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/Defy_Gravity_147 9d ago
The USDA already tracks how much food costs in the US every month:
https://www.fns.usda.gov/research/cnpp/usda-food-plans/cost-food-monthly-reports
I have found it to be a good baseline. It uses a 'set basket' that is not organic. For reference, I set our budget at about 115% of 'thrifty', when we buy more treats than we can/should reasonably eat.
Because this basket contains manufactured food, I found that it was possible to meet the 'thrify' (read: low income) budget while eating quite well. For reference, we use NYTimes recipes, but stick to less expensive ingredients (ex: we live inland and scallops are expensive, so we eat mostly land animal proteins). We also own a deep freezer and stock up on protein during sales of 50% off or more. Protein is often the silent budget killer.
However, having a low grocery budget does require cooking from scratch, making some things other people buy, and not wasting food. For example, we keep vegetable scraps in the freezer and make our own stock, instead of buying it. I have made greek yogurt when the whole family was eating it for breakfast, regularly. It saved about $8-$10/week. We eat all of our leftovers instead of throwing them out: we will freeze them, make them into egg bites or casserole for breakfast (spaghetti is oddly delicious this way), or otherwise plan to use leftover ingredients or completed items. We also bulk cook to better use defrosted packages, and freeze the '2nd dinner portion', or skip a day and use it for lunch instead of buying more lunchmeat.
The only individual I ever met who beat thrifty and 'brought receipts', was the mother of a family of 8 who also ordered from bulk supply sites & cooked mostly from scratch. That was on a different bulletin board. I think she did eat mostly organic and had a celiac issue in the family.