I try to keep it under 200 USD. Single person so it’s a bit easier. Buy meat and non perishable food in bulk when I can. Things like milk get bought sooner.
Two adults, one small child: About $400 on just groceries in a high CoL area.
Eating out is expensive, maybe another $400 a month.
Can you estimate how much it’d be without eating out?
Like… $450-500? It’s a pretty big difference.
$500/mo. Single person, SE USA. I eat 2 meals per day and a snack. Cook all of it except for one treat meal per week.
I should add, that price might be a tad high, as my grocery bill includes things for the household like laundry detergent.
Less than $100 just to feed myself.
I haven’t eaten at a restaurant in years and most of my meals are cooked by me using the cheapest ingredients I can tolerate.
I aim for less than $500. In Canada, so…
It’s a lot of pork, beans, rice, frozen veggies, unsweetened Coconut not-milk. I buy some store brand junk food too I’ll admit. The sausage and cheese addiction inflates costs too. Fresh fruit usually I just get banana, kiwi, and watermelon sometimes if it’s on sale. I buy some frozen fruit but it’s much less than veggie. I don’t need the calories.
It’s insane that in Canada it takes me $400-$600 a month for 1 person to eat basic, but non-processed food. 2 meals a day, basic breakfast of eggs and a meat with maybe cheese, and a dinner of a protein and veg and maybe rice. I cook everything from scratch including bread and use everything, like bones for broth, etc. It’s getting impossible for low income Canadians to even hope to eat relatively healthy, but at least the shareholders get bonuses every year…
I help my roomie out who is on AISH he’s autistic enough to qualify but before he moved in it was a lot of bulk barn dry pasta, rice, beans and then no name brand pasta sauce cans supplemented with food bank :( I only charge him $450 for rent so he can eat better now.
Yeah it’s not good.
I would say just food maybe 800-1000 swiss francs. And then 400 for other necessities like toilet paper, trash bags etc.
Tbf that went down in the last 2-3 months since I stopped eating dinner for 5-7 days a week. No, not to save money, I am intermittent fasting so I only eat breakfast and lunch. More lunch though. So I guess most money now goes towards dinner for my partner. So we spend maybe 600-800 now.
Probably about $600 a month for 2 adults, fancy eating a couple times a month and fast food maybe 4 times a month.
2 people, about €300 spent in grocery stores monthly, with the caveat that both of us get some level of food at work.
About 400€ sometimes for special occassions i go obove it but not much. Highest is about 500€ i spend on food in a month and that was due to a BBQ party.
100€ each week is my set limit for groceries For me and my partner
i cook farts and it costs $8
185 euro a month
Includes any form of eating out and mostly organic groceries.
Usually around $300/month:
- $50/month on bagels, my favorite food that I eat way too much of
- $120/month on other food at home like salads, homemade fried rice, and chicken nuggets
- $30/month on snacks like pretzels (it’s an addiction sadly)
- $100/month on going out to eat
Currently it’s about 160€ per month. One person in Germany. Potatoes and air fryers are a godsend
Potatoes and air fryers are a godsend
I could live off french fries and chicken wings for the rest of my life and convince myself it’s healthy because I cook them without fat.
Air fryers are the heckin’ best. I don’t even notice a huge difference in how my tater tots taste.
$320USD/mo. for healthy, organic food for one person. It could be less, maybe 75% of that. I’ve been considering making changes, but I like what I like.
I’m going grocery shopping today, in a couple of hours, as it happens. I shop once per week.
It’s about the cheese - for example Boar’s Head is $12/lb (baby swiss) to $14/lb (imported Swiss or Grueyere) and that’s worth eating ramen to subsidize. :) We can’t be eating any of that basic cheese oh no no no…
I can’t believe that anyone would be buying Boar’s Head products after reading about their systemically filthy processing plants https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/09/repeat-creepy-meat-problems-at-boars-head-plants-draw-congressional-scrutiny/
BH cheeses != meats. They don’t own the cheese factories, they partner with established cheesemakers in a partner network.[1] (no comment on meats, I don’t eat them)
[1] one of them was in the news recently for a recall so it’s not all roses in the cheese world either :(
Single person and I do almost all of my own cooking. I average $500 - $600 a month.
This isn’t that far away from mine for two people: ~$600-$700 per month in a HCOL area and doing most of the cooking myself as well. I have found that sizing up a recipe for more people is only a marginal increase in cost. So, cooking for two is not just double that of cooking for one, but less.
Oh yeah. I made a YT video recently about money-saving tips, and one of the things I do is look at restaurants that have family-sized meals that they offer to-go. This works really well for pasta and rice, but I can get six meals for the cost of a few dollars each, package up five of them, and then I have five really yummy lunches for my in office days when I go in.
Jeez, are groceries really that expensive in the US? For me in germany I can get groceries for 2-3 month with this money.
They are very high yes, partly because they have climbed 25~50% in recent years. I cook most of our food for 3.5 people, shopping at the least expensive store in the area, making a wide range of things but mostly mid to lower cost ingredients. Eat out about once a week, never high priced places. Typically spend around 800/mo.
They are. Luckily I cook nearly all of my own meals, or the bills would be way, way worse.
My grocery bill is well more than double what it was before 2020. Both ruling parties here refuse to address the corporate greed in any meaningful way, so each individual has to make the best choices they can for themselves.
