How To Eat On 150 Dollars A Month (2024)

FAQs

How to survive on $150 a month for food? ›

Another way to stick to a bi-weekly $150 grocery budget is to buy ingredients, not meals. In other words, buy whole and inexpensive ingredients that you can then turn into multiple meals, instead of buying premade food that may not be as good for you.

From my years as a financial planner, most families in the Bay Area spend between $800-1,200 each month on groceries. Add to this the cost of eating out, coffee shops and convenience items; you are looking at an additional $250–$1,000 per month depending on your lifestyle.

Decide what you'll eat for a week, or even a month, and plan meals based around low-cost staple foods like oats and eggs for breakfast; tuna, peanut butter, cheese and nonfat plain yogurt for lunch; and inexpensive cuts of meat like chicken thighs or flank steak and dried beans and grains like brown rice that you can ...

In 2022, families with the lowest earnings spent an average of $5,090 on food, equaling about 31% of their income. Meanwhile, the highest-earning households spent more than three times as much—$15,713—representing just 8% of their income, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The 50-30-20 budget rule states that you should spend up to 50% of your after-tax income on needs and obligations that you must have or must do. The remaining half should dedicate 20% to savings, leaving 30% to be spent on things you want but don't necessarily need.

Cooking at home is typically cheaper for a single person compared to eating out. Home-cooked meals allow you to purchase ingredients in larger quantities, control portion sizes, and take advantage of leftovers, reducing overall food costs.

You won't be able to do everything you want to do when living on only $1,000 per month, but you can make it work. We've put together a quick step-by-step guide on how to live on $1,000 per month by focusing on significantly lowering your expenses and building a strategy for keeping them low.

If you try to do it all the time, you'll go insane (believe me, I almost did when I went a month without splurging at all), but if you can live with being boring most of the time (and get on a first-name basis with everyone who works at your local grocery store), you can eat a balanced and healthy daily diet for less ...

Can you live on 200 a month for groceries? ›

Two meals per person per day, over a 30-day month, is 60 meals per person and 120 meals in total. At $200, that's a total of $1.67 per person per meal. This might seem Spartan, but with a bit of planning and practice, I believe that this is totally doable for most people.

According to the USDA, the average weekly grocery bill for a family of four in the United States fluctuates between $150 to $300. This variance accounts for differences in dietary preferences, geographical location, and individual shopping habits.

Food Banks

Each food bank will be different in the services it provides and how you access them. However, you will usually get a voucher from a local referral partner (often Citizens Advice, health and social care professionals and/or local charities). Check what you need with the food bank you want to use.

You will need 3,600 - 4,500 calories for 3 days; 16,800 - 21,000 calories for 2 weeks; 33,600 - 42,000 calories per month; and 403,200 - 504,000 calories per year.

On average, groceries cost between $290 and $548 per month for one person. However, expenses can vary depending on location, dietary choices and personal spending habits. If you don't budget for groceries and instead just buy what you need — and want — at intervals throughout the month, you could be overspending.

The good news is everyone's budget looks different. One family might spend $1,000 a month on groceries while another spends $2,500, and that's just fine. The bad news is that you have to figure out what works for you — there's no grocery spending template that will answer all your questions.