How much do you think about your grocery budget? We think about ours a fair amount, since we hardly eat out anymore. But even for people who cook at home, what you buy and how much you spend varies wildly, as seen by this really interesting experiment conducted over at The Simple Dollar.
They had several diverse households spend $100, and broke down how each of them spent that money on food. What’s really cool is that they didn’t just focus on “who ate out, who prepared foods”, they also drilled into who bought produce, who bought packaged goods, etc. It’s pretty eye opening to see how many different ways people can use $100 to feed themselves, and how differently each person approaches what is a staple to them (though I’m jealous of the college student who could eat that many pizza rolls and not weigh 500lbs!)
This made me curious about our own budget, and thanks to the magic of the Wegman’s Supermarkets app I could actually get a pretty good handle on how our groceries break down. We spend approximately $100/week to feed two adults and one toddler (and the dog manages to augment his kibble with scraps and begging, so we’ll throw him in the mix too). On average, we spend about $25 on foods that are not perishable or are shelf stable/processed; oatmeal, pasta, rice, condiments, crackers, pretzels, animal crackers, etc. The other $75 goes towards fresh/perishable foods; fruit, vegetables, meats, cheese, eggs, and milk. We also have an advantage in that my wife is home with our son, so it’s easier for us to take the time to prep meals. When we were both working, we definitely relied a lot more on the occasional premade Costco pizza, and I’m pretty sure the local Chinese restaurant knew our orders by heart. I’m also fairly certain even with one less mouth to feed we spent at least, if not more than, $100 per week when you added in all the eating out we did!
Check out the full article at Simple Dollar to see how their various test households did with their $100 budget, and then let us know in the comments what $100 is to your groceries!
