I (26F) and my girlfriend (24F) seem to spend a rough average of $400 a month on eating out and anywhere from $250 to $400 on groceries. Any other households of two young women racking up similar numbers? I can’t tell if I’m thrifty in a crazy economy or if I should be trying to make it so that my restaurant:grocery ratio isn’t often so 1:1.
Ratio of restaurant vs. grocery
byu/EducationalRegret903 inpersonalfinance
Posted by EducationalRegret903
32 Comments
Wife and I eat out once maybe twice a month.
I’m not a young woman, but my family is about 5:1 on groceries vs eating out.
Per week
Breakfasts – home
Lunches- packed (cook enough dinner for leftovers)
Dinners – 5 cooked. 1 out. 1 Costco ready to serve.
We budget $1000 for two of us for total food spend in a month. I get lunch with a coworker once a week, we get something like Chipotle or Panda for dinner once every week or two, maybe one sit down dinner a month. We target 1/3rd eating out to 2/3rds grocery spend but it’s not a hard and fast rule – if we’re overspent on one (like we recently had family in town so eating out budget got nuked) we’ll pull from the other. As long as we do our best to land on or under that $1k total.
In my experience food delivery, be it groceries or eating out, is much more of a budget killer than eating out a little more. A $15 burrito very rapidly becomes $30 with inflated menu prices from ordering for delivery, then delivery fees, then tax on those higher numbers plus a tip for the driver on the inflated menu price. Same for groceries. It’s so easy to spend SO much money on not that much food if you’re getting basically any of it delivered.
My partner and I spend $600 a month on groceries, no eating out. But that means cooking from scratch, not buying ready made stuff which is more expensive.
My husband and I spend around $600-$800 a month on grocery and $150 eating out. Maybe 2-3 meals out a month together, 1 out separate each
similar age group: groceries around 300-400$ monthly, eating out: $200-350 monthly. We do our best to only eat out once a week (probably hard for a lot of folks). The numbers are for me and my partner.
There are occasions where we would pay for family dinners and those occur around 5x a year. I didn’t add this in to the calculations above. If I did, it would average around $425 monthly for eating out.
Breakfast at home.
Weekdays Lunch always prepped. Extreme rare to purchase lunch.
Weekdays Dinner prepped.
I would not consider you thrifty as thrifty folks typically don’t eat out that regularly. However, your monthly groceries put you in the Thrifty category per the USDA Food Plans which I personally find to be generous in their definitions, but I also don’t live in a VHCOL area.
https://www.fns.usda.gov/research/cnpp/usda-food-plans/cost-food-monthly-reports
Normally the vast majority should go to groceries. Unless you have a ton of money to blow on eating out. Our ratio is usually 8 to 1 on groceries vs eating out.
Depending onn what you get. Things are usually 3 to 8 times as expensive when eating out compared to preparing them at home.
My partner and I vary from month to month but our overall food spend stays under our budget, and that’s our goal. Sometimes we’re busy and we need the convenience of Cava or Chipotle. We feel that we’re buying our time back and still getting a healthy meal. Other times we’re heavy into the meal prep and our dining out decreases a lot.
Life is all about balance.
Your spending seems totally reasonable to me.
My wife and I have a 50/50 ratio of groceries vs eating out and its probably higher than most people here.
$800 for each.
My wife and I spend about $800/month on groceries and probably average $200-$250 going out. We do not go out very often, but when we do it is normally a decent meal that runs $100 for the two of us. We try to get food we would not normally cook or go to someplace new that we hear is good. That happens about once a month. The balance of the spend is occasional lunches my wife buys when she is in the office. I am work from home and rarely leave the house to eat. I think my working from home and not having kids really frees us up to stay in for dinner. It takes us longer to leave and find dinner than just make something. But in all fairness, this does not include my beer budget. I have a local brewery that I go to a couple of times a week and spend about $250/month there or hanging people I know from there. It is my social hub.
We spend 400 a month on groceries for 4 people, and 300 a month on eating out (recently bumped up from 250).
Proportionately I think we have a high ratio of meals out spend to grocery spend, but I think it’s skewed because our grocery budget is so low. I think that’s similar to what’s happening to you.
For our family of four 300 bucks covers roughly 4-5 dinners out over the course of the month- about one a week. Our teenager eats adult meals these days, so going out for to a regular sit down dinner is about 70-90 dollars a pop, and we can do a counter service or more inexpensive meal for around 40-60. We have margin to squeeze in an “emergency dinner” at Costco food court or Wendy’s for under 20 bucks if I forget to start the crock pot or have a evening appointment or school thing that intrudes on cooking time.
If we were spending 1200 dollars a month on groceries like most of our peers the 300 bucks wouldn’t be anything to blink at. I’m just really good at shopping and meal planning frugally and can dial in and manage expenses at home much more easily than I can find a super inexpensive meal out.
I would not call $400 a month eating out *thrifty*, but it’s also not *crazy*.
Whether it’s reasonable depends on your income. As a DINK relationship, that’s probably fine. But if income is inconsistent, not so much.
Also, if income *becomes* inconsistent, that’s the first place to cut. Imo
My wife and I are about 1:1 with our two kids and we are semi indulgent with eating out. We/I expect to be eating out at least once a week, maybe twice. Nice restaurants for special occasions. When I was single and even when we were freshly married, I found it hard to cook efficiently without also getting very, very tired of eating the same meal a lot.
This is also an area where we’re willing to spend a little more. We’re not running around spending money in other areas much. Like we’re not doing concerts or sporting events a lot. Travel is usually with family and it’s at grandparents’ insistence so they’re paying for a lot. I’ve recently been pushing harder to prioritize savings goals, too, so like as the kids are moving out of daycare we’re just putting more away in general rather than letting it turn into lifestyle creep.
I think as long as you’re meeting your savings goals, where you choose to spend your money afterwards is less important.
> I can’t tell if I’m thrifty in a crazy economy
That depends a lot on your age and area. The USDA publishes a report for thrift food plan for non-Alaska and Hawaiian states. First number is weekly and second is monthly.
https://www.fns.usda.gov/research/cnpp/usda-food-plans/cost-food-monthly-reports
> 20-50 years $57.50 $249.00
> 51-70 years $53.50 $231.70
For a period of time, I just had better things to spend money on than food. I spent $50 a week on groceries and food for a summer. Probably needs to be like $75 now with inflation. But I couldn’t even justify pizza or a McDonald’s MCmuffin since I could still make a meal for less. My weekly treat was a cup of cafeteria coffee for $0.99
My wife and I budget $450 for groceries and $650 dining out. That’s my eating out every weekday from work at $15 and a weekend meal around $75. If we take a weekend away somewhere there will be more, but that’s our discretionary line item. Big vacations also has its own line. Looks like this in all – https://imgur.com/a/budget-spreadsheet-2026-2MZk8Xq
The bigger question is whether it fits in your budget with all your other goals. If so, who cares? We are very happy with our spending.
We are a bit flipped from you; $450 on groceries and $200 on restaurants. 2 adults.
My wife and I are about 1/3 eating out, 2/3 at home. Not sure about exact dollar amounts, but probably $200/$4-500.
Family of 2. We spend $300 on groceries and $500-$700 on eating out
I’m at around $800/mo between the two in a vhcol area for one. I go out for drinks with friends 3-4x a month. Sometimes that includes a burrito, so around $35-50. Then I have brunch/dinner with a different friend group once a month, at about $75. Then self-date dinner around $85. I spend $80-100 on groceries each week, though some of that is for my roommate, and some household goods. Once a month or so I’ll go to Disneyland, and that can get super pricey if I do a restaurant meal vs. snacks, and if I drink alcohol. (All prices for dining out above include alcohol, though the totals are coming down a bit as I’ve cut back on drinking significantly.)
M/F couple
We spend about $500-600 a month on groceries. Probably about $100-150/month on take/dining out (no deliveries) twice a week. We’re in a west coast city with high COL.
$200/mo per adult for groceries, $100/mo per adult for eating out. This feels pretty lavish to me, not a sacrifice.
40+ married couple and we’re $500 per month on groceries and $30 at Chick-Fil-A twice a month. All meals are cooked at home every night. It helps that I worked in professional kitchens for 20 years.
Thrifty? We do not live on the same planet.
We eat out 1x every 2 weeks or since since February; so the ratio is very skewed. Eating at a restaurant or fast food is very expensive nowadays, so the choice is pretty much made for us to eat at home.
My gf and I budget $100/week for groceries. Sometimes we come in at 60, other times 100. We only eat out of we come in under $100 that week.
If you ate out less would you save the money or just spend it elsewhere? It really depends on your disposable income and financial goals.
$650-$800 a month on food is insane to me. $25-$30 a day average!
We eat in mostly and spend about $300 a month for 2.5 people.
I spend around 60 dollars per week on groceries, so no, I don’t think you’re being thrifty.