Weekly grocery budget

For a (hypothetical) typical Japanese family of 4, how much would be spent on weekly groceries? Trying to be thrifty. What would you imagine the average to be? 8000 yen? 10000 yen? More?

Definitely more than 10,000 yen per week. Probably even more than 20,000 yen. But obviously it differs a lot between people. Four elderly vegetarian women are likely to spend less than four young, meat eating males.

How about two adults, one child, and one elderly? Eating regular food, but also filling (everyone has hearty appetites). For one adult and the child, it would be all meals for the entire week, and for the other adult and the elderly it would be just dinner 5 days a week. With that, what would you say should be a reasonable budget to aim for?

http://www.stat.go.jp/data/kakei/family/4-1.htm

It is 70134 yen per month for an average sized family of 3.43 persons. This is 16140 yen per week.

The total budget for the family per month is 319060 yen, they say.

"Four elderly vegetarian women are likely to spend less than four young, meat eating males."

Actually, due to produce being so expensive in Japan, a vegan/vegetarian lifestyle is much more expensive than the typical protein + carbs/starch diet.

As to the OP:
How much you spend on food depends greatly on location. For example, Osaka, Hyogo, Saitama, Chiba have tons of superstores. Fewer products are local but because of mass distribution, the average price of everything is low. In one of these areas, a family of four that cooks 80-90% of their meals can live without sacrifice for well under 40,000 yen/month.

Thanks for all the replies...

If I consider 40000 yen per month for a family of 4, and divide it into meal cost (assuming each person eats 3 meals a day), that would be about 111 yen per meal. Am I doing my math correctly?

Am I doing my math correctly?

40000/(30*4*3)=111

You are right.

I thought so, but I asked because it seems like so little. Is it really possible?

That is assuming that you don't eat out at all (not even occasionally), but do all the cooking for all meals at home, and know where to buy inexpensive ingredients. I tend to agree more with the statistics numbers given by frog1954 (more like 70,000 yen per month) rather than 40,000yen per month.

One guideline is that often homemaker's magazines feature articles like "recipes for the whole family around 10,000 yen a week" or "10,000 - 20,000 yen a week," which suggests that you need to make serious efforts in order to keep your food bill under these numbers...

Frog1954 (or anyone who can read Japanese), does it say if that figure assumes BOTH the husband and wife are working?

Thanks!

Hi, momotaroPeachBoy

does it say if that figure assumes BOTH the husband and wife are working?

No. It is an AVERAGE for the employee's family in 2009. Some of them are so-called double income, and others are not. It says the average number of the family members is 3.43 persons. An average of 1.67 persons are working (earn money). Note that the families of farmers, doctors, lawyers etc., who are not employees are not included.

Average income is 518226 yen per month from which they should pay taxes and social insurance fee.

I am sorry, but my English skill is insufficient to discuss this issue. However, in general, main income comes from male worker (in married family, husband). The data says 419269 yen out of 518226 yen is earned by the head of the family (47.1 years old in average: in many cases, husband). The words ''the head of the family'' is the translation of 世帯主 in Japanese, and I do not intend to say husband is or should be the head or the master of the family.

After paying taxes and social insurance fees (90314 yen per month), the average family can spend 427921 yen per month.

Then the grocery budget is 70134 yen per month. Note that this is AVERAGE. Some family might tend to go dining out, then the grocery budget might be less. In the data, there is ''その他の消費支出'' meaning ''other expenses'' which should include the expense of dining out. This is 72055 yen which is slightly more than the grocery budget. Therefore if you do not go dining out and cook and eat ''average'' Japanese foods, your grocery budget should be more than average, I suppose.