November 13, 2012

Example $100 / month Grocery Budget for One

In a comment on an old post Surviving on Minimum Wage? : An Example Budget a reader Nightvid challenged me to come up with a $100 / month food budget.    A while ago I did an  Example $5 / day Grocery Budget for One  but that was $150/month.    $100 a month is a bit more of a challenge.   But its still feasible :



Here is an example weekly food shopping list that comes out to $100/month:

1.5 gallon of milk
1 box cereal
1 loaf bread
2 cheese
7 bananas
3 frozen dinner
1 12oz pasta
1 mac n cheese
1 ramen
1 hot dogs
1 hot dog buns
0.5 peanut butter
6 eggs

Total cost is = $98.56 / week

You can throw in another buck or two to buy some condiments once in a while.


This comes out to 2503 calories, 15.1% protein

The example list is heavy on pastas and pretty light on fruits, veges.  Someone could adjust to suit.   You'd want to mix things up as well as I'm sure people don't want to eat the same stuff every week.   I'm sure you can find fault with this shopping list, it isn't necessarily that healthy and I'm sure some people will object to the food choices.   The idea isn't to get the perfect menu, but just to show an example shopping budget for a relatively low cost diet.

The prices are just off Safeway retail prices.  I didn't shop around.  No coupons used.  I used generic store brands across the board.   If you shop around or use coupons or shop for sales you can undoubtedly get cheaper prices on average with some effort.

I'm not saying that you should want to limit your grocery spending to $100/month.  But if money is tight then you could do so.

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