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30 October 2005
MetaChat Survey, Please Enlighten How much do you spend on groceries per week? (Extra points if you live alone.)
I live alone and I spent 62 bucks at the grocery today. I didn't go the grocery last week. All told I'd estimate that I spend 45 bucks a week on groceries.
Actually, between $12 and $30 USD on average. I cook for the week, freeze meals, and make my own stocks. The highest weekly tallys would include replentishment of staple items, (foil, spices, condiments) with the occasional delicacy (rock crab claws, game meats, farm fresh cider).
Why am I the only extravagant one? Or maybe I'm just a lousy shopper. I spend between $75 and $125 a week - there are two, sometimes three of us living here and I'm including feeding two big dogs and two cats into that. Sometimes, when I have a party or my son is home, it's more than that.
I can get by on one $20-$30 trip to the Ralphs/Kroger per week for food, household and personal items (and that involves major use of double coupons* and sale stocking-up; the tape usually shows 'Amount Saved' almost as much as amount spent - I really impress the checkstand babes). But I have to add $10/every-2-weeks at Trader Joes and another $5/week/minimum stocking up on loss leaders at other stores. That's under optimium conditions, and lately, conditions have been far from optimum, so check back with me in a month or two...
*and the value of the coupon doubling is the ONLY reason I usually use Ralps/Kroger.
15 dollars a week is about average for me. I do have an extensive garden, and trade with a guy who raises organic meat animals, so could add another 10 bux a month to the total. (Canadian $)
There is a legal definition for organic meat, and the animals that are bred for that meat get feeds that meet specific standards. This meat meets meat that has met. :D
Yeah, I actually do know what it means, reflecked - it is just one of those little things that annoys the crap out of me for no good reason. I see lots of food advertised as organic and I feel like asking for some "inorganic food" because what's the point in advertising that something is organic if everything is organic? Don't even get me started on the whole "this product is totally natural, comtaining no chemicals" crap. Oh and genetically modified vs selective breeding and what the fuck is the difference?
Now look what you did, you got me up on my soapbox again, damn you!
Our local health food store sells organic firewood.
That, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with the world today. Every bad thing you can think of that has happened in the past 20 years has done so because of things like that. Thanks a lot, yuppies.
We budget $AU 150/week for the two of us. After reading this thread lordy, do I feel like a spendthrift!
Actually, we typically come in under that (and this is for all household items as well) around the $AU 100/week on average. So that makes me feel better. Kinda.
Also: Sing it, dg. Organic != what you* think it means.
I pay something like $50ish every two weeks for groceries. Sometimes a little more. I do eat a fair amount of meat and fish, but I try to make up for that financially by eating a lot of cheap things like rice, pasta, homemade bread, etc. I also have burritos from a local taqueria several times a week, since I tend to find my meals lose a lot when they're reheated. So that adds up to a certain amount of non-grocery food expenditure. [Living alone, by the way.]
About $120 US for just groceries each week. Approximately, $40 US a week dollars for breakfast, and lunches at near/work, or dinner out (or ordered in). Figures are for two mouths.
Huh... remind me to design a t-shirt that says "Organic does not mean what you think it means." maybe with a few carbonaceous molecules in the backgroud. Possibly a picture of Inigo.
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