Money Mom Podcast

A Realistic Grocery Budget For Your Family Size

• Rachel Coons

Share episode

🛒 What’s a Realistic Grocery Budget for a Family Our Size?
How to Stop Overspending and Start Shopping with Confidence

Feeling like your grocery bill keeps ballooning no matter how hard you try to budget? You’re not alone—and no, you’re not doing it wrong.

In this episode, I’m breaking down how to figure out a realistic grocery budget based on your family size, lifestyle, and values—without the guilt, guesswork, or deprivation. Whether you’re a family of 3 or a household of 7, this episode gives you the tools (and mindset) to stop throwing spaghetti at the budget wall and finally feel in control of your grocery spending.

You’ll learn:
 âś”️ What most moms get wrong when setting a grocery budget
 âś”️ How your family size, dietary needs, and schedule all play a role
 âś”️ My favorite per-person budget benchmarks to use as a guide
 âś”️ How to avoid “chaos mode” in the grocery store and shop with a plan

đź’ˇ Want to go deeper? Join me for my FREE live  Masterclass, Confident with Money, where I’ll show you how to stop overspending, shift your money mindset, and finally feel calm and in control of your finances.

👉 Save your seat here: www.heyrachelcoons.com/mmctrainingmay

🔔 Don’t forget to subscribe for more real-life budgeting, grocery tips, and money mindset coaching made for moms like you!

xoxo,
Rachel

Where to find me:
Instagram: @heyrachelcoons
TikTok: @heyrachelcoons

Join my FREE live training
What kind of grocery shopper are you? Take my free quiz
Check out my grocery savings guide

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Money Mom podcast, the show where we empower moms to take control of their finances, break free from money stress and build a life of freedom, confidence and abundance for their families. I'm your host, rachel Koons, mom money mentor and your personal cheerleader on this journey. Whether you're here to save money, pay off debt or dream bigger for your family's future to save money, pay off debt or dream bigger for your family's future, you're in the right place here. We believe that being a mom is already a full-time job, but your role in shaping your family's financial success is just as important. And the best part, you don't need to sacrifice everything to start winning with money let's get started. This is the Money Mom Podcast. Money let's get started. This is the Money Mom Podcast. Hey there, and welcome back to another episode of the Money Mom Podcast.

Speaker 1:

I hope you're all having a fantastic May. It's one of the busiest months of the year. My kids are getting out of school in a couple of weeks, so we are just trying to get through this month, all of the plays and sporting events and activities. We have graduation parties. It's just feels like this month is one of those months of pure and utter chaos, but I do love this excitement for summer and really looking forward to summer. I wanted to remind you, if you're listening to this podcast the week it comes out, that we have our biggest training of the year happening this week, on Thursday, and I wanted to give you a special invitation to join me. To join me. This training is for any mom who struggles with money, and that feels really broad, because I feel like most people actually struggle with money in some way or another. So if you are someone who feels called to show up at this training, who feels stuck with their financial situation, who feels like money controls their emotions day in and day out, who feels the burden of financial goals, things that they want to accomplish, but they aren't able to do it because of money, if you are a mom who wants to even improve the financial situation of their family, who wants to have extra money at the end of the month, even more than you have now, if you have extra money or your husband has a good job or you make a good living and you wish you had more money to do the things you want with it, this training is for you. Like I said, it is a live training, so I'll be there. We've got thousands of people already registered, and so if you're listening this podcast and you haven't registered yet, please register. Come join us, check it out. I have seen the lives of moms that it has changed already, and so I am inviting you to take a leap and trust me and do what it takes to fix whatever problems you may have around money. So that's on Thursday of this week. If you miss it and you're listening to this podcast, later, we do have a replay set up as well. We'll link that in the show notes so you can watch the replay of it.

Speaker 1:

But for this episode today, I wanted to talk about probably the number one question I get in my DMs or on content that I produce, because for a long time I was literally just talking about grocery budgeting, and so everybody wants to know how much should I be spending. If you are someone who has watched your grocery bill increase over year after year and you're trying to set a realistic and I think that's a crucial word is you want it to be realistic, you want it to be something that doesn't feel like it is too little or too restrictive, but that fits your lifestyle and what you want for your family. We have to set a realistic budget and sometimes without a target to hit, when we're just, you know, willy nilly spending our money at the grocery store, we don't even know what we should be spending. And I see this with so many families that I work with is, for the longest time they've just been buying the groceries. Because we have to buy food for our family right, it's something you have to do and it's a very noble cause to feed your family.

Speaker 1:

But, just like if we get in a car and we don't have a map or a GPS or an endpoint on our road trip, we are not going to get to the destination that we want. And a lot of times when I see so many people are frustrated with how much they're spending on groceries, it's because they don't know what they should be spending. And so this episode, specifically, is your roadmap so you can stop just driving around and not having a destination to hit, and so you know where your money is going and why it's going where you're going. So we're going to break down exactly how to figure out what is realistic for your family, based off of your family's lifestyle, your family size, what your values are if you have dietary restriction. And then I'm going to give you some benchmarks that I teach inside the Money Mom Club that help moms set realistic budgets, save tons of money every month, but without having to give up everything needs health, you know, time, all of those things that really tend to be barriers for people who are worried about. If I'm going to put energy into saving money on groceries, I don't want to give up some of these other things that are really important to me.

Speaker 1:

Like I said before, most people don't know what's realistic, and grocery spending can often feel like quicksand, where you're trying to be a parent, you're trying to understand what you're spending, you're trying to budget, but then you just feel like the faster you move, the more you do it, the deeper you sink. And most moms are either guessing how much they should be spending based off of what their friends are spending right, they're looking at other people's spending in their area and asking you know, I think this is a really hot topic at summer barbecues and mom events where people are like what are you spending on groceries? Like what is the normal amount, or we're spending based off of emotions, where we're just grabbing whatever feels convenient in the moment at the grocery store because there is no plan, there is no set concrete system that they are following. So there are really three factors that we need to look at when we're trying to shape a realistic grocery budget, and I want to talk about some of those factors now. So the first factor is obviously going to be family size and then the age of your children, but mainly family size. When we look at a family of four, they're going to spend less than a family of eight would be spending, so we have to account for how many people in your family, but bigger than that is, we also have to account for how old your children are, because a toddler is not going to eat the same amount as a 16 year old boy, and I get this because my children over the years, when I really started nailing down our grocery budget in 2020, my children were much younger than they are five years later and they're eating a lot more. So my budget has had to adjust based off of my children's age. My family size hasn't changed, but the age of my children has, and I have three boys. I have one girl and three boys, and so I am sure that as my boys reach teenage age, we are going to spend a lot more on groceries just to feed, you know, their hungry growing bodies, and so that's really important.

Speaker 1:

When you're trying to set that realistic grocery budget, you need to look at your family size, but also look at the age of your children. And then the other thing we need to look at is dietary restrictions and or preferences that you have. Restrictions would be things like gluten-free, dairy-free, egg allergies, things like vegetarian and vegan those types of things where you are not eating certain types of foods and the substitute of those foods tends to cost more money than normal food. So if you have dietary restrictions, we're going to talk about kind of how you should adjust your budget with the number value. And then if you have preferences so if you are someone who only wants to purchase organic produce and meat, that's going to cost more in the long run, and that's okay if that's what you are valuing and things that are important to you. So we have to take that into account when we're setting that realistic budget. What restrictions do you have, what preferences do you have, and are those preferences and restrictions going to make you spend more money?

Speaker 1:

And then the third one, and I think one that tends to get overlooked the most or used as an excuse. I think people will use dietary restrictions as an excuse, like gluten free that's why I'm spending so much money but the other one is lifestyle and time capacity. So if you are someone who works full time and you need more convenience, or if you are just burnt out you know you've got young kids you're grabbing more easy grab-and-go snack ideas and dinners those types of things where relying on convenience foods all the time will tend to increase how much you spend on groceries. Now I think that this is one that people use as an excuse for high spending, but I also think it's the one that we can really kind of just change the way you look at feeding your family. Change the system that you're using, change the plan that you have to then make you still. You're still busy, you still have not much time capacity, but we can save money because we can incorporate things that will help you feel like you're getting convenience and you're getting all those things that you need, but not overspending so much.

Speaker 1:

So three things First thing, family size and age, dietary preference and restrictions, and then lifestyle and time capacity. There's times and seasons for all of us. So I think when I can really teach you how to set your own realistic budget, when things start to change in your life, or when kids start to get older or you know your kid gets diagnosed with a food allergy, then you can change up what your budget should be, based off of the time and season of your life. We have different seasons of life where maybe for three months, your family is going through a crazy time where there's kids and sports, or you know you're involved in a lot of things, you're doing a project at work or whatever it is that season you may have to implement new budget rules. Then it would be during a different season. We're coming up on a season that a lot of moms really struggle with their budget, and that would be summertime, where kids are home more, they're snacking more, they need more food. Maybe you're going on vacation more, which requires you to purchase more food for vacation. Whatever it is, you get to decide and I want to empower you to set the budget that works for you, to set the budget that works for you.

Speaker 1:

So let's break down, based off of these different things that we're going to look at, how much should you be spending on your family and I say should with a grain of salt, because whenever I say you should be spending this amount, somebody gets really defensive when they're not spending it or they don't think it's possible. So don't take what I'm saying as should and make it good or bad. I'm just saying these are ballpark targets that you could hit and I'm going to tell you how you can hit them. But, like I said before, it's like I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't. I want to give people a number, but then I give people a number and then they get really mad and angry that I'm giving them a number Again number. But then I give people a number and then they get really mad and angry that I'm giving them a number Again. You are in the driver's seat, you know your finances, you know what you can spend and you know what you want to spend. I'm just giving you options on here's what's possible, okay, so the easiest way to calculate how much you should be spending on groceries is look at per person breakdown of your family size.

Speaker 1:

Now, when we look at the average spend, the USDA comes out with the average amount of grocery spend per family every couple months, where we can look at trends and see how much people are spending per person. The average American family we're going to talk about Canadian families because I know I have a lot of Canadian followers as well but in America as well. But in America the average family of four is spending roughly $1,400 a month on groceries. So we're looking at like $300 to $400 per person for a family of four. So the average family per person is spending about $300, $350 per month. Now, I say that number because I want to baseline you and know you're probably, if you're listening to this episode and you're someone that's struggling with your grocery spending, my guess is you're maybe around that number. So if you take the amount of people in your family and you divide your grocery spending by the amount of people, that's going to give you your number per person, and I want you to get to that number per person, whatever that is. So, family of four, you're spending $1,200 a month on groceries. You're spending $300 a month per person. Okay, I hope I explained that and made that sense. So find out what your price per person is right now with your normal spending, how much you're spending right now when we know that someone can get to and when I say I know someone can get there is because I've worked with over 5,000 families and with the shop method we've seen it time and time again.

Speaker 1:

You can get to about $150 per person per month. That is for someone who has no dietary restrictions, is in America. This is not Canadian families and doesn't need to eat organic, specialty diets or anything like that, just baseline, like I would say. My family is very baseline. We don't have any allergies. I'm a stay-at-home mom. I mean, I run a business from my home but I'm home with my children, I'm not working out of the home, and $150 per person per month is very doable for me. In fact, I'm always underneath that number, but that's the range $150 per person per month.

Speaker 1:

So if you're a family of four, you take family of four times 150, then you'd get $600. That would be the goal number $600 a month for a family of four. Again, take into account your family, take into account what you need. Maybe you have lots of teenagers and you're like that's just not doable. Okay, that's fine.

Speaker 1:

If we need to bump it up, then let's bump it up to $200 per person each month. That is where I estimate people to go if they have dietary restrictions. So if you're someone who needs to eat gluten-free, dairy-free, then adjust that number to $200 per person per month. Now here's the thing If the average family is spending $350 per person each month and we can get you down to $200 per person each month If we can't even get you all the way to $150, we can just get you to $200 per person each month. Guess what you have now saved $150 per person every single month. Times that by the number of people in your family and we get some massive numbers of savings. Even if the $150 seems too sparse and too impossible, then just work down to that $200 per person.

Speaker 1:

Again. We just want to have a goal. We just want to have a target that we're trying to hit. And then if you are someone who needs to eat organic and you have multiple dietary restrictions and you're just really, really looking for convenience and you're in a crazy season of life, between $200 and $250 per person each month is reasonable. I would never suggest somebody go above $250 per person every month. I think it's completely doable to go underneath that. But the thing is is if you have been using the need to buy organic or the dietary restrictions as an excuse for how much you're spending on groceries, chances are you're going to be one of the biggest savers and I see this time and time again with our members is the people who are saving thousands of dollars every single month are the people who have dietary restrictions and have been eating organic because they've just been spending so much money on groceries and they're able to rein it in, set a target, get the right tools and resources to get there, and it's like magic for what they do.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so this is for America. I said this is. You know, we have different grocery prices in America than we do in Canada. For Canada, unfortunately, your groceries cost a lot more than they do in America. And so just take all the numbers that I just did and times them by two. So baseline would be $300 per person every month. If you are, you know, need dietary restrictions, whatever, you can jump it up to $200 per person each month. And then, if you have multiple dietary restrictions and you're just organic and all those types of things, $500 per person each month is like the highest I would go.

Speaker 1:

Now, again, we're setting these boundaries for ourself, to know what's possible, and most people tend to overspend because they don't have a system because they don't know what is possible and how to plan, shop and cook for your family. So here's how you can make your grocery budget work for you. So first thing we need is we need a plan and in order to create that plan, we need to look back at our spending and our routine from the past you know three to six months and see why are you spending the amount you're spending. That gives you that rear view mirror, gives you the real picture on what's going on and why you're spending the amount you're spending. And when we can look back and see, okay, this is how I've gotten here, then we can have a plan to move forward.

Speaker 1:

The best way to be able to save money on groceries is using the shop method. The shop method is my four-step process to plan, shop and cook for your family, and I teach the shop method in Grocery Budget Bootcamp, which is in Money Mom Club, so it's my proprietary method. I have never seen anything like it, and when people start to implement the shop method, that's where they're starting to save $400 a month without having to restrict, without giving up time and convenience. I do know we have a podcast episode about the shop method and what it is and how it works. I can't remember what episode number it is, but if you scroll back I mean there's only like 50 episodes. So if you scroll back you can see the episode about the shop method and how it is. But if you scroll back, I mean there's only like 50 episodes. So if you scroll back you can see the episode about the shop method and how it works.

Speaker 1:

But, truthfully, creating a plan using a system, whatever it is, you don't even have to use my system just finding the system that works, tracking your spending, making sure you know how much you've been spending in the past and how much you're supposed to spend in the future, will create so much opportunity for you. And just even listening to this podcast and saying, oh she's telling me that I don't have to spend the amount I'm spending, you're going to start to notice things. You're going to start to notice when you're overspending or when you're going to the grocery store without a plan, or when you're using convenience and other things as an excuse for what you're spending. You start to notice that and that's the first step to change really is just being aware, being cognitive of this problem in your life and how you could be saving so much money every month.

Speaker 1:

And the really cool thing about saving $600 a month on groceries isn't the fact that you now have $600 a month extra, every single month. It's that you can do something bigger with that money. You could take that money, and we just had a member, tanya, inside the Money Mom Club. She joined in September and she used her savings from groceries to pay for a full vacation to Hawaii for her family. She just posted on our group in April and had a picture of the beach and was like look, I'm here because I was able to save money on groceries. So it's not just the money savings, it's what we can do with that money. That is so freaking cool when you can pay off debt. You can pay off, you know, $10,000 of credit card debt in 18 months because all you did was implement a simple method Like, wow, that's friggin awesome, and that's why I preach what I do from the rooftops, because I think it is so powerful and has the opportunity to unlock so many financial goals for you when we figure this out.

Speaker 1:

So here's the truth, as I'm wrapping up, this episode is that your grocery budget isn't a prison. Your grocery budget isn't a prison. It's a place that you can look at that you're spending more than you should in that budget, spending more than you should in that budget. It's a place to find extra money every single month. It doesn't have to feel like it's draining your bank account and it can create and unlock places of extra money no other budget can. And when you stop guessing, when you stop overspending, and when you stop guessing, when you stop overspending and when you try and fit your budget into your family's needs, not someone else's budgeting box, that's when it gets easier and that's when you find real success and something that is completely sustainable. So try it out, see what you can do, and I want to hear how it goes.

Speaker 1:

Okay, thanks so much for joining me today. I'll see you in the next episode. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Money Mom podcast. I hope you're walking away feeling inspired, empowered and ready to take the next step toward financial confidence and freedom for your family. If you've loved today's episode, it would mean so much to me if you'd subscribe, leave a review and share this podcast with another mom who could use a little extra encouragement on her money journey. And don't forget to connect with me on Instagram at HeyRachelCoons, or you can join our thriving money mom club for even more tips, support and resources to help you save, spend and build wealth intentionally. You've got this, mama, and I'm here to cheer you on every step of the way. Until next time, remember, every dollar you manage with purpose is another step toward the life you've been dreaming of. I'll see you back here soon on our next episode.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Rachel Coons

Host