Average Grocery Bill for Family of 3 2017
Are groceries eating upward also much of your monthly budget?
Canadians spend an average of effectually $200 a month per person on nutrient bought in stores, according to Global News' assay of Statistics Canada data. Of grade, that number varies beyond the country. Albertans, for example, spend an boilerplate of nigh $240 per person for ane month worth of food. Shoppers in Nova Scotia spend the to the lowest degree, at nigh $186.
Costs tend to become upward in big cities — Torontonians need to budget at least $254 per person for food — and depending on household size: Families tin can buy in bulk, and being single is usually more expensive.
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And then, of course, there'south the simple fact that anybody'due south gotta eat: Lower income households inevitably spend a larger share of their earnings on food.
All the same, a rough rule of thumb is that groceries should take upward about 10 to 15 per cent of your gross income, said Scott Hannah, president and CEO of the Credit Counselling Society, a Vancouver-based non-profit group that helps families sort out their debt. If you lot make $twoscore,000 a year, yous should be spending between $iv,000 and $6,000 on groceries, including food as well as the kind of toiletries and drugstore items that nearly people choice up at the supermarket, he said.
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If y'all're bodily spend is well in a higher place that, there are three piece of cake means to cut dorsum, said Hannah:
Rejig your grocery list
Spending less on groceries doesn't hateful giving upward on healthy nutrient choices. In fact, squeezing your food bill could help y'all shed a few pounds, besides.
Ditch prepared meals
"One of the biggest things is swapping out processed food," said Hannah. A whopping 23 per cent of Canadians' food expenses goes to something StatsCan calls "not-alcoholic beverages and other food products." That's a lot of money for things like pop, candy bars and Television set dinners.
Cut back on prepared meals means spending more time cooking your own food, noted Hannah, only the effort can exist well worth it for both your wallet and your waistline.
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Cut downwardly on the meat intake
The other mammoth line detail on the average Canadian grocery bill is meat. We spend nearly twenty per cent of our nutrient budget on things like ruby meat and chicken (and only iii.5 per cent on fish and seafood), co-ordinate to StasCan.
"North Americans as a whole eat way too much meat," said Hannah. And really, "you don't need 12 ounces of steak."
Instead, cutting that steak in two. Buy a roast and feed the family for several days, or invest in a tiresome cooker that can tenderize cheaper cuts of meat, suggested Hannah.
Purchasing more legumes and grains is another manner to get protein in your nutrition and slash your bill.
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When shopping for fresh produce, get for what'south in season
Fruit and vegetables take up nearly 24 per cent of the boilerplate Canadian'south grocery listing. Now, no one recommends cutting down on that, simply produce tin can take a big seize with teeth out of your food budget. And factors like bad weather tin also make prices for things like cauliflower and lettuce swing wildly.
The surreptitious is to buy more of the fruits and vegetables that are in season, said Hannah. Costs become down when the strawberries in your cart come from a nearby field rather than a greenhouse or from across the border. And so load up on those local berries and freeze some for the future, Hannah added.
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During the wintertime months, when at that place's precious little fresh produce that's in season in Canada, you can load up on frozen fruit and vegetables, which are remarkably like the fresh stuff in terms of nutritional value.
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Make a meal plan and stick to it
Some other biggie when budgeting for groceries is having a plan, said Hannah.
Roaming aimlessly through the supermarket aisles tends to result in a lot of nutrient that volition end up rotting in your fridge and impulse buys are bad for your bag and midriff.
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Instead, sit down and write downward what the family is going to eat through the week, then come up up with a grocery list and don't deviate from the principal plan.
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Be aware of prices
Where you shop matters, likewise, said Hannah, merely that doesn't necessarily mean you need to get all your groceries at discount stores.
Stocking up on toilet paper at Costco can relieve you big bucks, merely what grocery story is correct for you depends more than on the makeup of your grocery listing.
Identify the staples that ever cease up in your cart and locate the store that offers the best deals on the largest share of your typical shopping basket, said Hannah.
In the long run, that can result in considerable savings.
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© 2017 Global News, a partitioning of Corus Entertainment Inc.
Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/3437328/groceries-budget-canada/
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