Determining how much to spend on groceries and creating a budget is a challenge for many households. But thanks to inflation, grocery budgeting has been especially difficult in the last year.
According to the Consumer Price Index, the average cost of eating food at home has risen 11.4% in 2022 versus 2021.
For instance, breakfast cereal is 15.6% more expensive than it was a year ago.
That ham sandwich you’re having for lunch is more expensive, too. The ham costs 3.4% more than it did a year ago. The bread, if it’s white bread, is only 0.4% higher than it was last year, or 2% if it’s wheat. But it’s not all bad. If you’re having some potato chips with the sandwich, you’re actually paying 1.1% less for snacks than you did a year ago.
Having chicken for dinner? Poultry is 11.2% more expensive than a year ago.
Inflation and food is bad — but compared to about a year ago, prices are generally somewhat coming down.
But not eggs. As you already know if you buy eggs, the price of eggs has risen significantly. In the last year, the price of eggs has gone up 70.1%. (Wholesale egg prices have started falling since December, but consumers haven’t really seen that yet.)
And for some families, paying for groceries is going to get harder. During the pandemic, families who were members of SNAP, or Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, were getting extra money for food. But that just went away for 35 states; the other 18 states lost those extra benefits some time ago). According to a study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the average household just lost $95 a month for groceries.
Leigh Zydonik, executive director of the Foothills Food Bank in Arizona, says she is concerned what the fallout might be.
“We feel this will create an additional burden on those facing food insecurity or living on a fixed income,” Zydonik says. “Over the past year, we’ve seen a 48 percent increase in visits to our community pantries. With the recent reductions in SNAP benefits, we are now seeing clients who have not utilized our services for the past few years, returning. It’s getting tough.”
While inflation is a major reason grocery bills are higher, George Gansner, senior managing director of consulting, training and technical services in NSF’s Global Food Division, also cites the supply chain issues of the last year.
“The world’s reaction to the pandemic has caused increases in costs at every point of the supply chain, from farm to fork,” Gansner says. “Not everyone is aware that these increases across the board ultimately result in higher costs in the grocery store or at the restaurant.”
You may want to brace yourself and continue preparing for higher grocery bills.
After all, a host of other factors have been blamed for the spike in food prices and complicated government and businesses attempting to bring them down. For instance, some reasons that food prices have shot up in the last year:
— The avian flu has driven up the price of eggs (fewer chickens to lay them).
— Droughts, likely due to climate change, have affected crops, causing shortages in products like rice, coffee and olive oil (fewer products, with unceasing demand, mean higher prices). The prices for olive oil and other oils in the last year have shot up 20.9%.
— The war in Ukraine hasn’t helped either, contributing to the price of wheat going up. Energy prices have skyrocketed as well. If it costs more to transport food, that’s going to affect the price a shopper pays at the register.
Amid rising food prices, consumers should keep these budgeting benchmarks in mind to guide their grocery spending, establish a grocery budget and rein in spending.
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How Much to Budget for Groceries
Coming up with saving strategies to keep your grocery bill lower is a necessity, but how much of your budget should you spend in the first place?
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s most recent figures, in 2021, Americans spent 10.3% of their disposable personal income on food. With inflation as it has been, one can only wonder what that number will look like for 2022, when those numbers come out.
For specific guidelines on how much you should aim to spend on groceries, the USDA publishes a food budget each month that offers an estimate for monthly and weekly spending, split up into a “thrifty plan,” a “low-cost plan,” a “moderate-cost plan” and a “liberal plan.”
How does that work out? Here’s a breakdown looking at how the USDA recommends a family of four (with two kids between the ages of 6-8 and 9-11 and with parents between the ages of 19 and 50) have their monthly budget for groceries.
— Thrifty plan. For a thrifty budget for a family of four, you would spend $225.60 a week or $977.70 a month. The Thrifty Food Plan, incidentally, is used to decide the benefit amounts for the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP.
— Low-cost plan. For a low-cost budget for a family of four, you can plan on spending $241.70 a week or about $1,047.10 a month.
— Moderate-cost plan. For a moderate budget for a family of four, you would spend $301.20 a week for groceries or $1,304.70 a month.
— Liberal budget. For a liberal budget for a family of four, you can plan on paying $363.70 a week or $1,910.60 a month.
There are other factors to consider when deciding how much to budget for groceries.
— Teenagers really do eat a lot. As your kids get older, the USDA recommends that your food budget grow. For instance, a moderate budget for a teenage boy between ages 14 and 18 would be $87.30 in groceries a week (or $69.50 a week if you have what the USDA calls a low-cost budget and $100.60 a week for a liberal budget). For comparison’s sake, a child who is 9 to 11 years old, according to the USDA’s moderate budget, would eat $76.10 in food every week.
— Teenage boys eat a whole lot. Not surprisingly, the USDA’s food budget allocates more of the grocery budget for teenage boys than it does for teenage girls, children or the adults in the household. For instance, it suggests if you have a moderate budget, you should plan to spend $69.80 a week on groceries for a teenage girl (approximately $17.50 less a week than for a teenage boy).
— Men in general cost more to feed than women. At least, that’s how the USDA sees it. An adult male from 19 to 50 years of age would account for $86.20 a week on a moderate food budget, and a 19- to 50-year-old woman would be allocated $72.80 a week.
How to Stay Within Your Grocery Budget
Coming up with a target amount to spend on food isn’t the hard part — it’s staying within a budget that’s tricky. Eileen Roth, an organizing expert in Scottsdale, Arizona, and author of “Organizing for Dummies,” has some ideas.
Create shopping lists. This is a common practice, but Roth suggests making your shopping lists better. For instance, if you’re scanning the contents of your refrigerator and pantry before you go to the grocery store, add items on your shopping list when they are two-thirds gone.
So if you aim to keep mayonnaise in stock, for example, get into the habit of buying a new jar when the current one is two-thirds empty, Roth recommends. This way, you’ll always have a refill ready and you’ll have more time to look for deals.
Create a meal routine. Routines make grocery shopping more predictable for your wallet, according to Roth. “Another way to watch your budget is to plan your meals,” Roth says. “Every Wednesday is spaghetti night. Every Friday is fish night. Every Sunday is chicken. Every Monday is steak night, etc.”
Create a shopping routine. Patterns also open the door to savings. “If you shop on the same day each week, at the same grocery store, you will know what they carry and where it is — saving you time as well as money,” Roth says.
Be careful with coupons. Coupon apps and strategies can be useful, but be aware of your spending mindset. “Don’t just use them because you have a coupon,” Roth says. She also advises consumers not to get sucked into the idea that you should buy two items because you have a coupon, especially if it is a product or brand you’ve never tried before.
“It doesn’t help to have bought three to four boxes of something you don’t like. Now you waste money instead of saving money,” Roth says.
Shop on sales days. Learn when your grocery store starts a new sales cycle. “Many stores have ads that come out on Wednesday, but grocery stores do differ,” Roth says. “Watch your newspaper ads and see if you notice a trend for sales too.”
She adds that a good time to save money is following a holiday. “Once a big sale is over — like a holiday sale — stores will discount the excess,” Roth says. “Valentine’s candy, the day after Valentine’s Day, and turkeys the day after Thanksgiving Day.”
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How to Budget for Restaurants and Dining Out
The amount you spend eating out is a judgment call, of course, but if it helps, according to the USDA, in 2021, the most recent numbers it has, 33.6 cents of each dollar spent on food went to restaurants and other eating out places. That doesn’t necessarily mean you should spend 33.6% of your food budget eating out, of course, but maybe it’ll be a helpful guideline to help keep you on track in your spending.
In any case, if you’re looking to pare back your food costs, you may want to tally up your restaurant spending, including takeout food, over the past month. Knowing what you’ve been spending on food from restaurants should help you determine whether you think you need to cut back.
There are other strategies to consider. For instance, if you’re loyal to certain eateries, download restaurant apps to join loyalty programs and get discounts for dining at particular places. You could also pick up food rather than have it delivered. Even with gas as high as it is, you’ll likely save money.
Tips to Spend Less on Groceries
Strategies to cut your grocery bill include:
Order online instead of shopping in the store. Jessica Randhawa, owner, recipe creator and head chef at The Forked Spoon, a website featuring family-friendly recipes, opts for Whole Foods grocery delivery with the Amazon app.
It’s far more convenient than shopping in the store, according to Randhawa. “Instead of managing a grocery list, I can simply add items to my cart when planning recipes, or simply add items to my cart if I notice I am about to run out of an ingredient,” she says. “The reduction in time spent driving, waiting (in line) and wandering aisles, coupled with the lack of impulse buying, has been a huge saver of my time and money.”
You can also take your time with online shopping and look for affordable foods.
Use coupons. This tried-and-true method endures. “I know I sound old saying that, but it’s true. Coupons can really help,” says Audrey Del Prete, a fitness instructor and health and wellness coach in Los Angeles.
Del Prete advises looking in the mail for coupon deals and online for digital coupons. “If you use the store’s app, it can save you a decent amount of money as long as you use them for things you are already buying. Don’t buy something you don’t really need just because you have a coupon for it. That will end up costing you more money in the end,” she says.
Make a list. Avoid shopping without a plan. “Whether you use paper and pen or make a list on your phone, the No. 1 thing you can do prior to grocery shopping is to make a list with only your immediate needs and stick to it,” Del Prete says. “Don’t buy anything not on the list because you don’t need it. I use the app ‘Any.do’ for all of my lists.”
Use rewards programs. This is another classic strategy. “If you shop at a major retailer, the store most likely has a customer rewards program that gives you automatic discounts on most items. Definitely sign up for it,” Del Prete advises. “You will save a lot each time you shop.”
Buy store brands. Sometimes called generic products, these brands are only sold by the store where you’re shopping. Generally, they’re cheaper than name brands and usually just as good, Gansner says.
“Most stores have systems and programs in place to help ensure their products are just as good as the major brands,” he says.
Shop more often, not less often. That sounds counterintuitive. If you shop more often, won’t you spend more? Maybe, but Gansner recommends more frequent trips to the supermarket and says you’ll probably spend less than if you do one mega-visit every week or two.
The idea: You’ll buy what you know you will consume in the next few days rather than purchase a lot of items you think you will be using in the next week or two. “This can help to avoid food waste, which is a common problem for many,” Gansner says.
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Tips for Help if You Can’t Afford to Buy Groceries
As noted earlier, extra pandemic-era SNAP benefits have ended at a time when grocery prices are high, and some families may be feeling particularly cash crunched.
While families across the country knew that these extra benefits were ending, Zydonik — the executive director of the aforementioned food bank — says that knowing what was coming didn’t really help people.
“Even with prior notification, the reality of decreased benefits and increased food prices is hard to prepare for, especially for those living in a crisis mode,” she says.
Margaret Lombe is an associate professor at the Boston University School of Social Work’s Center for Innovation in Social Work and Health. Lombe says that “food security in the U.S. was relatively high at the outset of the pandemic; it was just beginning to return to post recession rates.”
Lombe says that the data that she has seen suggests that “food insecurity has increased considerably among the working poor, families with children, older adults, rural communities and communities of color.”
If you are struggling to put food on the table, because you can’t afford to fill the pantry, Zydonik says that along with food banks, you probably have a lot of community resources available to help that you may not be aware of.
“Many of these resources can be found with apps like FindHelp.org, 211, and others. Organizations such as the Salvation Army, Saint Vincent de Paul, community centers, YMCA’s and houses of worship often have programs designed to help empower people as they get back on their feet,” Zydonik says.
Lombe suggests some of the same avenues that Zydonik does and adds Meals on Wheels being an option for senior citizens, local churches and USDA’s Hunger Hotline (1-866-3-HUNGRY) for information on community-based emergency food providers and other resources.
Lombe is worried for households that have trouble getting food into their homes. “The road ahead appears uncertain for many Americans. It is highly unlikely that we will see a break in the rising food costs in the near future,” Lombe says.
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How Much Should I Spend on Groceries? originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 03/22/23: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
