The cost of Food is often an interesting topic of conversation, but often with no real information being provided.
I see some people say that they spent $300 at the supermarket in one week, therefore they must spend $15,000 per year, yet others spend $300 one week, $100 the next, and get a totally different annual figure.
Over the years I have been carefully recording all my expenses into an excel spreadsheet, and can accurately quote my true food and grocery shopping costs.
These are my figures:
$5,998.98 2003-04 $116 pw
$6,623.06 2004-05 $128 pw
$7,101.12 2005-06 $136 pw
$7,192.45 2006-07 $138 pw
Unfortunately I had a computer problem in early 2008, and lost all my 2007-08 entries, and whilst demoralised from this loss, amongst ALL my other data on the hard drive, I did not bother recording all my expenses again until this year.
Those figures however, do show what can be the real cost of a family of 3, although not heavy eaters, and mainly fresh food rather than processed foods.
I will add my current year figures here as I go along, but I have estimated my 2009-10 costs at about $9,600 for the year. ($183 per week).
That is an average increase of 8% per year since I started keeping these records in 2003.
However, we have had a visitor with us for the last 10 months, so the increase is also to cover three adults and one child up from two adults and one child.
Not quite as good a comparison, as I first thought it would be.