Lets say you're single and on a budget. How much is a reasonable basic budget to spend on groceries?
My example shopping budget would be based on a menu for a week. Basically I'd eat dry cereal for breakfast, make a sandwich for lunch then have something different for dinner each day. I'd drink milk or water for meals. This is very similar to what I would do back when I was single myself.
The basic menu for the week would be :
Breakfast = cereal and milk every day
Lunch = piece of fruit, 1 oz bag of chips, sandwich of lunch meat & cheese
Dinners = Monday : spaghetti & salad, Tues: TV dinner, Wed : tuna sandwich & can veggies, Thurs : soup & salad, Friday : pork chops & potato, Sat: chili, Sunday : grilled chicken, salad & can veg
This isn't necessarily the most healthy eating possible but I have some fruits and veggies as well as meats and grains. I think its fairly well balanced.
I found prices at Safeway for the items and figured rough costs per week as follows. Prices will vary from store to store and week to week. This is just a snapshot of example prices.
Here is the shopping list for weekly items :
| item | cost |
| Gallon of Milk | $2.79 |
| Loaf of bread | $1.69 |
| 7x fruit | $3.50 |
| lunch meat | $3.50 |
| cheese slices | $2.80 |
| 2x can veggies | $1.60 |
| head lettuce | $2.19 |
| can chili | $1.20 |
| can soup | $1.67 |
| TV dinner | $2.50 |
| can tuna | $0.50 |
| TOTAL = | $23.94 |
You would also need to buy some items every few weeks.
| cost | / week | weekly | |
| cereal | $2.49 | 2 | $1.25 |
| 22x 1oz chips | $7.70 | 3 | $2.57 |
| condiment | $1.88 | 7 | $0.27 |
| spaghetti noodles | $1.69 | 8 | $0.21 |
| pasta sauce | $1.89 | 6 | $0.32 |
| 3 lb pork | $6.57 | 3 | $2.19 |
| 3lb chicken | $4.47 | 3 | $1.49 |
| 5 lb potatoes | $2.59 | 10 | $0.26 |
| salad dressing | $3.99 | 3 | $1.33 |
| butter | $2.99 | 5 | $0.60 |
| $10.47 |
So between the $23.94 on weekly items and the $10.47 per week for items you buy less regularly you'd have a total weekly cost of about $34.41. That comes out to $4.92 per day. Lets round it up to $5 a day.
If you shop around for bargains you should be able to do better. If you shop around a little that would give you extra money to spend on extra stuff like some ice cream or maybe a nice steak once in a while.
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