How Much For Groceries?

I must confess I have been doing much more blog reading than blog writing! One of the many blogs I have been sporadically following made the following comment on budgeting for groceries:

"If you are on a particularly tight budget, it is realistic to spend $100-$150 per family member for the month."

The author also noted that this includes toiletries, diapers, etc. as needed. So, for our family of 6, not counting the 3-4 times a week we are feeding an extra 2 people, we should be spending... $600-$900?? I realize that this is highly subjective depending on what area you live, cost of food, etc., but this blog post was from July 2008! Here we are in 2011, and when I spend $600 a month for groceries, we are definitely over budget! Is my budget unreasonable? I do cook at least a few meals a week from scratch, and I don't buy pre-made meals. My "fast-food" dinners are things like hotdogs or spaghetti. I also have 3 kids in diapers (one almost done toilet training) and one still on formula.

Let me ask you, how much do you spend on groceries per month? How many people are in your family? Are there special reasons why you would spend significantly more or less? Why do you spend the amount you do?

Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave a name at the bottom of your comment if using the no-login option - I like to know who I'm addressing! Thanks. :)

Popular posts from this blog

The Fruit Of My Labour

I love, absolutely love, getting ripe fruit and veggies off the clearance rack (49c to 99c) at our local No Frills for next to nothing. I also love their doorcrasher sales - like a fantastic basket of peaches I picked up this week for a couple of dollars. Of course, peaches don't keep very well once they're ripe, so I had to find something to do with them. We've been eating them like crazy, and I have had a good chuckle at my husband peeling the fuzzy skin off his peaches before eating them. It reminds me of my little brother, who used to say "it gives me shiver-ies!" Last night I saw that some of them were starting to rot, so today I set to making peach chutney. I read online that if you dip a peach in boiling water for 30 seconds, the skin slips off easily. So, I blanched, skinned, sliced and chopped peaches this morning, sprinkling them with lemon juice and salt. Then I boiled vinegar and brown sugar with finely chopped onion, cumin, coriander, and a pinch mo
Read more

"I Believe I Can Fly"

Do you ever feel like you're trapped in a hopelessly ordinary life? The tedium of your day to day responsibilities weighs you down like a millstone around your neck when you think of the dreams and passions you had in your youth. Maybe you dreamed of being a social activist, a political leader, a missionary, or a well-known writer, and now you're just an average Joe with an average job and a family to take care of. With all the routine busyness of everyday life, you've stopped pursuing or even thinking much about your grand dreams. Maybe you do still cherish some secret passions, but have stopped believing that you will ever achieve anything. You doodle endlessly in the margins of your notebook at staff meetings, but don't take the idea of drawing for a living seriously. You send money to World Vision, but never go yourself to see, hear, touch the people in desperate need. You write songs that you might share with a few friends, but don't take the leap of pursuing a
Read more

Learning In Every Form

Today I am in Belleville taking a course on therapeutic relationships and the effects of complex trauma. I find that no matter how much study, research, and real-life experience one is exposed to, there is always something more you can learn or improve upon. Sometimes when I am in the position of being taught by someone recognized as an authority, I find myself interposing my own values and philosophies and questioning a lot of what I am being taught. Do you? Is this a bad thing? I have heard quite a lot of people say that it is wrong or disrespectful to question authority, but I think I disagree. We should take hold of what anyone tells us (in person, in writing, or through whatever medium) and turn it over, examine it closely, critique it, take it apart and assimilate what is true and useful, then discard or store away the rest. In doing so, we take ownership of what we know and believe, and can better appropriate / apply it to our own circumstances. In this case I am learning a
Read more