We spend on average about $80-$100 a week for two adults, it,s like $120-$150 one week then $30-$50 then next week. That number also includes all the non-food stuff you get at the grocery store like alcohol (it,s not a food item, it,s a luxury item), household cleaners, plastic and paper products, personal hygiene, pet treats, etc....

If you eliminated all those things from the bill, I,d guess it to be closer to $70-$80 a week. This doesn,t factor in the occasional trip to a restaurant, or the vending machine purchase of a soda a few times a week at work.

I read somewhere that, depending on the part of the country you live in, $30 per person, per week is sufficient enough monies for a healthy and balanced diet.

I guess it would be closer to 70. Milk, bread, cereal, 3 meals a day, 7 days a week... I don''t know. Maybe I am spending too much over here. In New York stuff costs allot of money.

well milk jus shot up 65 cents agallon so that doesn't help..but my gf and i just went trhough 30$ in groceries.. however it was all very 'light' food, and a couple times during the week i did eat out. just wrap stuf, like tortillas, vegitables, crackers. if i want chicken it'll go up to 40 or 50. as i said though this is 'light' food and i went to bd hungry each of those nights. i'd say two people would get by on 60-80$.

since i occassionally don't have time to eat at home, however, i usuall spend 40-50$ extra just on eating out during a week. if i entertain, that goes up to 100.

We live paycheck to paycheck so I average about $120 for the two of us (plus dog and cat) for two weeks.

We live off of $208 a month.

call me crazy but that is closer to what I spend on going out per month...

lets just say we cook all the time. We spend about 20 bucks on going out a month.

The problem with statistics like this is that too much is assumed. It doesn't take into account the differences in modern lifestyles and situations. There are so many single-parent families now, and even in two-parent homes, work schedules often prevent the "classic" meal schedule where everyone is together at mealtimes.

Even school schedules get in the way. My girlfriend's two kids go to an early shift where they get breakfast and lunch at school, but we both work later shifts and don't get home til after 9 pm so the kids eat dinner at daycare. The only time we can actually have meals as a family is on the weekends.

I love to cook, and I make most things from scratch, so we wouldn't need to spend a lot of money on convenience foods, but we do use them so that the time we do have to spend with the kids isn't taken up by a lot of cooking time. We know the kids get balanced meals at school and daycare, so we just grab something quick for ourselves. I think that's the way for a lot of people, so the food budget gets a bit higher and nutrition takes a hit for us at times.

To answer the question, including what we spend on meals for the kids outside the home, our food budget is about $150 per week for the four of us. If we could have the standard breakfast and dinner together at home, I could probably take $30-$40 per week off of that and we'd eat better.

If this thread interests anyone you may want to check out a book called Nickel & Dimed by Barbara Ehrenheart Its a true story about a lady that quits her job and takes a minimum wage job to see if she can swurvive. She proves that you can't do it and live happily.

If this thread interests anyone you may want to check out a book called Nickel & Dimed by Barbara Ehrenheart Its a true story about a lady that quits her job and takes a minimum wage job to see if she can swurvive. She proves that you can''t do it and live happily.

And thats the truth because I live on minimum wage. I will look into geting this book. But up here in Oregon it''s getting hard to even get a minimum wage job, much less a regular job.
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