Average monthly grocery bill? (Page 3)

My family of four is spending over $200 per week on groceries.  With respect to the original poster - I remember being shocked at the price of some grocery items when I moved temporarily to Vancouver.  Could Calgary have similar inflated grocery costs?  If so, then $950 a month would be possible if purchasing a lot of prepared foods.

D 

I also keep track of every penny I spend.  My groceries and "going out" food add up to maybe $400 to $500 per month.  I would say about $300 of that is food and the occasional lunch out while the other $100-$200 is dinners out (including  beer).  Oddly enough, I budget dinners out under "entertainment/going out" vs. under "food".  And I budget sports nutrition under "Tri Gear".  My "Tri Gear" budget for a month is scary since it includes coach, sports nutrition, massage/acupuncture, and any gear/race/travel fees.  But I digress.

So, about $300-$350 for groceries.  I make my lunch 95% of the time (gotta love having NO places to eat out around your work...that helps).  I do eat a lot of whole foods and can be picky about buying organic.  BUT...I'm in the military and can shop at the commissary.  And the commissary is getting better about stocking organic stuff.  Their produce is hit or miss though.  Sometimes it's GREAT.  Other times it's scary.  So I usually go to the local Safeway for produce and "I just need one thing's".

I made an observation from alot of the above posters that the bill for a couple isn't much bigger than the bill for a single person.  I know that I end up having a lot of food go bad on me.  No matter how much I think I'm getting just enough...you can't buy "half a package" of some things and stuff just goes bad.  Well, that and my job likes to send me out of town on a moment's notice--that doesn't help.   Does anyone else agree that single people end up wasting quite a bit of food?

I have to agree with several posters that nearly $1k for two people seems WAY excessive.  I have expensive taste and I can't even come close to that figure.

For someone not living in the States or Canada this is really interesting to read!

Here in Iceland everything is about 3 times as expensive as in the States (e.g. one BIC MAC at MCDonalds costs 10$) and me and my husband we spent around 800-1000$ in groceries (plus other neccesities) a month.

But we hardly ever eat out (too expensive) and only get take-out food maybe 1-2 a month. We always take our own lunch (or for me dinner) to work.

We usually eat meat every day but chicken only 1-2 a week as it is freaking expensive (1 pound is about 12-15$ if its on sale).

Sure good to see that even in the States some spend close to the amount what we spend

ON RANT: Did I just read that " I GIVE my wife $200/week for food and she needs more"?   I might just break my foot off if I had to ASK my hubby for money to buy food for OUR family. (OFF RANT)

 As for us, we spend $800 on a family of 4 and that includes diapers for 1.  We go to Wild Oats frequently and buy mostly organic for the kids.  The farmer's market might add another $60/month. We are also vegetarian, which you would think would be cheaper, but turns out to be more expensive because of all the fresh produce, weird fake soy products, and gourmet ingredients required to make the recipes taste good.

I'm a sinlge mom with 2 little ones (2, 4). My budget only allows for $400, including non-food items and IT IS HARD!!!! I feel like I'm always hungry because it's not enough to feed my training appetite AND the kids   I used to not be very conscious of my budget and would estimate and say "oh I spend about this much on this...", but quickly learned I was always WAAAAY off when it came down to it. So I wonder if some of the posters would be surprised if they actually tracked thier receipts to see if they were right? Some of these really low numbers are hard to imagine, and I'm a very conscious shopper! I only say this because I personally was shocked once I sat down and wrote everything down and tracked it with Quicken - I believe it's all the little things and unplanned trips to the store that add up and bite'cha in the bee-hind.

Ofcourse, maybe it would be easier if my youngest didn't eat as much as A FREAKIN' ADULT!! She's 2 and only ways 20 pounds but will eat a large bowl of cereal, some fruit and half a bagel for breakfast. And then be hungry again in 2 hours..... Where in the hell she puts it all, I have no idea 

When I said I "give" it to her I meant I hand it to her... literally...

I'm the bill-payer in the family and we ration out specific amounts for everything and I'm literally the one that stops at the ATM on Thursday afternoon, gets the $$$ and hands it to her...

I guess the way I wrote it sounded a little chauvinistic...

Well, at least we're not the ONLY ones. I made him re-check like eleventy-seven times, even though its all calculated in Quicken for us. I still can't believe we're that far above normal! The cost of living here is comparable to other places I have lived (Baltimore and Florida) and its not like our fridge/pantry is overflowing...oh well, thanks for all the posts! Its very interesting to compare...