Feeding The Family – What Are We Spending?


This post is part of a series on family finances. You can find the other posts in the series here:

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A number of weeks ago, many of you kindly took the time to fill in a survey about how much we are spending to feed our families. Today’s post shares the first of the data from the survey, which I hope you will find useful.

Personally I found the information food for thought! For a family of my size we are spending about $100 more per week than the average. The sample size for families with five kids was only 17, but I still thought we would have been closer to the average.

We are pretty much spot on for the amount our family size spends on meat and only slightly over on what we spend on fruit and vegetables, so the area where we over spend the most is on groceries. There of course could be an element of how families track their expenditure. Our total food bill counts every cent we spend on food, so every loaf of bread, litre of milk etc is tracked and added to the total food expenditure.

With that said though, it has given me a challenge! My aim is to see if for the rest of May, if I can spend the average amount on food for our family size ($245). As I continue to write posts on this series I will update you on my progress!

Family Finance Survey – The Results

Before I table what families are spending on food, some background info on the 601 people who responded to the survey. Australians made up 95% on the respondents and 99% were female.  In addition to that:

540 income make up.jpg

The income make up of the household was evenly split with one full time income (42.76%) and one full and one part time income (42.6%).

household income

The approximate average household income was $110,462.

 

home owner

 

The majority of respondents were home owners – 79%.

Food expenditure per week

No. of children% response$ spent on total
food bill
$ spent on
meat
$ spent on
fruit and veg

1

15.0%

$167

$41

$47

2

46.8%

$184

$41

$51

3

25.0%

$218

$49

$64

4

9.5%

$237

$48

$70

5

2.8%

$245

$53

$75

6

0.5%

$307

$53

$87

7

0.2%

$287

$25

$37

8

0.2%

$300

unknown

$112

So how does your spending stack up? Do you spend more or less than the average for your family size?