Romanians are worried about recent price hikes. Many can no longer cope with expenses and try to save. A good portion of salary it is used to buy food.
The topic is of interest in the online environment. A Romanian woman tried to find out in a group dedicated to the family budget what amounts are set aside for each month food.
“How much do you allocate to the food budget? It seems unreal how much we spend in a month on food (family of 4). I’m trying to reduce it but I can’t do it at all,” the woman wrote on the group Family budget.
How much do you spend on food?
In the comments, group members specified how much money they spend food and how they cope.
“1,500/1,800 lei and here are 4 members. We cook. A little, because you eat a maximum of 2 times of a dish. For example, today I made chicken broth with dumplings, horseradish, chicken cutlets. I also had a check in the plan, but I haven’t done it yet.”
“Honestly, we reduce ourselves to what is strictly necessary. We eat as little food as possible so as not to waste. I specify that we do not consume melted cheese, margarine and other similar foods at home. I do not keep corn, flour, rice, etc. We cook 2/3 times a week meat we use pork chicken or beef. There are no fish lovers in our family. Shopping is done once every 7/10 days.”
“2 adults and one and a half year old, we were spending 250 lei a week, when we also had to buy food for the dogs (3 large dogs), we were going over budget. Now we also have a newborn, I’ll have to recalculate. But even so, it seemed like a lot of money spent on groceries (food and hygiene products).”
“1200 lei, 2 adults and a child who has recently started to diversify (here I have not included expenses with baby formula and diapers).”
“I don’t know how to save on food, everything is extremely expensive. Last time I went for butter and paid 19 lei. I also have a small child, I can’t buy margarine for him, but even those are not ” Much cheaper cheap. And we spend a lot on food. And I cook at home, but I seem to go out a lot expensive with any menu.”
“At the supermarket alone they spend about 450 a week + 20-30 a day in neighborhood shops + 300 a month on kindergarten meals + 10 lei a day for pastries, when I pick up the boy from school (that’s the daily dessert). 2 adults, 3 children, of which the infant has not yet reached diversification and is breastfed, so we do not buy formula milk”.
“About 3,000 and us too family 2 adults and 2 children.”
“Over 3000-3500 for 2 adults and 2 children. This is because we eat better quality food and also get from the countryside. A few years ago I was on an extremely tight budget and because of the quality of the food, my eldest son “I got sick. There were permanent repercussions. Precocious puberty, growth spurt, twisted spine. All because of the growth hormones in the chicken (that’s all he ate). Now I prefer quality food to anything else.”
“Last shift at supermarket I left 1300 lei. I couldn’t believe it. And I didn’t take sweets or other nonsense like that, strictly food. I was doing the same shopping up until now (I haven’t changed products or quality), but I was still paying somewhere around 20% less. Actually I never calculated how much we spend on food, but I say we spend 5000 lei with 2 trips a month of big purchases (1200-1500 lei), on small things (no cleaning products and so on). 5 people. We don’t consume alcohol, sweets, we cook at home almost daily, everything. But I still can’t say that the calculation situation is wonderful. At the moment we haven’t had to discount quality, so we really buy quality and expensive products, but then again, nothing we haven’t bought before.”
“I usually take the products that I know we usually eat without looking at the price. After seeing everything they have gotten more expensive and since we always leave a lot more money in the till, I really wanted to see how much the Bio yogurt we keep buying costs. I knew it was 1.49 ron, I was amazed it’s now 2.49 ron!”
“I see we ended up spending 300 lei or more on bread alone. With bills rising, I don’t think it’s profitable to bake either. Milk, yoghurt, sausage rolls, 1 lei, 1 lei and a slice of ham chicken breast 20 lei 600 gr.”
“In addition to the monthly purchases, for the weekly ones I gave about 100 lei, now I give almost 400, on the same things, nothing different”.
“About 2,000-2,300 lei, but only at the supermarket, excluding home or transit orders restaurant, at work I eat what I bring from home. One adult and two children.”
“We spend around 3,000 lei on food, 2 adults, a child who has been going to kindergarten for a long time, so eats most of his meals there, and a child who is just starting to diversify.
It’s not a budget we’ve necessarily set aside, we simply can’t afford to spend less even though we are careful not to buy the more expensive brands if there’s a reasonable alternative.”
Expense tracking application
“I advise Home Budget. And in the chapter on food, create several sub-chapters and see exactly what you spend your money on. I, for example, have something like this, and when I wanted to reduce I knew exactly where the “losses” were – at sweets I had about 200 lei/week and about 500 lei/month for water. I no longer bought water and limited sweets. Now I don’t buy sweets in the house at all. We don’t actually order fast food less often, but eat a lot of fruit and barbecue every day, salads, cheese, yogurt, etc. and we’re way over budget.”
