Determining how much to spend on groceries and creating a budget has always been a challenge for many households. In recent years, inflation made it more complicated. Grocery shopping is still not an activity that most shoppers would call cheap, but things have improved. Still, grocery budgeting remains an ever-complicated math puzzle.
[Read: How to Make a Budget — and Stick to It.]
According to the Consumer Price Index, the average cost of eating food at home rose 11.4% in 2022 versus 2021. In 2023, prices have been more wallet-friendly. According to the most recent Consumer Price Index report, the index climbed 3.7% from September 2022 to September 2023.
So how much should you be spending on groceries these days? Well, as you might expect, when it comes to buying food at the supermarket, there aren’t any hard and fast rules, especially if you’re staring down some delicious looking processed snack that you know you shouldn’t eat but it’s been a rough week.
Still, there are some budgeting benchmarks that consumers may want to keep in mind to help guide their grocery spending, establish a grocery budget and rein in spending.
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 2022, U.S. consumers spent an average of 11.3% of their disposable personal income on food. That was 1% higher than what Americans spent in 2021; it’s a similar amount to what households were spending during the 1980s, according to the USDA.
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 and 8 years old and 9 and 11 years old and with parents between the ages of 19 and 50) set their monthly budget for groceries.
— Thrifty plan. For a thrifty budget for a family of four, you would spend $225.10 a week or $975.20 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 $243.80 a week or about $1,055.80 a month.
— Moderate-cost plan. For amoderate budget for a family of four, you would spend $302.80 a week for groceries or $1,311.50 a month.
— Liberal budget. For a liberal budget for a family of four, you can plan on paying $365.20 a week or $1,582.90 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 $87.90 in groceries a week (or $70.20 a week if you have what the USDA calls a low-cost budget and $102 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 $76.30 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 $70 a week on groceries for a teenage girl between the ages of 14 and 18 (approximately $17.90 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 $86.80 a week on a moderate food budget, and a 19- to 50-year-old woman would be allocated $73.20 a week.
Tips for Help if You Can’t Afford to Buy Groceries
If you are struggling to put food on the table, because you can’t afford to fill the pantry, you probably have a lot of community resources available to help that you may not be aware of, says Leigh Zydonik, executive director of the Foothills Food Bank in Arizona.
There’s the well-known Meals on Wheels, an option for senior citizens, and USDA’s Hunger Hotline (1-866-3-HUNGRY) for information on community-based emergency food providers and other resources. Local food banks and churches may be able to help.
“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.
How to Stay Within Your Grocery Budget
Of course, deciding how much you want to spend on food isn’t the hard part — it’s staying within your budget that’s tricky. But here are some ideas:
Plan your meals. It sounds obvious, but plenty of people kind of figure out what they’ll be eating that week while they shop. If you really think about it before you go, or shop online at home, you’ll probably save money.
“Plan your meals around what’s already in your fridge and pantry to avoid buying extra ingredients you don’t need and utilizing what you have,” says Kara Myers, founder and recipe developer at the family meal website Sweetly Splendid.
For instance: “Is there a rogue can of beans that’s been in your pantry for a while? Make chili that week,” Myers says.
Create shopping lists. This is a common practice, but you could probably improve how you write up your shopping list, says Eileen Roth, an organizing expert in Scottsdale, Arizona, and author of “Organizing for Dummies.”
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.”
Utilize leftovers. If you plan right, you’ll not only have leftovers, you’ll have a use for them.
“Even if you aren’t someone who typically likes leftovers, there’s always the opportunity to make them into a completely new meal and avoid buying groceries for another dinner. You can take things like leftover pot roast and potatoes and turn it into shepherd’s pie or take leftover baked chicken and turn it into a chicken noodle casserole or stuffed shells,” Myers says.
Careful about going bulk shopping. Yes, you can save a small fortune at bulk warehouse stores. You also can waste plenty of revenue shopping at one, if you aren’t careful.
“Buy in the right quantities,” Myers says. “Instead of buying bulk sized items of food you’ll never use, buy the container that’s closer to the quantity that will actually get consumed in your house. It may feel like you’re saving money by buying something in bulk because it’s cheaper per ounce, but if you end up throwing out half, you haven’t saved the money.”
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 of buying 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.”
[READ: The Best Time to Buy Everything.]
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,” she says.
You can also take your time with online shopping and look for affordable foods.
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,” says Audrey Del Prete, a fitness instructor and health and wellness coach in Los Angeles. “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, says George Gansner, head of global accounts at NSF International, a product testing, inspection and certification organization.
“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.
Tips for Looking for Bargains at the Grocery Store
If you feel like your supermarket shopping habits are in check, you might want to ask yourself how your skills are in actually looking for grocery bargains. Adam Schwartz is the CEO of the coupon website, CouponSurfer.com. He says he has been bargain hunting at the grocery store for over 20 years, and here are his tips:
Shop where it’s crowded. If there are several supermarkets in your area, that’s great, and you’re far more likely to find deals than if you’re at a supermarket in the middle of nowhere.
“Stores will frequently vary their prices by location depending on how much competition there is,” Schwartz says. “If you are doing a large shopping order, it may be worth it to go a little further to get the lower prices.”
Use price matching apps and websites. You can see which store has the lowest price for the items you want, Schwartz says.
“This can be a dedicated price matching app or even something like Instacart,” Schwartz says.
Flipp and Price Cruncher are a couple other big names.
“Use a shopping list to easily compare the prices at different stores to ensure your getting the lowest price and help you limit the number of high-priced impulse purchases. I’ve found that some items at my local Whole Foods are less than they are at the local Stop and Shop,” Schwartz says.
Review circulars. You know, those printed pages with coupons and sale prices on food that supermarkets print out. You’ll find them at the front of your store, in the Sunday newspaper (yes, they still exist) and on your supermarket’s website. Schwartz suggests reviewing circulars, and “then be sure to shop the first few days of the sale to ensure your product is in stock. If the product is out of stock, ask for a rain check so you can still get the item at the sale price when it is back in stock.”
Check out surplus food apps. Flashfood is a big one. Too Good To Go is another. These apps, Schwartz says, list surplus food items by store that are approaching their best before or sell-by dates. “You can save up to 50%,” he says.
Ask someone at the store about the “manager’s special.” Schwartz says that if packaged meat is close to the sell-by date, and you inquire if the store would discount the meat, you may actually get an instant slashing of the price.
“You can usually save 30% to 40%. If you’re unable to cook the meat that day, you can freeze it and use it at a later date,” Schwartz says.
Look for coupons. Schwartz is naturally a fan of coupons, given his profession. He believes they are one of the best ways to reduce a grocery bill, provided you were going to buy that food item anyway.
“Look for both manufacturer coupons and load to loyalty card coupons, sometimes called digital coupons, specific to a store,” Schwartz says. “Many times, they can both be used, (a practice) called stacking.”
How to Budget for Restaurants and Dining Out
Of course, we’re not always at the grocery store; we’re often getting our food somewhere else.
The amount you spend eating out is a judgment call, of course, but Americans actually eat out at restaurants and carry out just as much as they prepare food at home, according to USDA numbers from 2022.
Last year, consumers spent 5.62% of their income at the supermarket, convenience stores, warehouse club stores and other retailers, and 5.64% at restaurants, fast food establishments, schools and other places that offer meals.
Typically, consumers can eat for less at home due to things like leftovers and the fact that we generally have food items that last for days. If you buy a loaf of bread, you’re probably going to use it for several meals and not just one.
So, 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. Sure, you’ll pay for gas, but you won’t have to pay for the delivery company’s gas, and you can pocket the tip you would have given.
More from U.S. News
What to Know Before You Try Grocery Pickup
Tips to Make Ends Meet During High Inflation
Wants vs. Needs In Your Budget — How to Tell the Difference
How Much Should I Spend on Groceries? originally appeared on usnews.com
Update 10/18/23: This story was published at an earlier date and has been updated with new information.
