomato, bell pepper, grapes, ginger, onions, blackberries, baby carrots, yogurt, 2 Luna bars, bulk trail mix, and a jar of sesame seeds for only $50 yesterday :D I could easily go to a regular grocery store and spend double that on the same things!
ejs4y8... it is more expensive to buy healthier food, in general! I feel your pain. We try to avoid Costco, so we don't have the $500 months!
We spend at least $100/week on groceries. We cook 4 nights a week and pack all of our lunches. We eat out once a week and have those leftovers for another dinner :)
this thread makes me feel better because i feel like we spend WAY too much money on groceries. we spend about $120 a week, but $30 of that goes to a local company where we pick up organic produce every week. it's EXPENSIVE. we like doing it, but some of the veggies are things we never eat, like beets, so we end up wasting a lot of them (luckily i have guinea pigs who LOVE our veggies..best fed piggies in texas). we also eat as organic as we can, which adds up. and we are winos, which is where another $15-$20 a week goes. each of us goes out to lunch about once a week, and we do dinner once a week. So with EVERYTHING we spend about $175 a week on food.
food shopping is our biggest money waster, so we are working on that now :)
We spend around $120 at the grocery store weekly! So I am with EJS and spend about $500 a month on food!
We both take healthy lunches to work with us and cook mostly healthy dinners at home. We eat all fresh foods and no pre-packaged process foods and so that probably makes it a bit more expensive but I think it is worth it!
We probably eat out for dinner about once a month and we each probably buy lunch twice a month!
@ribbons: we cook 4 nights a week too! I plan meals for Monday-Thursday, but Friday-Sunday are a tossup of leftovers and maybe going out to eat :)
Oh yeah, and we cut out Costco because most of it is prepackaged foods which I try to avoid buying already so I wouldn't really be saving any money! My parents have a membership so they pick up vitamins and my muscle milk for me since those two things are much cheaper there.
ETA: Maybe it is the area I live in, but it is actually CHEAPER for me to buy healthy groceries instead of prepackaged foods :/
We spend about $350-400 a month, plus we both buy lunch every day ($7-9 each). We live in crazy expensive Boston, so unless we were willing to take our lunch, there's not a lot to cut back on. And since getting out of my office to eat is what keeps me sane, I say that's money well spent :-). But, I do remember when I first moved here from Texas - I was absolutely shocked at how much more food cost! Milk was double the money!
We spend about $300 per month, and we eat out 1-2 times a week.
We shop mostly at Target and Trader Joe's (we get our fruits, veggies and a few other things at TJ's and everything else like cereal and such at Target 'cause it's cheap!).
When we do eat out, though, we try to keep it cheap (like under $30 for both of us) and we very rarely get drinks while we're out because they add up ... fast! We drink at home to save money so we always get water when we eat out :)
We spend anywhere from 50-100 a week at the grocery store, depending on how many "staples" we need to replenish and how much we are eating out for dinner. We both probably eat out for lunch once a week (10-20 bucks) and also eat out 2-3 times a week. I would say we "watch" our spending in terms of eating out, but we buy what we want at the store. For example, we eat steak at least once a week, don't think twice about buying expensive fish, etc.
Generally we spend about $500 a month on groceries (which includes the cat’s food too and some mics. non-food items), and about $150 on alcohol for the 2 of us. That doesn’t include eating out – usually we get takeout sushi once a week which is like $30-$40.
We LOVE to cook, and cook almost every meal at home. We try not to buy any processed/prepared foods, and shop a lot at the farmers market, which is more expensive in our area than the grocery store (I so envy those of you with cheap farmers markets!! lol) – eating “well” is expensive, and that sucks, but it is what it is, and we love food.
I eat lunch at home 99% of the time (live 10 minutes from work), and bring breakfast to work with me.
Wow, when I saw the poll options (before seeing the results) I thought I was at the extreme! But I'm glad to see I'm not crazy with my spending..I spent $80-100 a week at the grocery store. And we only eat out about once a month and do takeout once a week.
I agree with others above that healthy eating is expensive!!! Fruits and veggies...yikes!! Fruit is so darn expensive! I like to cook nice dinners and boy does the cost add up. (Most of our dinners do include beef, pork or chicken) I'm working on trying to remember to use coupons and I want to start going to two grocery stores weekly in order to save more money. I used to be good about looking at the grocery store website circulars before going, but I've gotten lazy and don't do that. Best way to save I've found is too stock up on meats when they are half-price or so!
I buy our groceries for all our weekday meals and spend $400/month ($100/week). The Guy buys weekend groceries and usually spends another $50-$75/week.
We are foodies and we do spend quite a bit on food. We try to buy as much organic produce and free-range, organic meat and dairy as possible/available.
I eat all three meals a day at home (work five minutes from home so am able to go home for lunch) and The Guy eats breakfast and dinner at home, and is usually able to expense his lunch.
We rarely eat out, as we love to cook and don't like spending money on mediocre food, so when we do go out (maybe 3-4 times a year) we go ALL out and have a fancy, expensive meal that's above and beyond what we could create at home.
We typically spend around $100 or slightly less than per month. We have a veggie garden so we don't need to buy many veggies during the summer, and we also can them for the winter. We also don't buy things like chips/soda, packaged meals, etc. Oh, and we eat at my parent's house a lot b/c they live close by. And FI's lunch is provided for him at work, so we save a lot that way.
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