How to Lower Your Grocery Bill: Budget, Unit Price, Waste

Step 1: Find your real number

You cannot lower a bill you have not measured. For one month, keep every grocery receipt, including the quick trips for milk and the online orders. At the end of the month, add them up. Count only food and drinks you bring home. Restaurant meals and takeout are a separate line, and household items such as dish soap are easier to judge on their own.

The free expense tracker has a category column for this, and the monthly budget spreadsheet has a Groceries row with planned and actual amounts. If you print the grocery list, its Budget and Spent lines collect the total trip by trip.

One number to compare with: the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Survey puts average spending on food at home at $6,224.00 per consumer unit in 2024, about $518.67 a month. Food away from home came to another $3,945.00. That is an average over all US households of all sizes, so it says little about yours. A better yardstick is the next step.

Step 2: Compare with the USDA food plans

USDA prices four food plans every month: the Thrifty, Low-Cost, Moderate-Cost and Liberal plans. Each one is a set of foods and drinks that could be bought and prepared to make meals and snacks at home, at a successively higher cost level. USDA updates the costs each month for inflation with the Consumer Price Index. The CPI guide explains how that index is built. The Thrifty plan has one more job: its cost for a reference family of four is used to set the maximum SNAP benefit.

The costs are listed per person by age and sex, for people living in a four-person household. For other household sizes, USDA suggests adding up the people first and then adjusting the total: add 20% for one person, 10% for two, 5% for three, nothing for four, subtract 5% for five or six and 10% for seven or more. Here is that calculation for a few households, with the August 2026 US averages:

The Thrifty plan rests on a newer market basket than the other three: USDA updated it in 2021 from 2013 to 2016 consumption data, while the Low-Cost, Moderate-Cost and Liberal plans are based on 2001 to 2002 data. So do not expect even steps between the columns: for a man aged 20 to 50, the Thrifty cost is even slightly above the Low-Cost one.

Two more things to keep in mind when you read the table. First, all four plans assume that every meal and snack is prepared at home. If your household eats lunch at work or orders pizza on Fridays, your grocery bill should come in below the plan, and the rest shows up under eating out. Second, these are US averages. Prices in your area can be higher or lower; USDA publishes separate Thrifty plan figures for Alaska and Hawaii, adjusted for food prices in Anchorage and Honolulu.

Find the column your monthly total lands in. If you spend at the Liberal level and would like to be at Moderate, the gap is your target. For a couple, the step from Liberal to Moderate is $198.88 a month; for the family of four it is $290.50. These are not recommendations, only reference points that tell you whether your bill is high, typical or already low for your household.

Step 3: Turn the month into a weekly target

A monthly number is hard to keep track of in the aisle. A weekly one is not. USDA itself converts with a factor of 4.333, the average number of weeks in a month:

Where groceries sit in the rest of your budget is a separate question. The budget planner splits take-home pay with the 50/30/20 rule and counts basic groceries as a need; enter your new target there to see what it leaves for wants and savings.

Step 4: Plan the meals, then write the list

Most of the money is decided at home, before you reach the store. Plan the week's meals first, then write a list of only what those meals need and you do not already have. The free weekly meal planner walks through planning the week, including cooking once and eating twice, and prints a grocery page sorted by store section. The grocery list keeps a master list of your staples and has a box for the week's meals. Use them as written; the steps are on their pages.

What this guide adds is the order in which money decisions come:

1. Check what you have. Fridge, freezer, cupboards. Anything that needs using soon goes into the plan first.
2. Plan the meals. Choose dishes that share ingredients, so one bunch of herbs or one bag of carrots is used up across the week.
3. Size the recipes. If a recipe serves eight and you cook for three, scale it before you write the list, not after. The recipe scaler does this for a pasted ingredient list, with kitchen fractions, and explains which things do not scale in a straight line.
4. Write the list with amounts. "Rice" leads to a random bag; "3 cups rice" leads to the right one. Step 6 shows how to turn cups into package sizes.
5. Price the list. At the store or on the store's website, compare unit prices for the items that make up most of the bill (Step 5).

An unplanned item is not wrong, but it should be a choice. If the receipt total is over your weekly target, the items that were not on the list are the first place to look.

Step 5: Compare unit prices, not package prices

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines unit pricing as the cost per unit of measure of a product, such as the cost per milliliter or per ounce. Its consumer page calls it the best tool a shopper has. Where a store shows it, the unit price is on the shelf tag next to the package price. When a tag does not show it, you can work it out:

An example with made-up prices for one product in four packages. The cheapest package price and the cheapest unit price are not the same thing:

Three lessons in four rows. The store brand is cheapest per ounce at 17.8¢. The large jar costs 19.7¢ per ounce, 7.9% more than the small one, so bigger is not automatically cheaper. And the sale price of $3.37 looks like a deal until you divide it by only 16 ounces. For the sale math itself (percent off, stacked discounts, a coupon), the discount calculator gives the price you pay; divide that by the size to compare it.

Some rules from NIST's Unit Pricing Guide (Special Publication 1181) help you read shelf tags:

• Allowed units. By weight, a store can use the ounce or the pound, or 100 grams or the kilogram. Liquids can be priced per fluid ounce, pint, quart or gallon, or per liter or 100 milliliters. Items sold by count are priced per piece, count or each.
• No "per serving". NIST says loads, uses and servings are not acceptable units. Compare by weight, volume or count instead.
• Rounding. Unit prices under one dollar may be shown to the whole cent or to the tenth of a cent, for example 13¢ or 13.1¢. Two products that differ by a tenth of a cent are a tie in practice.
• Not everywhere. There is no federal mandate. NIST lists 16 states plus DC, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands with unit pricing laws or regulations; elsewhere it is voluntary.

NIST recommends that a store not mix units within one product category, but it happens. When one tag says per pound and the next says per ounce or per 100 grams, convert before you compare. With made-up tags of $4.79 per pound and $1.09 per 100 g:

So the per-pound tag is the cheaper one, by 1.0¢ an ounce. The weight converter handles other pairs. One trap to watch: an ounce is a weight and a fluid ounce is a volume, and a tag per fl oz cannot be compared with a tag per oz. The fluid ounces vs ounces guide explains the difference.

Unit prices also catch a quieter price rise. When a package gets smaller at the same price, the package price stays put while the unit price goes up. NIST points to unit prices as the tool that reveals that kind of downsizing. If a product you buy every week has a new, slightly smaller box, compare the unit price with your last receipt.

Step 6: Buy the amount you will actually use

A low unit price only counts for the part you eat. If part of a big bag goes in the trash, you paid for that part too. Divide by what you use, not by what you buy:

An example with made-up prices: a 5 lb bag of potatoes for $4.49 (89.8¢ per lb) against a 3 lb bag for $3.29 ($1.10 per lb). On the shelf, the big bag wins. If your household uses only 3 lb before the rest goes soft, you paid $4.49 for 3 lb, or $1.50 per pound you ate, more than the small bag. The break-even point is $4.49 ÷ ($3.29 ÷ 3 lb) = 4.1 lb. Use more than that and the big bag is cheaper; use less and the small one is.

The same thinking works for recipes. Package sizes are in pounds and ounces, recipes are often in cups. The cups to grams converter bridges the two. It lists 185 grams for a cup of uncooked white rice, so:

• A 2 lb bag is 907 g, which is 907 ÷ 185 = 4.9 cups of rice.
• A recipe that uses 1.5 cups gets 3.3 batches out of the bag.
• At $2.79 a bag, the rice in one batch costs $2.79 × (1.5 × 185 g) ÷ 907 g = $0.85.

Price a whole recipe this way, line by line, and you know what a dinner costs before you cook it. Combined with the recipe scaler, you can also check whether doubling a recipe uses up a package that would otherwise sit half full in the cupboard.

Step 7: Read date labels before you throw food out

Some of the food that goes in the trash was still fine. The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) cites a USDA estimate that 30% of the food supply is lost or wasted at the retail and consumer levels, and names confusion about the dates on labels as one source of that waste.

The key facts from FSIS: except for infant formula, product dating is not required by federal regulations, and the dates are not an indicator of safety. Manufacturers add them to show when a food is at its best quality. There is no uniform wording in the US, so you will see several phrases:

FSIS says that if the date passes during home storage, a product should still be safe and wholesome if it was handled properly, until spoilage is evident. Spoiled food develops an off odor, flavor or texture, and food with those signs should not be eaten. "Handled properly" is the part that matters: fridge and freezer temperatures, the two-hour rule and how long leftovers keep are in the food safety temperatures guide. If you are not sure whether a food is safe, throw it out; saving a few dollars is not worth getting sick.

Three more details from the same FSIS page that help with stocking a pantry:

• Can codes are letters and numbers for tracking and recalls, not a "best if used by" date for you to read. FSIS says high-acid canned foods such as tomatoes and fruit keep their best quality for 12 to 18 months, and low-acid canned foods such as meat and vegetables for two to five years. Discard cans that are dented, rusted or swollen.
• Egg cartons with the USDA grade shield must show a pack date, a three-digit number for the day of the year, from 001 for January 1. When such a carton also has a sell-by date, that date may not be more than 30 days after packing.
• Freeze-by dates are a hint: if you will not use something in time, the freezer keeps it for later. Write the date on the package when it goes in.

Step 8: Review the month and adjust

After four weeks, add up the receipts again and compare with your target and with the USDA column you started in. Look at three things:

• Unplanned items. Mark everything on the receipts that was not on the list. A pattern, such as snacks on every trip, tells you more than the total does.
• Food thrown out. Keep a short note on the fridge of what went in the trash. Repeat items are a sign to buy a smaller size or freeze part of it.
• Your top ten items. List the products you buy most often. Check their unit prices against other sizes and brands once, and write the winner on your master list.

Then set next month's target. USDA updates its plan costs every month with the Consumer Price Index, so compare yourself with the latest month of the food plan reports rather than an old number. If your total went up but so did the USDA plans, you may have saved more than it looks.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• USDA Food and Nutrition Administration, USDA Food Plans: Monthly Cost of Food Reports (Thrifty, Low-Cost, Moderate-Cost and Liberal plans, U.S. average, August 2026; household size adjustments; page updated September 24, 2026)
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Expenditures in 2024, news release, Table A (food at home and food away from home per consumer unit; released December 19, 2025)
• National Institute of Standards and Technology, Unit Pricing Guide: A Best Practice Approach to Unit Pricing, NIST Special Publication 1181-2025 (June 2025)
• National Institute of Standards and Technology, Uniform Unit Pricing: Tools for Consumers to Fight Shrinkflation (updated September 15, 2025)
• USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, Food Product Dating (last updated April 23, 2025)

General information based on the sources above, not tax, legal or financial advice.

Written by Tobias. Updated October 21, 2026.