[TameAntelope]

My wife and I spent multiple thousands on food (groceries + restaurants) in May, and managed to bring that down by about half (though still well over a thousand) in June.

We live in semi-rural Arkansas, so not a HCOL area by any means.

How do you spend so little?! Why would you? I grew up outside of Philly, so I happen to know a bit about your area, and it's much more urban than where I live now.

[lukevp]

I live in Portland, Oregon, which has high COL and high food costs, and just checked my actuals (not estimates). Total spend for the last 2 months was $1263 for my wife and I. That’s $315.75 per month per person, and we buy a lot of organic food and produce. However due to Covid that was only including 1 restaurant meal both months, the rest was prepared at home. I think you are spending far too much on food, probably because of restaurants. Do you have something like Mint where you can see your spending by category and dig into this?

[neogodless]

We are budget conscious but this is what our spending naturally settles into just going to to the store and getting the ingredients we need for the meals and snacks we want. Meat several times a week, lots of fruit and vegetables, some pasta and wraps and breads. We don't feel deprived or unhealthy, and it fits well within our means.

[TameAntelope]

Yeah, I guess the main difference for us is cooking/preparing our own meals is genuinely foreign for us. My wife does try to learn, but for me I prefer to do nearly anything to cooking. At best it's a novelty, I've never looked at ingredients and thought practically about how I can make them pleasurably ingestible.

It's more expensive, but I see the cost as a price to free up my time/energy for other things I find more interesting.

To each their own!