Food Budgets and Living within them
Episode 12 Season 2: I took notes so you didn’t have to…. So grab your apron and let's get into it!
Recently I was chatting with someone and they were saying how they would really love to cook more but it was too expensive. And that got me thinking, “What is the average weekly grocery budget for a single individual in the States?” Well that question of course led to more questions and some dead ends but some interesting information. So here’s what I found out….
I had to start with, ‘What’s the average income for a single individual in the US’ the answer I could best find is about $42k - $63k, so for easy math let’s say it’s about $50,000 before taxes and I also do realize that this income in a lot of households feeds a lot more than one person but for this purpose we are looking at from the single individual lens.
Alright so after taxes what are we looking at…about $42,000 give or take. Now in the US “we” spend about 35% of our income on housing, about 15% on transportation, 10% on healthcare, 10% on food/groceries and 30% on EVERYTHING ELSE. And these numbers can be very skewed depending where in the US you live. Like for example if you live in a Major City you could spend closer to 50%+ of your income on housing. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for savings, education, vacations, splurges and everything else in our lives.
So for this purpose what does that $42,000.00 leave us for a grocery budget? About $4,200 per year which is about $80.76 per week. And again that may need to feed a lot more than just one person in many households in the US which I acknowledge. So can you live off of $80.76 per week for all of your food needs? This also means take out or possibly going out.
What I came up with is 6 recipes for dinner and lunches the next day, one day for take out and breakfast every morning for about $81. I also assumed that the person making these recipes would have olive oil (or some kind of cooking oil), salt and pepper in their pantry. It wasn’t easy to create healthy meals with fresh vegetables and fruits. It also doesn’t leave a lot of room for snacks and fun little splurges like even a bottle of wine.
I did my best to pick recipes that had fresh ingredients and that could piggy back on one another with a few of the ingredients too. The majority of the recipes are all Skinnytaste.com recipes with a few exceptions and all that I have personally cooked. So I can vouch for them being delish! For breakfast I budgeted milk (any type) for coffee, coffee, loaf of whole grain bread, almond butter and bananas.
Beth Fuller is a Boston based Food, Product and Lifestyle Photographer. One of the best ways to support the podcast and Beth is to write a review wherever you listen, like the podcast on your favorite platform and please keep Beth in mind for any photography projects as a gal has got to pay her bills!
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xoxo
Beth
