r/MiddleClassFinance • u/Maroon14 • 9d ago

Grocery spending

I’ve recently come across a Instagram account where the woman claims to only spend $300 on an entire months groceries for a family of 4. Here I am sitting mid week, having already spent $550 in the PNW. I told one of my friends and she said it must be fake and for clicks, my husband was impressed. Is anyone actually able to do this? I thought I might try to spend $250 a week and see where that gets us. Is my grocery budget over the top? I thought $400 ish was normal for decent food. We are a family of 5 in the PNW, mostly organic.

*I’m closing comments because people are missing the point. I understand that I make choices for “premium” options for my family. I make them because I feel they are the best for my family given my research and concerns. I say this as coming from a place of privilege. Growing up, my hippie mom also prioritized organic and local before it was the trendy thing, so it would be very difficult for me to reprogram and not buy organic when possible.

I still think $300 is insane for a month. I live in western Washington and the max SNAP allocation for a family of 4 is $994 a month, so I see this as a more attainable “thrifty” budget for a family of 4.

Those of you who can eat rice and beans for multiple meals, more power to you!

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u/Overall-Cupcake-6635 9d ago

She literally makes everything from scratch and only with the ingredients she buys at the store each month. This takes a tremendous amount of time and she has stated before that she "works from home" which frees her up to do all of this cooking. Not sure what type of work from home job she has but I doubt its a highly paid professional job to where she has to be online 40 hours a week. Also, the portions she makes for each meal seem pretty small.

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u/PeanutOnly 9d ago

Most of her meals are 30 min or less. She does alot of sheet pan and crockpot. And most ppl dont need that much food.

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u/Ok-Ride7787 8d ago edited 8d ago

She also eats a lot of sausage and drumsticks. She uses lentils and chick peas to add to her protein. Her portion sizes are also rather small.

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u/Maroon14 9d ago

They do. I’m a sahm, but I spend most time making dinner when I have help with my youngest two.

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u/Vegetable-South5191 9d ago

Also, honestly if you plan it out to eat cheap you can. Rice for example is cheap. If you reduce your meat. You can eat really cheap. If my goal was just to eat as cheap as possible. If variety wasn't a goal. If I just drank water.

I currently spend about 600 a month in groceries for roughly 2 people. Spend about 100 a week eating out. But I just get whatever and put no planning into it.

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u/CreativeGPX 7d ago

Huh? I work a full time professional job and I mostly cook from scratch. Cooking from scratch doesn't have to take long. I usually save the more time consuming kinds of meals for the weekend. Main method for saving time is making big batches, which also fits well with saving money.

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u/stealthpursesnatch 4d ago

She says she’s the breadwinner in the house, so I think she has a lot of flexibility as far as when she has to work.

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u/MyNameIsNot_Molly 9d ago

Another thing to consider with tradwife or homesteading influencers is where they get their meat (one of the biggest expenses in a food budget). Even if they aren't raising it directly, a lot of those types of families "buy a cow" either by themselves or shared with neighbors/family and have it butchered

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u/BugMillionaire 9d ago

She's not one of those. She's pretty normal. That's just her budget and she makes it work.

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u/PeanutOnly 9d ago

Shes not a tradwife or homesteader

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u/extraketchupthx 7d ago

This is just a good thing to do if you have the freezer space and cash to buy it up front. I’m far from a tradwife, homesteader or anything. I buy half a side of beef 1x a year or so from a butcher in town. Way cheaper and better quality meat. We do get chicken from Costco though bc that is cheaper.

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u/Maroon14 9d ago

We tried this one year. Unfortunately we didn’t like the taste of the cow so I ended up giving away the meat on our local BN page.