Wow. Thanks to everyone for the TJ’s suggestions.. more stuff to check out on the next grocery run! 
January isn’t over yet, but I’ve bought all the groceries I’ll buy for this month – not to mention that next weekend will be February, so I don’t expect to buy any more food until Saturday or Sunday.
With a revised food budget of $220 ($110 each for Dining Out & Groceries), I spent $218.55 ($124.17 groceries, 94.38 dining out)… barely squeaking by. I’ve increased my budget $20… my original budget of $200 felt a little tight for me.
I’m curious – so I’m posing a question to all the 20-something female bloggers (my demographic!) out there: what’s your overall food budget (groceries + dining out)? It’d be helpful if you can also list your area of residence to provide context – food would be much more expensive in NYC than in the Mid-West.
Update: I’m still on the Clothing Hiatus… even though I saw some really cute things on sale at J. Crew. One month (almost) done… 5 more to go.
You May Also Want To Read :
Food is definitely a challenge for me in terms of spending in that I love to eat. And eat well. ...
One reader, Luckygrin, asked: I’m interested in your food budget. My first thought is that $200 ...
This woman can. She astounds me. She has an $800 ANNUAL budget for herself, her three daughters ...
{ 2 trackbacks }
{ 64 comments… read them below or add one }
$260 – $160 groceries, $100 dining out. I rarely spent $160, but it gives me room in case I actually go under on dining out, and in case I need to replace expensive items any particular month (like spices). I could probably reasonably budget $240 or even less, but I like a lot of wiggle room in this area so that I can try new things. (I’m in LA.)
Not sure just yet, as I just moved…. But in the midwest i easily spent about 100 on groceries, and eating out fluctuated wildly, depending on the month.
I average $50-60 on groceries and $50 for eating out. I only need to buy vegetables, bread, fruit and other misc foods for groceries. I have plenty of dry beans and grains (barley and brown rice are plentiful in my cupboard). And I live in the wonderful but expensive foggy city of San Francisco.
Up in the wilds of Canada, I spend about $200-300/month on groceries, and probably less than $100/month on eating out. (I recently graduated and started a job, so I’ve started eating more expensive foods like meat!)
I’m a married 20-something, and my husband and I spend $30-35 per week. Some months have four weeks; others have five. We don’t go out to eat every month, but when we do, we try to keep it under $30.
We live in Pittsburgh, Pa., where the cost of living is low.
In January, I (and sometimes fiancee) spent 400 eating out, including bar tabs, and 50 on groceries.
I also spent 150 taking friends to dinner who couldn’t afford it and 100 on food for a BBQ.
If those were NYC and not Texas bar tabs, it would be more like 550 eating out.
My food budget is $400/month, I live in NYC. that’s broken out into $120 in groceries and $280 in dining out. I usually buy my lunch so that’s about $6/day, but on weekends I’m with my BF and he pays for food about 80% of the time…so it’d probably be a little bit more if I was single.
DH and I budget $150 for groceries and $150 for eating out. He has an awesome consultancy job that provides daily food allowance each day he’s traveling for work (usually 4-5 days/week). Sometimes, he even takes me out for dinner. We live in Kansas City.
For the two of us, it averages around $450-500 a month for groceries and eating out. We’re in a city in the Midwest, so cheaper but not cheap. We eat mostly vegetarian at home, sometimes pesco-veg (I never learned how to cook meat, and he doesn’t like to make it for just him) so we can splurge on some really nice cheeses and fruits and things because veggie ingredients tend do be so much cheaper. That also doesn’t include liquor or beer for at-home drinking or beer-making supplies. Those can fluctuate a lot depending on how much we’re home, how many people we have over to hang out at our place, and all that stuff.
I have a lot of lunches comped, though, for client and work events, so if I had to pay for those meals we would spend somewhat more.
$200 for groceries and dining out. I’m feeling a little crunched, but I think I need to make better choices at the grocery store.
I live in the midwest in a bigger city….
Wow, I am impressed with your budgeting. I LOVE cooking, and spend about $100/week on groceries. But then we also go out to dinner maybe once a week for around $40-50. I live in the Washington DC area. After looking at your budget, I’m thinking I need to revise mine.
I live in a relatively large city outside of Chicago with my bf and we spend roughly 160.00 a month on groceries and 50.00 on eating out. BF is a cook at a local restaurant so he mainly just eats lunch [sandwiches] on our grocery bill. I rarely buy any pre-made meals, mixes, or sauces and bake my own bread [a hobby of mine]. Note, I also purchase almost exclusively organic foods with this budget.
I’d also like to add a tip I’ve noticed shopping for higher-priced items like spices; buy them from your local health food store ‘loose’ These spices are the same quality and require less extra packaging. I recently bought organic cumin from my health food store for 1.26 when a smaller amount of non-organic at the grocery store was 4.69.
I budget $180/month for groceries and $170/month for dining out. $40/month of the dining out budget is earmarked for days I just can’t get it together to bring my lunch to work (I work in Midtown Manhattan, so there’s pretty much no way, other than street food, to eat a solid meal for less than $10). My grocery budget is pretty comfortable (sometimes I’ve got extra money), but in my efforts to eat in more often, I’ve found it helpful to have enough to buy the occasional pomegranate or pound of fresh shrimp–so that I don’t feel like I’m depriving myself too much. There are also certain setup costs to switching to cooking in from eating out–you’ll need to lay in a store of staples, herbs, and spices–so be sure to budget for that at the outset.
And as I mentioned, I’m in NYC.
Oh, and that includes alcohol–drinks with friends and wine & beer for the house.
I live right outside Los Angeles and even go to school in Los Angeles. Considering that I waitress and get free meals on the shifts I work, I have a budget of 100 for groceries and 60 for going out. Now, four meals a week are provided at work and they are hefty-sized meals. I usually have enough for leftovers the next day.
I live in Dallas and I spend an average of $120 a month on groceries and $350 a month on dining out/takeout (I just checked Mint.com and verified this fact).
My “entertainment” which includes bar tabs runs $30-$50, so that’s $500 total for eating and drinking each month–which I know is excessive. Honestly too much of that is spent on alcohol, too. About $50 of the grocery portion is spent on wine and easily a third of the dining out goes to drink orders.
If I have a rough month financially or if I decide to lose weight and cut some alcohol (which I really intend to do…as soon as the Mardi Gras parties are over this weekend) then I can easily shave $150 off this.
I budget $200/mo for groceries, but usually come slightly under. I budget $50/mo for eating out, and hover right around that average.
I could make the grocery expenditures less if I couponed and such, but I just don’t have the patience. I’ve found that shopping sales and stocking up works well enough for me.
Dining out budget is hard to estimate because it’s so variable, but I budget about $120-150 per month for groceries.
So far on groceries, I spent ~150. On dining out, I spent ~200, but it’s restaurant week (Baltimore) and I have gone out twice this week and spent 50 bucks a pop. Normally I would probably spend about 100/month on dining/going out. I’ve been saving and buying groceries instead of eating/going out so far this year.
Cute outfits make for a cheaper bar tab (ha ha).
I do $20-30 a week for groceries. In DC, this is pretty bare-bones (all generic grocery products, farmer’s market produce, and assiduously shopping the sales). So it’s $100-120 a month, pretty reliably.
Eating out: I budget $50 for some combination of nice ($20) meals, moderate ($10), and incidentals (bagel if I forgot my lunch, a piece of fruit, etc. here and there). The last two months it’s been about $100, though.
Booze is about $100/month, between bar tabs and wine/beer for around the house. This needs to come down!
I budget about $200 for groceries and $50 for dinner/drinks out each month. My fiancee pays for most of our dinners out, as he makes more money that me and I am concentrating on saving for our wedding. If I paid for all my meals out, it would probably be an additional $75 for eating out.
Wow, I feel like a wild spendthrift reading everyone’s dining out budgets.
Groceries average $130/month, and may go as high as $170 if I am entertaining or as low as $100 if I am out of town for some time.
Dining out varies wildly. I try to stay under $100, but noticed considerable uptick in this category when I had a boyfriend. Some months were over $300. He doesn’t keep food in the house, so if I stayed over I’d have to go out for breakfast and/or lunch. I tried keeping some groceries at his place, but then he’d let everything go bad, so I had to buy in tiny quantities. :-/ Also, it’s really hard to manage this category when you’ve got birthdays to celebrate and you aren’t choosing the restaurant.
Drinks are another story…that category went way down when I had a boyfriend! I wasn’t going out as often, so I saved $, albeit at a social cost.
How does everyone keep dining out & drinks under control, especially those with <$100/mo in the budget?? How do you avoid having a second drink because you feel weird buying just 1?
Margo–I keep my drinks tab low by not going out very much (once every two months?). I’m just growing too old for the lifestyle of going out all the time–29 will do that to ya. Lately, I’ve just been buying a cheap bottle of wine, a snack, and going over to a friend’s house for entertainment.
Whoa! I don’t know how you guys can eat for so cheap.
I am in the midwest and my husband and I spend $550/month on groceries and household (target) stuff. we are vegetarians and fairly frugal too but… Our most expensive items are 5# coffee every month $35; Giant container of olive oil $30/month; organic produce ~$25/week… um not sure where the rest of our money is really going. I think the organic co-op we shop at tends to be a bit more pricey.
We spend about $100-$200/month going out.
$300 groceries, $300 eating out for a couple of DINKS in Boston. Eating out is now way more expensive than Southern Cali. Less ethnic restauarants.
Last month though we spent $91 groceries and $67 eating out. Yeah the cash thing didn’t work, I just tried not to buy food or eat out. Um, no.
My husband and I have about $900 per month budgeted for groceries and dining out. It might sound ridiculous, but consider this:
- He does the shopping and isn’t willing to economize and look for sales. He also goes to Whole Foods, because it’s close. I accept this, because he’s an amazing cook and I benefit from a home-cooked meal every night.
- I’m an attorney and work fairly long hours (he’s an MBA student), so we’re willing to pay for convenience.
- We order in about 2 nights a week (about $40-45 each time, with generous tip) and have a “nice” dinner out (bottle of wine, appetizers, entrees and maybe dessert for $150 or so) about twice a month.
These expenses add up quickly, but we’re still maxing out my 401(k), paying $1300 per month in student loans, tithing 10% of post-tax income, and saving extra each month. So food slows our savings, but it doesn’t do too much harm.
I spend $25 a week at Whole Foods. That doesn’t include the occasional (maybe 4 times a year) splurge on a random item like pie or uber expensive cheese. I also spend about $20 a week on lunch at work. Dinner out is budgeted to $75 (that includes delivery), but I am usually closer to $50. So that comes to… $230-255 a month. And I live in downtown DC.
For myself and my husband we have $150 for groceries and $100 for dining out as well as another $140 for lunch money this is all per month. I take my lunch to work, but my husband “has to” eat out. We live in Northern California.
P.s. I just came across your blog and it seems very interesting. I will stop by again soon. Feel free to stop by mine as well.
My husband and I live in Washington state. He is military and so we are paid roughly $230 per month for groceries. I sometimes go over this as WA has a very high cost of living and we only eat organic. I try to buy in bulk as much as possible which saves me a lot. I think it changes a lot from summer to winter too, as we can shop at farmers markets and meat tends to be cheaper.
If we do go out to eat, we make it count and spend about $150, but neither of us drink much and we don’t go out to bars.
I know there are a lot of services that deliver veges and fruits to your door at a reasonable price as well. I am training to become a chef and cook from home about 95% of the time. I also am really picky about good quality ingredients which could also account for any overages.
I’m a vegetarian so I imagine I save money on what would be meat costs. I spend about $50/week at the grocery store, between my bf and myself.
Over the past few weeks, I have been really interested in budgeting and carefully watching where my money was going to. And what did I discover, that a huge chunk of my money went to food, mainly eating out. It isn’t that my bf and I eat out very often because I tend to cook mostly every night, it is that when we do tend to meet friends for dinner of the weekends, we tend to overspend. One night with friends can blow our entire weeks grocery budget. And like most other people on this site, it is because of alcohol. We are trying to the month of March off better and limit our spending to about $75 a week/$300 a month on food. This means, that if we spend all of our money at the store, no going out. It is a sacrifice, but hopefully one that will pay off in the long run.
I live in central Virginia.
In January, I spent $309 on food, according to my budgeting software. However, I’d say at least $50 was spent out at restaurants while traveling for work and I got reimbursed for it. Some of it was buying in bulk…but that’s a LOT of money for one person who lives in an area with a reasonable cost of living!
I live in NorCal (Oakland/East Bay) and I spend about $120 on groceries, and probably around $100-150 on eating out.
I live in Portland, OR
I’m pushing the 400.00 range with 50% of that restaurants & a shocking 70.00 bucks a month at work (hospital) for awful food. And maybe 20-30 bucks for the Mocha habit.
This month I kicked the Mocha habit (making my own great coffee); started buying healthy pre-made lunches to take to work (it’s cheaper than what I was doing); and when eating out I either have a limit of 2 drinks or desert – but not both!
I’m aiming to be consistent at 300 or less a month for all food & imbibing.
My husband and I spend between $350-$400 a month on groceries. We live in Chicago. This will have to be reigned in a bit though, since he’s not working right now! It sucks that we have to pay more for food because we choose to eat healthy vegetables, chicken, and fish and not garbage that comes in a box. It’s so much cheaper to eat crap.
For my husband, myself and our 2 boys we spend about $600 per month on groceries and about $150 total going out to eat. We live WAY up in northern california (not the bay area.) I cook from scratch for most meals (buy most of our meat and chicken in bulk at Costco then split it into meal packages for my freezer) and do not used boxed or packaged foods as a general rule. I buy organic whenever I possibly can and always buy organic milk for my boys to drink, and they drink 2-3 gallons per week. It adds up fast!
With 5 boys my hubby and I we spend $120.00 a week. In the winter making crockpot meals drops this total to 75.00 a week. Amanzing huh? Well I love to cook and we eat something different every night and then have a leftover night at the end of the week, don’t eat out a lot just once in a while.
My hubby & I spend about $170-200 every two weeks on groceries now. We took the challenge in March to not spend anything unnecessary – including no Easter cards for each other – mainly because our eating out had gotten out of control. We were spending about $400 a month eating out and less than half of that on groceries, which was crazy since we only live about 20 minutes from work – no excuses about being wiped out from the commute! We did pretty well; only ate out and paid twice in the month (we had cash from very part-time freelance work I do, so it didn’t really “count” since it wasn’t coming from either paycheck). Considering we went out an average of six times a week in the previous five months, we were pretty proud. We’ve also now gotten in the habit of not eating out so much – after just that one month – and this month hasn’t been hard at all to eat at home and take lunch to work. We both find we don’t even really crave the food itself, just the convenience of letting someone else do the cooking. It’s making a huge difference in the amount we’re able to save toward a house. We live just outside of DC, in Manassas VA.
I am a single mom, I feed myself and four kids. We spend about $400 a month on food. We do not spend any money eating out. It is just too costly. If my kids want fast food they pay for it themselves out of allowance or money earned from work. We have milk with breakfast, and lunch. We eat lots of fruit & veggies. We do eat meat, but in small portions. We buy 2 junk food items each week, that is all. We also eat lots of yogurt and cheese. We eat salad 1-2 times a day. I try to cook alot from scratch as well.
We make pizzas at home and the kids love it. We also make our own snacks, like sweet potato chips which we bake. The kids like to try new things in the kitchen.
Hmm, my b/f and I definitely need to cut back on our eating out. Last month, we spent about $525 on groceries/eating out. Granted, there was one sushi dinner in there for $60 and we don’t eat sushi as often as we used to, but there are a couple of other moderately expensive meals that we could have done without. I also tend to buy my breakfast and lunch at work and spend approx. $40-45 a week; I would consider bringing my meals to work, but given that I take public transportation and my commute is an hour and a half long (and involves a train, the subway, and walking), I worry that the food will spoil, especially on hot days. But I certainly could make the effort to learn how to cook more easier meals at home on the days when I’m not really tired by the time I get home (again, long commute). Oh, and we live in a suburb just south of Boston, and I totally agree with one of the earlier posters that Boston is expensive! It’s definitely on par with what I used to pay for meals in Los Angeles and San Diego when I lived in those areas.
my husband and I spend about $400 food and household per month and $100 dinner out (cheap places)
I am over budget….we live in CT
In Nigeria, 40 to 50 cents a day for a family of 5 and grateful for it.
I’m not an activist, just wanted to put things in perspective.
If you can, put the pop tarts back on the shelve and help a starving family. Here or abroad, we are all people.
Just make sure the money doesn’t go to corrupt governments, war lords.
never done this!!! i decided to go through our checking account to actually see how much we spend on food. my husband uses cash a lot, so it’s very possible it could be much more:
groceries/month – $150
eating out/month – $275
we live in north san diego county and shop at trader joes and local farmer’s markets. eating out we try to keep the bill at $20 by splitting and ordering water, but i think the coffee is our biggest weakness… that alone i think is $50/month.
I have a family of 3 and we try to spend about $300 a month. We rarely eat out and cooking at home is healthier and insurance for our budget. Taking meals to work leads to fewer urges to buy on the spot. We’d like to go lower but we buy a lot of organic.
Jerry
http://www.leads4insurance.com
I live in Ontario and spend about $40/week for food as I let myself splurge. I very rarely eat out and visit family every other week where they feed me. The very few times I go out (maybe twice a month) my boyfriend usually pays… I thought I splurged a lot on cheese and meat but apparently not.
I think I manage this by:
Buying whatever’s cheap at the farmer’s market
Bulk-buying all my meat at Costco
Eating in almost every meal
Planning meals out a week in advance
I think I’d spend less if there was a place to heat up lunches on campus/work but I’m restricted to cold foods.
Oh… and that doesn’t include drinks.
My parents brew their own wine and beer which is fabulous
I spend about $11 a day between groceries and dining out. It breaks down to about $200 for groceries and $130 eating out. I also travel a lot though, so hence the reason for a high eating out budget…
I only eat cheese so Its kind of expensive. I pay about 800 a month on cheese. I pay about 200 dollars on other foods like asparagus.
I usually spent about $400-$500/month on food.
I’m the type of person who walks through the grocery store and randomly grabs anything that looks tasty.
But lately, I’m a bit low on money….so I’m trying to budget myself to 240 dollars a month. I’m trying to survive with 8 dollars per day of food. It’s hard when I’m use to going out everyday and eating 15 dollars per meal.
It’s going to be hard. I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve been looking around ads and promotions. I don’t think I can come up with a $8 dollar budget plan.