Whenever I meet people who are getting started with budgeting or who have fallen off the budgeting wagon, the conversation on how to get back on track usually gets to groceries pretty quickly. I think that’s because groceries are an area of our budget that can vary a lot depending on our habits and desires.

You can’t do much to change your electric bill in the summer, but you can find ways to lower how much you’re spending on groceries!!

The question always comes to, “How much SHOULD I spend on groceries?” Most people have a sense that they’re spending more now than they did a year ago or even three years ago. If you feel that way, you’re not crazy. The USDA reports that food spending went up 11.4 percent from 2021 to 2022. Usually, inflation is about 2 percent from year to year, so that was a huge jump from one year to the next and all of us felt it in our wallets.

In practical terms, If you spent $1000 a month on groceries in 2021, then in 2022, you’d likely be spending more than $1100 a month. That’s an increase of almost $1,200 over the course of a year on food you need to live. (To see more, you can check out this report on food prices.)

How Much Should You Spend on Groceries?

So let’s dive in and see if we can get a satisfactory answer to the question: “How much should you spend on groceries?”

For the purposes of all the calculators and charts that are on the Internet, I’m going to use a family of 5: Mom (age 40), Dad (age 40), a teenage boy (age 15), an elementary aged kid (age 8), and a toddler (age 3). Based on these individuals, the following sites and calculators give the following projections for how much that family should expect to spend on groceries each month.

•  The USDA “thrifty” food plan: $1200/month
• Iowa State Extension Spend Smart Calculator: $1200/month
• University of Idaho Eat Smart Calculator: $920/month
• Instacart Grocery Budget Calculator:  $1250/month

If you average these four calculators, that works out to about $1100 a month (or about $275 a week) for this imaginary family of 5. Whether you like it or not, that’s likely a pretty realistic guess for how much a family of this size might plan to spend per month.We’re going to use this imaginary family and their projected spending to help you figure out how much you should spend on groceries!

First, how many people are in your family?

In the past, I remember that planning to spend $100/month per person on groceries was a good rule of thumb. That may have been true 5-10 years ago, but based on the calculators above, it seems like $200/person per month might be a better rule of thumb.

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