The USDA publishes Monthly Cost of Food Reports, which provides a way to calculate what a reasonable food budget is for different sized families to ensure a healthy, nutrient dense diet.
What does the USDA say about these Food Plans?
How to Calculate Your Food Budget
The USDA publishes the information necessary to determine what your food budget should be. These are updated monthly and are based on cost-of-living adjustments made in the month or two prior.
There are 4 categories of food budgets: Thrifty, Low, Moderate, and Liberal. The budgets are published each month and can be accessed directly on the USDA’s website:
For January 2025, this is the Thrifty Food Plan:
You’ll see that there is a weekly/monthly cost associated with individuals by age and male/female. So, you would add up the relevant amounts for each person in your household.
The USDA adds information about adjusting these amounts based on the size of the household (see footnote 3):
The USDA also has a separate document for the Low, Moderate, and Liberal Food Plans. Here is the plan for January 2025:
These amounts are similarly adjusted for household size.
How Does Our Spending Compare?
I wanted to know how our current spending compares. I know our previous spending would have put us very solidly above the Liberal plan. We used to spend A LOT.
What about our current spending? I calculated the food budget under each plan for my household. It was pretty eye opening.
Just a quick note: it doesn’t appear that any of these amounts are intended to include anything other than food. So, no household goods, paper products, toiletries, etc.
I took the amounts for one male aged 51-70 (Mr. Frugal Forward), one female aged 51-70 (Mrs. Frugal Forward), and one female aged 20-50 (Miss Frugal Forward). Considering we have a three person household, as instructed, we adjusted the numbers up by 5%.
Here’s what I calculated:
| Weekly Thrifty | Weekly Low | Weekly Moderate | Weekly Liberal | |
| Male 51-70 | $62.50 | $66.00 | $82.60 | $98.70 |
| Female 51-70 | $52.60 | $59.40 | $73.20 | $87.70 |
| Female 20-50 | $56.40 | $61.00 | $74.30 | $94.80 |
| Pre-Adjustment Total | $171.50 | $186.40 | $230.01 | $281.20 |
| +5% Adjusted Total | $180.08 | $195.72 | $241.61 | $295.26 |
If you look at Footnote 2 to the food plans from the USDA, the monthly cost is calculated by multiplying the weekly amount by 4.333.
This means the monthly totals for our family are as follows:
- Thrifty: $779.94
- Low: $848.19
- Moderate: $1,046.96
- Liberal: $1,279.11
Taking into account that we set aside $200 per month for Azure Standard purchases and $200 per month for Butcher Box meat and seafood purchases, that leaves us with the following;
- Thrifty: $379.94 per month, or $94.99 per week.
- Low: $448.19 per month, or $112.05 per week.
- Moderate: $646.96 per month, or $161.74 per week.
- Liberal: $879.11 per month, or $219.78 per week.
Since I am currently aiming to spend no more than $150 per week on food and household goods, I think this pretty solidly puts us somewhere between the thrifty and low categories.
Before the Felon was inaugurated, we for sure were outspending the Liberal budget when counting eating out, Hint water deliveries, etc.
This has been an adjustment, but I’m petty. I feel like it’s my patriotic duty to not contribute to this economy. Plus, we need to save as much as possible should things get really bad.
Conclusion
What are your thoughts about the food plans? Which budget do you fall within?
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