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Comment by aantix | Hacker News Reader

I feel like it's grocery prices..

We are a family of 6. Our grocery budget is consistently between $2500-$3000 a month.

We shop at Aldi.

While I suspect that your budget could probably be tightened up a bit, I have to say that I'm ever glad I never wanted to have children - just keeping my own ass housed, fed, and health-insured (important for someone with a bit of disability) takes about everything I got.

There was another story here this morning that got some discussion about how people are omitting children as a way of finding work-life balance; who can blame them?

edit: other thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39259093

Could you link the story? - e: looks like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39259093

Can you explain this to me in even a rough estimate?

My family of 4 spends $900 a month, and we do NOT price shop. I live in the metroplitan area of a major city, do NOT shop at discount stores, and even have higher meat bills due to religious reasons. We waste very little, I should add, and buy almost all name brand goods.

There are vast differences in how much people eat. Males between 12-25 tend to eat a lot more than girls - hormones mean they can burn a lot of calories without gaining weight - and they are also more likely to be in activities that use a lot of energy (I don't know why this is, but it seems to be the case) Babies of course eat very little.

I can believe both numbers just based on normal genetic variation.

I expect my food bill to go up around 50% once my boys hit their teens, but still, that only puts me at around half the monthly spend of OP

Where are you at? My family of 6 usually spends on the order of 1000$ a month for local grass-fed meat and groceries at Costco

Per year? Thats pretty reasonable I'd say.

A month.

Thats stupid insanely high and hilariously out of line w/ normal consumption

Choosing a very high COL area (Westchester), the expected food costs for a family of 6 is 1.7k according to the EPI

Buying fresh everything?

Real food? Not 100 boxes of Hamburger Helper with a shelf life of 6 years for $100.

Yes, fresh food in bulk is cheaper than hamburger helper. I lived on $190 a month on veggies and eggs when I was poor as hell in 2015. I just bought everything in bulk.

A week? Seems high.

It's high for shopping at Aldi...

But as an individual I'm probably spending 500-600/mo between Publix and Food Lion...so it kind of tracks.

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