Curious to see what a family of 8 in California spends on groceries for a whole year? I’m pretty sure we’re not your average family, but I’m happy to share our family’s annual spending on groceries last year.
One of the side benefits of keeping meticulous financial records is all the data that you end up with! Thanks to our YNAB budget, it’s easy to see all of those numbers. And you know I love looking at numbers!
Before I get into the numbers of our family’s grocery spending in 2025, I want to specify what our grocery spending includes and doesn’t include. My method of tracking spending isn’t the only way to do it, of course, so if something else works for you, that’s great!
To put it simply, our grocery budget covers what we eat. In fact, we actually call the category “Food” in YNAB. We don’t eat out much, so we don’t have a separate “eating out” budget. If we grab frozen yogurt at Sam’s Club or order pizza, that comes out of our food budget.
We don’t eat laundry detergent, trash bags, aluminum foil, or toilet paper, so those aren’t in the grocery category of our budget. I have a separate “Household” category that covers all of those things. Yes, that means that when I enter our spending into YNAB, I have to split the transactions into multiple categories for places like Walmart, Target, and Sam’s Club. For me it is worth that minor inconvenience to have a very clear view of exactly where our money is going.
We have a family of eight in the Sacramento area of California. My husband and I have six kids ranging in age from 6 to 17 including three athletic teenagers. We go through A LOT of milk!
Grocery Spending in 2025
Drum roll please….
$8,709
In 2025, we spent $8,709 on food for our family of 8 in Northern California.
That averages out to $725 per month, but of course the actual amount varied each month.
Our lowest month was December at $568 and our highest month was $900 in February.
Annual Grocery Spending for Past Years
And because I enjoy looking at numbers, I wanted to see how our annual grocery spending has changed over the years. I’ll go back over the past 5 years while we’ve been a family of eight.
2024– $8,373
Monthly average: $698 per month
2023– $8,323
Monthly average: $694 per month
2022– $7,249
Monthly average: $604 per month
2021– $6,190
Monthly average: $516 per month
2020– $5,947
Monthly average: $496 per month
2019– $5,266
Monthly average: $439 per month
There is a clear increase from year to year, but we can’t blame it all on inflation.
For example in 2019 our kids were ages: 0, 2, 4, 8, 10, and 11.
They ate much less than the same kids in 2025 at ages: 6, 8, 10, 14, 16, and 17.
With this trajectory, you might expect our grocery costs to continue to increase indefinitely. While I don’t doubt that the prices will continue to rise, our collective household appetite is probably at its peak. In the fall our oldest will head away to college and our household will trend smaller and smaller.
How We Keep Grocery Costs Down
Keeping our grocery costs low definitely doesn’t just happen. We didn’t just get lucky. Maintaining a low grocery budget was a conscious effort over decades, our most concerted effort being during our payoff of six figures of student loan debt.
Here are a few basic principles that help us keep our food spending down:
- We eat at home, rarely buying food anywhere but a grocery store.
- We buy ingredients instead of prepared foods.
- We strive to plan meals and shopping trips.
- We avoid wasting food.
- We comparison shop and know the best places to shop.
- We keep a well-stocked pantry including long-term food storage.
I’ve had years of practice building up my skills, so keeping our food budget low is just natural for me. But don’t worry! These skills can be learned!
I want you to learn to lower your grocery spending too, so you can pay off debt and reach your other financial goals.
That’s why I created Grocery Budget Hero! In nearly 3 hours of videos and multiple printables and digital tools, I share all of my smart shopping strategies and frugal food wisdom. My strategies work with any diet and don’t involve using coupons.
You can learn more about Grocery Budget Hero here . I just moved the entire course from a paid platform to my own website, which greatly reduced my costs. With that reduction, I’m offering the course at a price that will work for you– you can choose the price yourself!
That’s right. If it’s worth $50 to you, go ahead. If that seems like a huge cost when your goal is to spend less, pay whatever you choose.
My goals is to help you reach your financial goals and reducing your grocery spending will help you do that! The best part about lowering your grocery budget is that it puts money back in your pocket every single month. It’s a gift that keeps on giving! Let me help you start saving with Grocery Budget Hero!
I am curious what your household spending was for last year. Since I budget it all together that would help me compare how my budget for 9 compares
Hi Rosie! Our Household Miscellaneous category is where I put toiletries and non-edible kitchen things. In 2025 we averaged $370 per month. It probably still won’t make an apples-to-apples comparison for you because it’s kind of a catch-all category for us. In 2025 it included things like subscriptions, security cameras, parking fees, postage, eyeglasses, and electronics. In January 2025 we bought a new laptop, which brought the whole year’s average up.