Reduce Your Grocery Bill

Dear Dollar Stretcher,
I am just learning how to be frugal. Our grocery bill is outrageous! I am desperate to cut it in half to $400 to $500 a month or even less. We have a family of 6 (children - all boys - ages 8 mo., 2, 6, 8). I would like to know how much everyone else spends for their size family and what they do to keep their grocery bills down.
Thanks!
Debbie

Good question, Debbie! If you're spending $800 to $1,000 each month in groceries, you have definitely found an area where you can save some money. Let's look at this as two separate questions. First, what do other families spend. And then, in our next column, we'll take a look at ways to reduce that bill.

To get a handle on what families spend for food, we went to the U.S. Statistical Abstract. The information is a couple of years old, but it will give us a good idea of what's going on.

According to them, the average family of five or more people spent $6,229 on food in 1992. That included $4,397 for food at home and $1,832 for food away from home. If you've wondered why there seems to be a fast food place or restraunt on every corner that explains it. We spend nearly 30% of our food budgets away from home.

Let's look at some of the areas where we spend our grocery money. Mom always told you to have a good breakfast. On average we spend $271 on cereals and cereal products. That might seem like a lot until you figure how many boxes of 'Toasted, Frosted, Sugared Whatsit' that you can buy for $271. It adds up fast!.

Some of us like baked goods for breakfast. I'm a bagel or muffin person. The average family spends $430 on bakery products. Let's hope that most of that is for breads rather than cakes and cookies!

As you might have expected 'meats, poultry, fish and eggs' make up the largest category at $1,169. Beef weighs in with $385, pork with $256 and the others with smaller amounts.

We're also big consumers of dairy products. $537 goes to cover our daily bills each year. About half is spend for milk / cream and other half for all other dairy products.

We must be getting some balance in our meals. Fruits and vegetables account for $657 in a year for our large family. Mom would be proud.

Finally, we spend about $330 each year for non-alcoholic beverages. Just in case you were wondering, we also spend $213 on alcoholic beverages.

At this point, I'll bet that some of you are wondering if it makes a difference where in the country you live. And the answer is yes. There are some differences. The average family (of all sizes) spends $4,316 for food. If you live in the South, you'll average less. About $4,028. The Midwest is next least expensive at $4,165. The Northeast and West are most expensive at $4,524 and $4,549 respectively.

But how frugal you are makes an even bigger difference. There's a table in the Statistical Abstract for 1994 that tells a fascinating story. It displays weekly food cost for January 1993. The figures are for food purchased at a store and prepared at home.

Debbie's family wasn't represented exactly on the chart so we'll have to do some arithmetic. A family of four (including two adults and two children between 1 and 5) could spend anywhere between $73 and $137 each week for food. For Debbie's family we need to add two children between 6 and 8 years old. Their bill adds $35 to $68 each week combined. So Debbie could expect to pay anywhere between $108 ($73 plus $35) to $205 ($137 plus $68) each week for groceries. If you figure four weeks in a month (yes, we're that lazy!) it works out to $432 to $820 each month for food.

Before we leave the subject, there are probably some of you who have families of different sizes. Let's take a quick look at what their range was. For instance, a family of two spent between $50 and $97. A one or two year old adds between $13 and $23 each week. A teenager is another $22 to $44 per week.

One other interesting fact was that large families (eight or more) actually spent less than smaller families. No explanation was given, but I suppose that larger families were more frugal of necessity.

Gary Foreman is a former financial planner and purchasing manager who currently edits The Dollar Stretcher.com website and newsletters. You can also follow Gary on Twitter or on his blog.

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