The Glade 4.0

Just out of curiosity...how much do you spend on food? Please include groceries AND dining out/take-out.
I made it a sort of generic poll based on USDA averages since it is a rather personal question.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I generally spend $50-60 on groceries per week, but that's for 2 people. For eating out, I go out for lunch during the week, at $10-15 per day, 5 days. So, $100-$135 per week.

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That seems to jive with what I perceive as average.
Also this:

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Over $500 a month just on me.

I'm coming over to eat. Make some room.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

I spend a lot on food. I didn't always, but it's highly dependent on efficiency of scale. In college, I spent probably $125 a month or maybe even a bit less -- but we shared cooking duties for 4 at the time. I don't cook for 1 very much, leading to a lot of frozen stuff or take-out. Now, it's closer to $300. I keep meaning to cut down on that a bit by packing lunch, but..

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

LK Did you mean per week in your poll question or did you really mean per month?

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See, thats my thing. It's hard to tell what would be considered "a lot" to spend on food...that varies per person I suppose, which is why I wanted to see what the average was around here.

For example, we may think that $600 for a family of four is too much money for food, but according to the govt, a family of four on foodstamps is would receive a monthly allotment of $668.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

If you were to go by my Mint.com summary of August, I spent $1259. Some of that is my gf, some of that is me treating others.. I figured $500 was a safe figure for myself.

After logging in to Mint.com, I find that my historical total (from Sept. 2008 to now) is $8,591. Mint says the average user in the US spent $18,840 in the same timeframe.

My spending includes frequent purchases for the SO, but our budgets are not totally together. That breaks down to $357.96 per month for me v. $785 per month for the average user of Mint.

Now, that's total food and dining, which includes categorizations for Restaurants, Fast Food, Groceries, Coffee Shops, Bars, and other misc. categories as created by each user. If I were to look exclusively at groceries, I'd find a combined spending of $5,137 for me, or $214.04 per month, v. combined total of $8,098 for the average user, or $337.42 per month.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Per month.
I realize that not everyone here has a family so I polled it as per person, per month.
For example, we have a family of 4 and our grocery bill averages a little over $100 per person, per month.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

My impression is that your poll options are skewed toward a quite low "center." $100 a month per person is like $3 a day and some change.

Now, granted, I note you said "grocery bill" -- that's entirely different from "how much do you spend on food?"

My grocery bill probably averages more like $100 a month, but I spend a lot more than that on "food."

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Yes, because I want to see how close to "average" I am on my grocery spending...so I used myself as average to see how I compared to everyone else.
And, other than once or twice a month, we don't generally eat out at all so what we spend on groceries is a very accurate number in regards to what we spend on food which is approximately $125-$150 per person, per month.




That's actually pretty helpful, thanks. Gives me a good idea of where I stand on food spending.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

Whoops.

I read per-week in the above poll. Might want to edit to include changing votes, LK.

We spend about $70 per week on groceries for two of us, some weeks way less and some way more. We go out to eat maybe every 2 weeks, more often just out for coffee and bagels on the weekend, or somesuch.

So maybe around $175 per person per month when we add in eating out?

I think you're skewed to the low end as well.

It's also interesting to note that the size of the family you're feeding has a decided effect.

It doesn't cost close to twice as much to feed 2 people as compared to 1, and that trend continues with larger families.

I estimate we could tag on $20-$30 per week and easily feed a family of 4 or 5 for about $100 per week quite easily.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

You also have to remember that for some, eating out will skew their budget decidedly from groceries.

We eat out twice a month, but that's almost the same as an extra week's grocery budget for us, if you assume ~$15 per person per meal eating out.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I thought it seemed odd so I went back and screwed around in Mint some more... For some reason it was doubling my purchases, so my real number for last month was actually half.. $627.

If your spending is either 1) mostly via credit card and/or 2) mostly via check (or you're willing to manually adjust cash expenditures), you should sign up for Mint.com. It's free, it's awesome, and you can compare yourself to various averages to see where you fall. Amazingly, I find myself lower in a huge number of areas, but then again I'm not budgeting for a family.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Re-voting allowed now. Sorry, thought I had done that to begin with.

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"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Jesus of Nazareth

It's cool. I thought about doing it for you, but then I thought you might have disallowed it on purpose

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I assume Mint.com is a relatively secure place? I'd thought about using it (was using MS Money previously), but giving financial information to 3rd parties always makes me worry a bit.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

It is secure.

Importantly, no money can actually be transferred using Mint. It is merely a tracking software. It functions basically by logging into your various online accounts at banks and credit cards and pulling transactions and balances into its own software.

This means that your risk exposure is that you've provided the web logins for your other accounts, but no actual account information is out there. It's kind of a degree of separation thing.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Cool. I'm trying to change my financial usernames and password every 3 mos or so anyway, and I usually use random combinations of project names/numbers from work.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Eating out kills us. I can get us down to about $250 a month for two adults, but it sucks and I get really bored. I could go lower by reducing protein, but Shel and I both feel like **** on a carb-based diet. My friend feeds her family of 4 (two adults, a teenage boy who is 6'4" and a toddler) for about $600 a month. She could pare it down quite a bit, but she only buys sourced meat (Whole Foods) organic veggies on on dirty dozen, and has to avoid anything with corn syrup, artificial colors, or preservatives.

Be aware that location affects grocery prices, especially with produce. $100 buys a lot more in rural Iowa that it does in NYC.

Groceries works out to around $100/per a month. We do eat out semi-regularly either with friends or for activities, etc.

If you include eating out, then we're probably up to about $200-300/per a month. The issue is that we don't eat out of McDonald's a lot. If we eat out, we eat at a nice restaurant and have a good meal. Around here that usually means that we're spending between $50-100 for the 2 of us. Sometimes more if it's a really nice place.

We eat Chipotle rather a lot. Actual 'fast food ' maybe once a month. My food-dar has led me to a bunch of inexpensive spots for amazing food, though, We've got a Polish place nearby that does a multi-course tasting menu for 2 for $40.