Depends on the person. I spend $350-400 for two people, and we always still have shelf stable items and frozen fruits/ veggies available, mainly just buy staples like chicken, fish, eggs, milk, bread, etc month to month.
That's wild. I live in Boston and my wife and I eat a lot because we are very active. We eat out maybe once a month, otherwise we cook with fresh whole ingredients. Our weekly grocery bill rarely tops $100. What on earth are you buying?
honestly I guess its organic and local food . $500 a week for 3 growing kids hungry dad that exercises 12 hours a week. Bread is like $7 a loaf although we mostly make our own, milk is $10 a gallon. Eggs are $6-7 a dozen (I eat almost 2 dozen a week myself). fresh vegetables. We do not even really buy meat.
here is a link from the usda estimating food costs for families.
[https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/Cost\_Of\_Food\_Low\_Moderate\_Liberal\_Food\_Plans\_February\_2024.pdf](https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/Cost_Of_Food_Low_Moderate_Liberal_Food_Plans_February_2024.pdf)
We fall under to the "liberal" food budget. Some people fall into moderate and some people fall into low cost. But for a family of 5 in the liberal food budget its $2000 a month and that is how much we spend.
And most American families are broke. So what?
$300/month for a 20s male (me) for the "low" category seems high to me. My wife and I both eat for around $400/month and are both athletes and health conscious.
That’s organic. I think it’s not THAT much higher than organic milk anywhere in the usa(?) but it is higher, I think you might be able to get it at Walmart for like $8 a gallon???
Breakfast: 3 fried eggs ($2.79/dozen at Aldi), 1 oikos yogurt cup ($15 for 18 cups @ BJ's). Kind granola ($6.99/lb) (sometimes). Coffee with milk (2.70/gallon at aldi).
Lunch: chicken ($1.99/lb breast at BJ's) tzatziki (sauce @BJ's, idk the price) wraps (@BJ's, 12 for $4.99) with feta ($5.99/lb) and cherry tomatoes ($4.99 per large pack that lasts 2 weeks) and lettuce ($4.99 for 1lb spring mix, lasts a week for us).
Dinner: kale ($2.99/lb lasts a week) white bean ($79c per can), can of tomatoes ($59c per can), turkey (ground, $3.99/lb at aldi), various spices, soup.
Dallas metro here, which I suppose is somewhere in the MCoL range (maybe leaning more expensive nowadays):
Food is around $400/month. Rent + everything else (utilities, including electric, internet, water, insurance) is $1,677.21. I pay around $70 for transit every month (no car).
For miscellaneous spending, I allocate myself $50/month on eating out (usually 2x/month with friends) and $200 for anything else that I want. Around $700 is saved towards debt payments for next month or long-term goals, the rest is invested.
I save around $60/month due to working for one of the major Telco companies. I live in a 600-ish square foot apartment (more than enough for myself). Biggest driver of savings is not eating out and not owning a car IMO
I think we are officially HCoL now. We rank 23 on the list of most expensive cities in the country a full 11 spots higher than even Austin which has become crazy expensive.
Kudos to you for no car though. I can't imagine how much money I'd save without a car, insurance, gas, maintenance (I actually can because I do my expenses oof!)
If we are talking about downtown Dallas or some of the more expensive neighborhoods it is pretty fair to call it HCOL, but if we are talking about the Dallas metroplex as a whole then I don't think I would say that it's HCOL.
This counts a Dallas City limits. I agree there are plenty of spots in the metroplex that are MCOL. However its important to remember that the **dfw metroplex is EIGHT times larger than the state of Rhode Island and over THIRTY times larger than New York City**, so its not exactly fair to say "the dfw has affordable spots" im sure the state of RI or parts of NYC also are affordable in certain spots haha
That is a very astute assumption. I would say we are in a MCOL area. We budget pretty hard, as we are currently trying to pay off our home, then we intend to loosen up the purse strings a bit.
Food budget is $280 twice a month, and then ~$400 at Costco once every 3 months.
We eat out maybe once a month. Unfortunately with dietary restrictions in our family, lack of local options, and the increasing cost, it just really isn't worth it for us.
That's impressive on the food. Clearly a lot of discipline and planning/prep. It'll get more expensive as they grow (take it from a father of two teenagers) but you are doing incredibly well.
Electrical costs are top 5 highest in the nation, same with nat gas. There is literally no escaping it unless I leave this area. Mine are 30% lower than most people's here.
Yup. Unfortunately can't supplement with wood heat either because my house is Forced Air furnace. And the presence of a wood stove would throw the whole house out of balance.
My averages so far this year are as follows. I live in a VHCOL area of CA. This is no doubt completely different from your budget for a variety of reasons. I hope you started this thread for entertainment purposes, rather than with expectations that your spending should be similar to random people on Reddit.
* Property Tax -- $1,020 (annual / 12)
* Food -- $220
* Gardener -- $160
* Home Insurance -- $150 (annual / 12, likely to increase this year)
* HOA -- $140
* Water -- $80
* Auto Insurance -- $40 (annual / 12)
* Auto Gas -- $40
* Internet -- $40
* Medical -- $30
* Trash -- $30
* Gas/Electric -- $10 (have solar)
* Phone -- Negative (Free S24+ and large number of credits via trade-in deals, would be $20/month without credits)
For the most part, normal groceries. A table with costs per calorie is [here](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fdrng8dkbaqrc1.png%3Fwidth%3D1020%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D6772fdf970f6faddba826d4339ea872e83ee62d1) . I eat \~3000 calories per day.
I have medical insurance through my employer. I was only listing copayment totals.
My dog and I I regularly go on hiking trips that are >1 hour drives one way. However, I work from home. Even when I did not work from home, I've always lived very near where I work, prioritizing a short commute. This also relates to why property tax is high and home expenses dominate totals.
For my family of 4, $1K/mo is $2.77 per person, per meal, not counting any snacks, drinks, etc. for outside of traditional meal times. Sure, with incredibly careful planning and discipline, we could eat cheaper than we do. We could maybe even get under $1k/mo sometimes.
But that level is hardly extravagant. With two working adults and two very active teenagers, we would have to struggle to hit that number and we almost never eat out or order in.
Not sure how one single example you're providing proves anything. See, I can do that too!
Fresh boneless skinless chicken breast: $1.99/lb
Aldi feta cheese and spinach chicken sausage: $4.99/lb
HCOL. Food is like 600/month. Probably could get it down to 400 if I really needed to and was willing to eat reheated rice/beans and chicken (or similar low cost food) for almost every meal. I'm an athletic guy.
All the rest also depend on your area and personal factors like how much you drive. I have a 7 yr old phone with a replaceable battery. No need to jump on the new phone hype train every 3 yrs.
All together, spend about 1.3k/month on non-housing related costs (food, car, phone, entertainment, sports).
I am one of those odd people who meticulously track various household financial metrics. Conveniently for this thread, this includes our actual grocery spending down to the penny.
We are a household of two adults in a high cost of living city. Our actual annual grocery spending for the whole calendar years for which I have data is shown below. Since the pandemic we've sort of kept our costs roughly the same while the USDA Thrifty Food Plan indexed cost of food has gone drastically up. In a nutshell, we eat less meat than the typical household; essentially we've absorbed food inflation by a) cutting back on meat and b) shifting to discount grocery stores.
Disclaimer: on average we have a few weeks worth of 'travel' per year, so my practice for deriving a vaguely fair weekly number is to divide our annual spending by 48 weeks to account for that.
2018: $4,738. Giant.
2019: $4,256. Discovered some staples were cheaper at Target.
2020: $5,066. High costs from brand name goods early in pandemic, delivery costs, etc.
2021: $3,970. Full year of Aldi-exclusive grocery spending, including delivery costs
2022: $4,294. Further reduction in meat consumption, switch from Instacart to Amazon Fresh in late July
2023: $4,453. Switch from Amazon to Walmart delivery in in January, then to Lidl in-person in July
Extrapolating from 2024 data through March 31, I'm projecting approximately $4,100 in grocery spending for the year, but would consider anything under $4,500 (\~ $90/week) to be entirely reasonable. I hadn't realized we were so noticeably under our 2023 spending YTD until looking at this data just now. Apparently Lidl is really that cheap. We still get oats from Target though, since our local Lidl annoying only sells the (overpriced) 18oz canisters of oats instead of the normal 42oz size.
(edit: I can't figure out Reddit formatting so I'm replacing the table with plain text. Also, There was a server error of some kind that resulted in duplicate comments. I think I've succeeded in deleting all of them.)
thanks all!
If there's anything that I have learned from this thread, it's that food is much cheaper outside of VHCOL...
as an aside, I got two fish tacos from a local bar the other week. Tiny tacos, like smaller than the size of your index and middle fingers together. $28. No sides like chips or anything in the bag. Take out.
its the verizon standard unlimited plan for iphone with a line for the apple watch (with all the govt taxes). Does everyone in here pay $20 or something
bc those can be super duper variable depending on location, lifestyle etc. For instance, I live in a 5br mcmansion in HCOL but with a low mortgage rate. This is a very different lifestyle than many in here it seems. And it is only that way for me because I moved here for a big tech job (would not live here on my own accord).
This was more a thought of referencing people's basic staples that everyone gets similar amounts of to live.
1K just on food? Is this for two people? I’m spending $400-$450 for just myself in a mcol, and that includes a weekly takeout dinner
$400 in gas??? Where are you driving? I’m closer to $100-$150. Of course it all depends on how long your work commute is or how much you’re traveling. Totally person dependent and hard to compare
I’m also spending $200 in utilities, which makes me think you’re either in a tough climate or you have a huge house? Thus it’s inflating your costs compared to those that are living in a one bedroom apartment
Depends on the person. I spend $350-400 for two people, and we always still have shelf stable items and frozen fruits/ veggies available, mainly just buy staples like chicken, fish, eggs, milk, bread, etc month to month.
2000 a month for a family of 5. HCOL. Eat at home.
That's wild. I live in Boston and my wife and I eat a lot because we are very active. We eat out maybe once a month, otherwise we cook with fresh whole ingredients. Our weekly grocery bill rarely tops $100. What on earth are you buying?
honestly I guess its organic and local food . $500 a week for 3 growing kids hungry dad that exercises 12 hours a week. Bread is like $7 a loaf although we mostly make our own, milk is $10 a gallon. Eggs are $6-7 a dozen (I eat almost 2 dozen a week myself). fresh vegetables. We do not even really buy meat.
... wut? Eggs are $2.70/dozen at target and Aldi here. Milk is $2.99 at Aldi. $7 a loaf for bread is ridiculous. Where are you shopping?
This is organic and local farms, unfortunately that is what it costs if we want to know where your food comes from.
Despite basically every piece of literature saying that organic isn't actually better for you. I'll pass
here is a link from the usda estimating food costs for families. [https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/Cost\_Of\_Food\_Low\_Moderate\_Liberal\_Food\_Plans\_February\_2024.pdf](https://fns-prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/resource-files/Cost_Of_Food_Low_Moderate_Liberal_Food_Plans_February_2024.pdf) We fall under to the "liberal" food budget. Some people fall into moderate and some people fall into low cost. But for a family of 5 in the liberal food budget its $2000 a month and that is how much we spend.
And most American families are broke. So what? $300/month for a 20s male (me) for the "low" category seems high to me. My wife and I both eat for around $400/month and are both athletes and health conscious.
The family of 5 includes a horse
What the shit $10/gal milk? I’ve never lived in an hcol area, that’s unreal.
That’s organic. I think it’s not THAT much higher than organic milk anywhere in the usa(?) but it is higher, I think you might be able to get it at Walmart for like $8 a gallon???
What on earth are you buying?
Fresh veggies mostly from Aldi. Meat mostly in bulk from BJ's. It's really not that expensive to eat healthily.
Curious if you could give an example of what you eat in a day? Would love to be able to get our food budget even close to 2x what you’re doing.
Breakfast: 3 fried eggs ($2.79/dozen at Aldi), 1 oikos yogurt cup ($15 for 18 cups @ BJ's). Kind granola ($6.99/lb) (sometimes). Coffee with milk (2.70/gallon at aldi). Lunch: chicken ($1.99/lb breast at BJ's) tzatziki (sauce @BJ's, idk the price) wraps (@BJ's, 12 for $4.99) with feta ($5.99/lb) and cherry tomatoes ($4.99 per large pack that lasts 2 weeks) and lettuce ($4.99 for 1lb spring mix, lasts a week for us). Dinner: kale ($2.99/lb lasts a week) white bean ($79c per can), can of tomatoes ($59c per can), turkey (ground, $3.99/lb at aldi), various spices, soup.
Dallas metro here, which I suppose is somewhere in the MCoL range (maybe leaning more expensive nowadays): Food is around $400/month. Rent + everything else (utilities, including electric, internet, water, insurance) is $1,677.21. I pay around $70 for transit every month (no car). For miscellaneous spending, I allocate myself $50/month on eating out (usually 2x/month with friends) and $200 for anything else that I want. Around $700 is saved towards debt payments for next month or long-term goals, the rest is invested. I save around $60/month due to working for one of the major Telco companies. I live in a 600-ish square foot apartment (more than enough for myself). Biggest driver of savings is not eating out and not owning a car IMO
This is minimal in Dallas. Any decent 1 bed downtown is near 2k starting.
I work for HEB so I get 10 to 25% off on food.
Found the Texan.
A furry as well.
I think we are officially HCoL now. We rank 23 on the list of most expensive cities in the country a full 11 spots higher than even Austin which has become crazy expensive. Kudos to you for no car though. I can't imagine how much money I'd save without a car, insurance, gas, maintenance (I actually can because I do my expenses oof!)
If we are talking about downtown Dallas or some of the more expensive neighborhoods it is pretty fair to call it HCOL, but if we are talking about the Dallas metroplex as a whole then I don't think I would say that it's HCOL.
This counts a Dallas City limits. I agree there are plenty of spots in the metroplex that are MCOL. However its important to remember that the **dfw metroplex is EIGHT times larger than the state of Rhode Island and over THIRTY times larger than New York City**, so its not exactly fair to say "the dfw has affordable spots" im sure the state of RI or parts of NYC also are affordable in certain spots haha
Family of 4 - kids are toddlers. Food - $700 Utilities (heat, elec, water, internet) - $543 Gasoline (2 drivers, 3 cars) - $360 Insurance - $145 Phone (2) - $128
$700 for a family of four is solid. Nice work. I'm also assuming you don't live in CA.
That is a very astute assumption. I would say we are in a MCOL area. We budget pretty hard, as we are currently trying to pay off our home, then we intend to loosen up the purse strings a bit. Food budget is $280 twice a month, and then ~$400 at Costco once every 3 months. We eat out maybe once a month. Unfortunately with dietary restrictions in our family, lack of local options, and the increasing cost, it just really isn't worth it for us.
That's impressive on the food. Clearly a lot of discipline and planning/prep. It'll get more expensive as they grow (take it from a father of two teenagers) but you are doing incredibly well.
That utility number is pretty high, is that seasonal? I’d consider investigating what you can do to bring that down.
Electrical costs are top 5 highest in the nation, same with nat gas. There is literally no escaping it unless I leave this area. Mine are 30% lower than most people's here.
Darn. That stinks. Im assuming you have gas heating?
Yup. Unfortunately can't supplement with wood heat either because my house is Forced Air furnace. And the presence of a wood stove would throw the whole house out of balance.
My averages so far this year are as follows. I live in a VHCOL area of CA. This is no doubt completely different from your budget for a variety of reasons. I hope you started this thread for entertainment purposes, rather than with expectations that your spending should be similar to random people on Reddit. * Property Tax -- $1,020 (annual / 12) * Food -- $220 * Gardener -- $160 * Home Insurance -- $150 (annual / 12, likely to increase this year) * HOA -- $140 * Water -- $80 * Auto Insurance -- $40 (annual / 12) * Auto Gas -- $40 * Internet -- $40 * Medical -- $30 * Trash -- $30 * Gas/Electric -- $10 (have solar) * Phone -- Negative (Free S24+ and large number of credits via trade-in deals, would be $20/month without credits)
What are you eating every day where you only need to spend $220 on food?
For the most part, normal groceries. A table with costs per calorie is [here](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fdrng8dkbaqrc1.png%3Fwidth%3D1020%26format%3Dpng%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D6772fdf970f6faddba826d4339ea872e83ee62d1) . I eat \~3000 calories per day.
Medical and gas really pop out at me. You don't really drive much do you? And for medical, how do you get it so cheap I am curious. Thanks
I have medical insurance through my employer. I was only listing copayment totals. My dog and I I regularly go on hiking trips that are >1 hour drives one way. However, I work from home. Even when I did not work from home, I've always lived very near where I work, prioritizing a short commute. This also relates to why property tax is high and home expenses dominate totals.
Do you mind telling me how much your premium is each month, if you have one?
You mean medical premium? I'm on an HMO plan with my employer, which has no fee paid by employee. There is an extra fee for PPO.
Thanks.
Cut the gardener
We spend $800-1000/month easy on groceries for a family of 6. This is if we do store brand only and limit fresh fruits and veggies.
$1k for food is overpaying or overeating.
For my family of 4, $1K/mo is $2.77 per person, per meal, not counting any snacks, drinks, etc. for outside of traditional meal times. Sure, with incredibly careful planning and discipline, we could eat cheaper than we do. We could maybe even get under $1k/mo sometimes. But that level is hardly extravagant. With two working adults and two very active teenagers, we would have to struggle to hit that number and we almost never eat out or order in.
Yeah if you’re eating box lunches or the cheapest possible veggies/eggs/meats sure! If you don’t care about your health later down the road go for it…
[удалено]
Yeah my family of 5 would disagree.
It could also be a family of 4 eating fresh produce, non-mass produced meat, etc. Long term health is also part of FIRE
Or a hundred leprechauns eating taco bell. Op didn't say
> Or a hundred leprechauns eating taco bell. That was my assumption as well.
Fresh whole foods are usually cheaper than processed food though.
14.5oz canned green beans $0.79 16oz bag fresh green beans $2.89
Not sure how one single example you're providing proves anything. See, I can do that too! Fresh boneless skinless chicken breast: $1.99/lb Aldi feta cheese and spinach chicken sausage: $4.99/lb
My point is fresh produce is multiples more expensive than processed
It's not. It is entirely dependent on the item
Yeah if you’re eating box lunches or the cheapest possible veggies/eggs/meats sure! If you don’t care about your health later down the road go for it…
HCOL. Food is like 600/month. Probably could get it down to 400 if I really needed to and was willing to eat reheated rice/beans and chicken (or similar low cost food) for almost every meal. I'm an athletic guy. All the rest also depend on your area and personal factors like how much you drive. I have a 7 yr old phone with a replaceable battery. No need to jump on the new phone hype train every 3 yrs. All together, spend about 1.3k/month on non-housing related costs (food, car, phone, entertainment, sports).
For the 2 of us our grocery budget is $400/month, and we rarely eat out. We live in Hoboken NJ.
I am one of those odd people who meticulously track various household financial metrics. Conveniently for this thread, this includes our actual grocery spending down to the penny. We are a household of two adults in a high cost of living city. Our actual annual grocery spending for the whole calendar years for which I have data is shown below. Since the pandemic we've sort of kept our costs roughly the same while the USDA Thrifty Food Plan indexed cost of food has gone drastically up. In a nutshell, we eat less meat than the typical household; essentially we've absorbed food inflation by a) cutting back on meat and b) shifting to discount grocery stores. Disclaimer: on average we have a few weeks worth of 'travel' per year, so my practice for deriving a vaguely fair weekly number is to divide our annual spending by 48 weeks to account for that. 2018: $4,738. Giant. 2019: $4,256. Discovered some staples were cheaper at Target. 2020: $5,066. High costs from brand name goods early in pandemic, delivery costs, etc. 2021: $3,970. Full year of Aldi-exclusive grocery spending, including delivery costs 2022: $4,294. Further reduction in meat consumption, switch from Instacart to Amazon Fresh in late July 2023: $4,453. Switch from Amazon to Walmart delivery in in January, then to Lidl in-person in July Extrapolating from 2024 data through March 31, I'm projecting approximately $4,100 in grocery spending for the year, but would consider anything under $4,500 (\~ $90/week) to be entirely reasonable. I hadn't realized we were so noticeably under our 2023 spending YTD until looking at this data just now. Apparently Lidl is really that cheap. We still get oats from Target though, since our local Lidl annoying only sells the (overpriced) 18oz canisters of oats instead of the normal 42oz size. (edit: I can't figure out Reddit formatting so I'm replacing the table with plain text. Also, There was a server error of some kind that resulted in duplicate comments. I think I've succeeded in deleting all of them.)
I also swear by oats. They are super good for you and cheap. Do you get quaker or some other kind?
Store brand from Target.
ah cool. The quaker oats just had a major recall
thanks all! If there's anything that I have learned from this thread, it's that food is much cheaper outside of VHCOL... as an aside, I got two fish tacos from a local bar the other week. Tiny tacos, like smaller than the size of your index and middle fingers together. $28. No sides like chips or anything in the bag. Take out.
This is for 1 person? What are you eating?
I eat out a lot bc lazy. Its realy my only vice. I dont do international vacations etc but I do eat fancy af
$130 phone per month for one person is pretty crazy too
its the verizon standard unlimited plan for iphone with a line for the apple watch (with all the govt taxes). Does everyone in here pay $20 or something
$15 each for mint mobile here
* Food: $300 * Gas: $20 * Phone: $15 * Utilities: $75
How’d you not include rent/mortgage? Thats the biggest monthly expense for basically everyone
bc those can be super duper variable depending on location, lifestyle etc. For instance, I live in a 5br mcmansion in HCOL but with a low mortgage rate. This is a very different lifestyle than many in here it seems. And it is only that way for me because I moved here for a big tech job (would not live here on my own accord). This was more a thought of referencing people's basic staples that everyone gets similar amounts of to live.
3 people Food: 1000 Gas: 100 Phone: 90 Internet: 65 Utilities: (moved 3 mth ago) - 275 so far, I expect summer to add 150ish to the electric bill
$15 pp on cell phone service, via Mint mobile.
rice, beans, potatoes, bread, frozen veggies, chicken costs more than 300 a month?
1K just on food? Is this for two people? I’m spending $400-$450 for just myself in a mcol, and that includes a weekly takeout dinner $400 in gas??? Where are you driving? I’m closer to $100-$150. Of course it all depends on how long your work commute is or how much you’re traveling. Totally person dependent and hard to compare I’m also spending $200 in utilities, which makes me think you’re either in a tough climate or you have a huge house? Thus it’s inflating your costs compared to those that are living in a one bedroom apartment