These days, I'm paying about $75-100 per person per week. I usually buy fresh chicken, maybe some salmon if there's any on sale, 2-3 varieties of locally farmed veggies and greens, bread (preferably high in fiber), cheese, and a few cans of chicken, tuna, corn & peas for later in the week.
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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There’s… a lot more information needed to make real recommendations. I can get away with $30 a week for two people because we have a relatively well equipped kitchen, a decent pantry and enough time to prepare meals for the week.
So what’s your kitchen like, what kind of stuff do you already have, what kind of time can you commit and what dietary restrictions do you have?
E: I gotta ask all that bullshit because if all you got is a plug in kettle and a worlds greatest dad mug then your options are significantly different than when your kitchen looks like some shit from the about the author section of a cookbook. If you’re lactose intolerant or vegan then you’re gonna end up buying different shit than I do. If you don’t have any time to prepare meals or anything to store em in then you gotta do it different than a lot of people. If you’re building a pantry from scratch then you’re gonna have at least ten bucks a week of buying a giant ass bag of something that will keep.
Oh yeah, and what’s around you? Having a Asian or Mexican store is different than having a grocery store (and the iga is different than the Walmart) is different than being stuck with dollar general or whatever.
I did leave out some important details, I see now.
Unfortunately I've been barely getting by. Assume I have nothing ingredient wise. I have some seasonings, but that's about it. I'll definitely have to build up a supply of essentials. I have some pots and pans. Nothing fancy, but I make do. I have an oven, stove, and microwave.
I'm southeast US. COL around here I feel like is kind of high, but it's no big city. There is a Publix (main grocery around here), an Aldi, Walmart, and Asian market all within a couple miles, which is good because I rely on a bicycle and the bus.
I have no dietary restrictions. I'm trying to move my diet more towards no-meat but I'm not there yet. That said, I welcome meatless suggestions.
~$83. not as bad as it could be but still fucking brutal. a lot of this is amounts you'll use throughout the month as well though, and nothing is insanely perishable so it's no serious loss if you can tolerate spending that amount to get up and cooking.
grocery list
$3 5lb corn meal mix
$4 gallon milk
$1 bread. wal mart has a bakery usually and the french bread is a buck.
$8 2 1/2 dozen eggs
$3 big ol bottle of vegetable oil
$4 4lbs dry beans (dealers choice, buy in groups of 2)
$2 a bunch of greens. it doesn't matter if it's turnip, mustard, collard or whatever.
$5 bacon ends. resist the urge to get strips of bacon, the ends and pieces bag is 1/4 the price and has much more flavor.
$2 a bag of sugar
$5 coffee. get the cheap stuff till you figure out what you like and how to make the best cup with your drip machine.
$3 a bag of onions. it doesn't really matter what kind
$1-2 a squash if you can get a cheap one,
$8-10 that frozen 10 lb bag of chicken leg quarters they have at the wal mart
$5 a 10 lb bag of rice. get jasmine if you're feeling fancy.
$1 at least one can of chipotles in adobo. start with one.
$3 a bag of carrots
$5 two 24 oz tubs of cottage cheese
$3 two 8oz packets of cream cheese
$2 some other cheese in a brick
$2 twenty or so tortillas
$3 peanut butter
$2 garlic get a bunch of it, you're gonna use it.
$6 3 cans coconut milk. there are different kinds. you'll eventually figure it out.
$1 a buck or so worth of jalapenios. they're cheap.
$1 some celery
meal plan, recipies and prep instructions
We're opening up with something simple, you just need a big bowl, whisk or fork and oven safe dish (cast iron pan):
Cornbread
basically follow the instructions on your bag of self rising corn meal mix. it's all some variation of 2 cups mix, 1 egg, 1 1/2 cup milk and 1/4 cup vegetable oil. before you start in on it go ahead and preheat the oven to 350 or 400 or whatever your bag says and put your oiled up pan in there to get hot. whisk all your ingredients together in your bowl until its smooth (if you wanna be fancy about it, start with the egg, get it completely scrambled up then mix together the wet ingredients with it and add the mix last) then pull out the hot pan and pour your batter in. return it to the hot oven and it's done when a toothpick comes out from the center clean of goop, about 20-30 minutes.
make up some eggs and toast to have with a wedge of cornbread when it comes out. that's a quick breakfast for the week and you only had to do a few minutes of prep for your cornbread. put stuff on the eggs and toast or cook them different ways to keep from getting bored, although it's hard to get bored of eggs. just try em with salt and pepper or cheese and whatever else you have on hand.
A Coffee Drink
make some coffee, when it's done take a cup or two and combine it with the same amount of sugar and mix it until you got a coffee simple syrup. mix coffee, coffee simple syrup and milk to make the drink you like to stop and get on the way to work. just play with it until you got what you want.
Next is an easy lunch that takes a little prep to get ready but will work for the whole week:
Hoppin' John
it's just beans and rice with stuff in it. make the beans first, soak 2lbs of em overnight, dump out the soak water, boil em until tender then containerize them. save a quart or so of the bean water to make rice with. If you get an instant pot you can avoid the soak and just toss 2lbs of dried beans in with water to the fill line, set it for an hour or so and press start. once the beans are done, look up a video on how to dice an onion and throw a couple diced onions in there while the beans are still hot. go ahead and salt to taste too. it'll take a decent amount. save the onion skins and butts in a old bread bag in your freezer.
make your rice in a pot. just rinse off two cups of rice, add it to the pot with a little oil or something and stir it with a fork to get some on all the grains. add 4 1/2 -5 cups of water, a couple of teaspoons of salt, bring it to a boil then stir it up good, cover and drop it down to low heat and wait for it to be done.
fry up your bacon ends and while it's going, separate the stems of your greens until you have what feels like too much greens. put the stems in your freezer bag and chop the leaves into ~1" squares by just bunching them up and going wild. watch your fingers. when the bacon ends are almost done, toss the chopped greens in and cover the pan. it'll only take a minute or two but you'll know when they're good and done because they'll turn "greener".
make a serving of rice, beans, bacon and greens with whatever else you might have, leftover salsa, just whatever's in the fridge.
you'll have plenty of meals from this one.
Whenever you run out of rice just make more.
For a snack you're gonna have carrot sticks and peanut sauce
Celery and Carrot Sticks with Peanut Sauce
take the ends off some carrots and celery, peel the carrots, wash the celery and put the ends and peels in your freezer bag. slice the carrots and celery so they're around twice the length of your pinky finger and about as big around. store em covered with water in some container. make peanut sauce with a fried diced onion, finely diced jalapenio, minced garlic clove or two (add garlic last in the pan), a half cup or so of peanut butter and equal parts coconut milk. use your littlest pot and brown the onions, jalapenio and when everything else looks almost done, garlic. add peanut butter, mix it up on the lowest of low heat and add as much coconut milk as you did peanut butter. add more to get the texture right. it'll be real runny when hot but much thicker when cool. i usually have to add another 1/4 cup of coconut oil to get the texture right.
Dinner/portable lunch is very not vegan but it makes a ton of food and is versatile.
Creamy Chicken Burritos
This is a lot of work but it makes a ton of portable high protien food.
start by defrosting your chicken the night before and cooking it off after it's completely defrosted. baking is fine. just hit 165f or until the juices run clear to avoid salmonella. while all that's happening go ahead and chop up a bunch of carrots, celery, onions and garlic and pan fry em until they're tender. use vegetable oil or butter and remember to salt. If you have some greens left do like before with the hoppin john and cut em up into pieces and add at the end of the fry. put all the skins , stems and ends in your freezer bag. pull your chicken and let it come down to handling temperature and debone all those leg quarters. this may end up being what radicalizes you to veganism. put your skin, ligaments, werid crap and bones in the freezer bag. chop up the chicken into little pieces and set it aside. if you have a stick blender, hit the choipotles in adobo with it, otherwise just mince em up real small and put them in your biggest bowl with the cream cheese, cottage cheese and about two fists wirth of the other cheese grated. mix this by hand to get a good consistency. a food processor or blender could be nice here if you have one.
add the cooked vegetables and chicken to the bowl and mix it up. contain a few quarts of this mix to add to stuff later, then dump a bunch of beans and rice into it and mix it up more. add plenty of salt and pepper to taste and if it's not spicy enough consider adding another can of chipotles in adobo. look up a video on how to roll a burrito and then brown the burrito on all four sides so it sticks together. repeat until you run out of mix or wrappers. cover the burritos with aluminum foil and freeze/refrigerate them.
the cheeses and chipotles are what makes this the way it is, aside from onions, garlic, beans and rice, you can just wing it and add whatever you like.
sunday dinner is gonna be soup but you're gonna make stock first
Make stock by taking all the crap in your freezer bag, dumping it into a pot, adding water to cover then bringing it to a boil and letting it simmer for two or three hours. strain out all the crap and skim any foam that forms on top and contain your delicious homemade stock.
i'm tired of typing out recipes. go download the Good and Cheap pdf and make the curried squash soup in that cookbook. use your newly made stock in place of however many cups of water it calls for.
serve it with a big ol chunk of toasted bread.
things you may need to buy
a cheap chefs knife - $5-10: don't overthink it, just get something on sale. look up how to hold it with the "pinch grip" and be aware that cheap knives can be a little fishy when they're new and sharp so keep your head on and other hand crabbed when using it.
a stick blender - $20 or so: again, don't overthink it, just get whatever and use it. cheaper ones have attachments that fill up with water in the dishwasher so it may end up being hand wash only.
a thermometer - $5 or so: get instant read, it's great.
a 10-12" cast iron pan - $10 or so: go to the goodwill and get one that doesn't have any cracks. you'll know it doesn't have any cracks because there won't be any cracks on it. it's okay if the surface is crap, you can fix that. now you have a good pan to use on an electric stove and bake things in.
a coffee maker - $5 or so: pick this up at the goodwill too. get the simplest one possible. remember to get filters, they're like a buck.
Maybe later:
instant pot - $80 or so: it makes stock and beans set it and forget it. save your pennies and get the max version with More Power
this list and meal plan will make you much, much more than a weeks worth of food, and starting from zero you'll have plenty of ingredients left over to fuck with next week.
If you don't just eat leftovers from this meal plan for the week after, you'll only need to spend 10-15 bucks to make for that week.
Holy shit, this is perfect. I really fucking appreciate the time and effort you put into this. Thank you so much! I'm saving it to my desktop so when I am ready I can pull it back up easily. I just started a second job, so hopefully within the next month or two I'll finally be able to focus on actually living and saving and budgeting instead of being worse than hand to mouth.
Thank you, again!
If you give me the amount you can spend now and a budget per week I can do better.
I have to be honest - and maybe it's partially a skill issue - but I really can't. I'm running a deficit every week. I'm stuck in rotating CashApp loans. Every week I also end up borrowing 20 to 50 from friends, to be paid back on payday. So wash, rinse, repeat. And I have to visit mutual aid way more often than I'd like. So the honest answer to your question is a negative number, as far as available. As far as what I spend, I don't really know. And I guarantee I'm not spending it smart when I'm stress buying the one meal I get that day because someone came through. So I just get cheap takeout for like 10. Which I know is awful, but I do think it's understandable. I'm trying to do better.
Okay, so you got pots and pans and ten bucks every once in a while.
Don’t worry about that big reply I made, we’re going smaller.
Instead you’re just gonna focus on one recipe, the hoppin John. Beans and rice are incredibly cost effective and by varying the specific beans and grains you can use that rough outline of a recipe to make dozens of different dishes.
Same ingredients, but this time you’re buying smaller amounts so you can afford to spend more on greens and other vegetables.
$2 - 2lbs white rice
$2 - 2 lbs dried beans
$6 - vegitables
Vegetables is a crazy item, but you might get like an onion or two, a bulb of garlic, a jalapeño pepper, whatever greens are cheap and a half pound of mushrooms that are on special.
Cook the beans like I said before, but reserve all the leftover liquid and use it to cook the rice and make a simmering sauce for the veggies. You’ll have about three quarts of beans and about as much rice, but cook that 1 cup at a time (makes about a quart, 1 cup dry rice to 2 1/2 cups water) so you don’t have stale old cooked rice hanging out. Maybe a quart and a half of vegetable mix when it’s all done.
Make sure to season your beans after they’re done with salt and pepper and put salt and pepper in the water for your rice.
The technique with making a little topping for your beans and rice is knowing what takes the longest to cook. I always go mushrooms -> onions -> root veggies -> garlic/aromatics -> greens and pull it when the greens look like they’re really “popping” with color. For long sautees like this make sure you salt “through” by adding a little bit with each ingredient and any other spices you want to use.
Tase the food you’re making as you go so you don’t end up accidentally over seasoning.
When you make a bowl go ahead and put a dab of sauce from the sauce packet drawer on top.
Thats about six thousand calories worth of food. You can use different beans and different grains like grits or oatmeal or whatever too, so if you end up with ten more bucks before you run out you can use the same buying process to stock up on more staples and vary your goop scoop up.
E: I did my math wrong af, it’s about 12000 calories.
Your location is going to matter a lot for an answer
For a Midwest USA city, we're averaging $86 a week per person in groceries. We're cooking pretty much everything from scratch ingredients. We buy a lot of stuff from a big bulk stores, and then Aldi, and then a few specialty items that we like from Trader Joe's.
Main staples are Rice, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Beans, Mushrooms, Tofu, Eggs, and then a large variety of greens. I'm sure I'm forgetting major categories of food we eat. We do eat chicken and salmon, but it's usually a once or twice a week thing. We keep a lot of dry ingredients in storage for seasoning, so a typical meal might have a lot of ingredients. We are very diligent about eating up everything in the fridge within a week or two, it's terrible to let food just sit in there and go bad.
Cooking from scratch is the main way to save money. Buying in bulk is the second way. Both are kind of challenging if you're just a single person household, unfortunately.
I'm running about $600 a month for two adult vegans and two cats (including non-food essentials).
When I was single in the early 2020s I could get it under $200 a month but I'm willing to treat myself a little more now.
country at least would help a lot
though the omission means american lol
You got me 😂 In my meager defense, I posted this right before bed and had already smoked. I left out a few details I should have included.
In college, I could get by on $45 a week about. Now it's pretty close to $70 if I am cooking everything. I probably spend about $120-140 a week on all of my food expenses and honestly it's my biggest budget item.
unless youre in a high cost of living area/city, if you're buying a preparing most food(not buying frozen meals too much) you're probably looking at $150 a week. If youre real thrifty maybe you could get close to $100. Helps if youre not a picky eater. Make large batches of food you can eat over multiple days. im not good at cooking so im a bad source, but there are subreddits like EatCheapAndHealthy that could be good idea sources.
COL is huge, I'm not being particularly thrifty and I feed my family of 3 on 150 or less every week. I could easily feed myself on 60.
Groceries are cheaper when you buy in bulk.
Certainly true, however in my case we don't have a store nearby that does bulk really, we go to a little market and get things in the one size they sell, which is what I bought when I was single. So it's not JUST bulk.
I spend about $100/wk, mostly on frozen prepared slop because I hate cooking, though I also get fresh fruit/veggies as well. The extent of my thriftiness is working from a baseline that one meal should be ~$4 and trying to avoid things that cost more than that. That leaves ~$16/wk for snacks, drinks, and whatever else, which is plenty for me.