

The USDA came up with a way to report the average spending American's do on food when eating at home − by breaking it up into four categories of spending: Thrifty Plan, Low-Cost Plan, Moderate-Cost Plan, and the Liberal Plan.īecause let's face it − we all set our own limits on what we think is “acceptable” to spend on our food. While this still doesn't give the number of kids in a household, it's a bit more specific (speaking of which, households without kids under 18 average spending of $143/week or $572/month). How are you supposed to know what is the average grocery bill for a family of 4 from that statistic, versus what is a what is the average cost of groceries for a family of 3?Ī Gallup poll shows that Americans with kids under 18 at home spend on average $173/week on groceries, or $692/month. But that includes single households as well as households of six. What is Considered “Average Grocery Spending”?Īccording to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall average grocery spending for all consumer units (sounds like we're robots living in containers) is $3,971/year. Below are our receipts for the month of July:.Steal My Two-Week Dinner Meal Plan (Free Printable Shopping List.

#Average household budget for a family of 4 how to#
Here's how to save money on groceries (without using coupons). Hint: we've since brought our grocery spending back under control. She shops almost exclusively at Kroger’s, and feels that each month it just keeps getting worse.īefore I get into our own story and how our grocery bills have changed over the years - from being a single gal, to buying groceries for 2 after moving in with my husband, to having a baby together - I want to show you what the average household grocery bill is (we need a reference point). Some weeks she says that it seems like they won’t make it to the end of the week before they reach the end of their food. Her grocery bill for four people (husband with kids aged 4 and 1) has ballooned to almost $800 a month, and they eat out for lunch and dinner approximately twice a week. Just the other day, a reader emailed me concerned about the amount of money her family spends on food. You introduce kids into the picture…and food bills can just balloon out of control. That's because in all of the things we did to prepare for our precious Conner to enter this world (including learning how to cloth diaper), saving up for the added expense of groceries was not one of them.Īnd we don't seem to be alone in this. “I didn't expect our grocery bill to soar so high after having just one baby.“ I could easily have named this post the egregiously long (but super-honest) title:
