Meal Planner & Grocery List
Plan the week's meals and the grocery list writes itself: repeats merged, pantry staples skipped, sorted by aisle.
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Make the grocery budget easy to hit
The Meal Planner turns the week's meals into a grocery list sorted by aisle, so you buy what you planned. The Monthly Budget Snapshot is free and puts groceries next to the rest of your money.
Monthly Budget Snapshot
A free one-page monthly budget: income, bills, spending and savings, with over-budget and unpaid bills flagged.
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Where these grocery numbers come from
Every month the U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes what it costs to eat a healthy diet at home at four price levels, called the USDA Food Plans. The costs are broken out by age and sex, because a 16-year-old boy eats a lot more than a 4-year-old. This calculator uses the September 2026 report. It adds up the cost for each person in your household, then applies USDA's own adjustment for household size: +20% for one person, +10% for two, +5% for three, none for four, −5% for five or six, and −10% for seven or more. Buying for one costs more per serving, and buying for a crowd costs less.
The numbers are U.S. averages for food you cook yourself. They don't include eating out, household supplies or alcohol, and they don't account for where you live. Use them as a benchmark, not a rule.
A quick example: a couple, both aged 20–50, cooking every meal at home. USDA's Moderate-cost plan comes to $398.40 + $336.40 = $734.80 a month. Add 10% for a two-person household and you get about $808 a month, or $186 a week. The Thrifty plan for the same couple is about $630 a month. If they eat five dinners out a week, the grocery number drops to roughly 16/21 of that, but the restaurant bill moves to another line of the budget.
How to pick a grocery budget
- Find your baseline. Add up the last two or three months of grocery receipts or card transactions and divide by the number of weeks. That's your real number.
- Compare it to the plans. If you're above the Liberal plan, there's usually easy money to find. If you're between Low-cost and Moderate-cost, you're in the range a lot of families aim for.
- Set a target a step below where you are, not three steps. Going from $1,500 to $1,350 a month is very doable. Going to $900 overnight usually lasts about two weeks.
- Split it by week. Most people shop weekly, so a weekly number is easier to stick to than a monthly one. The calculator shows both. Monthly = weekly × 4.333, the same way USDA does it.
What actually lowers the bill
- Plan dinners before you shop. Most overspending is the unplanned trip and the food that goes bad. Planning 4–5 dinners and shopping from a list does more than clipping coupons.
- Cook once, eat twice. Doubling a recipe for lunches costs little more than the original.
- Shop your pantry first. Build at least one meal a week around what's already in the cupboard and freezer.
- Watch the add-ons. Snacks, drinks and the "while I'm here" items are where a $120 list turns into a $170 receipt.
The meal planner below does the planning part for you: you pick the week's meals and it builds the grocery list, merges repeats and skips what you already have. If you want to see groceries next to the rest of your money, the free Monthly Budget Snapshot is a one-page budget you can start today.
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Questions
How much should I spend on groceries a month?
A fair benchmark is the USDA's food plans, which price a healthy diet made at home. For September 2026, the Thrifty plan for a woman aged 20–50 is about $254 a month and the Moderate-cost plan about $336, before the household-size adjustment. A single person adds 20% because buying for one costs more per serving. Enter your household above to get your own numbers.
How much should one person spend on groceries per week?
Using the USDA's September 2026 numbers with the 20% single-person adjustment, a man aged 20–50 cooking every meal at home lands around $88 a week on the Thrifty plan and about $110 on the Moderate-cost plan. A woman of the same age lands around $70 and $93. Eating some meals out lowers your grocery number.
What's the difference between the Thrifty, Low-cost, Moderate-cost and Liberal plans?
They're four USDA shopping lists that each meet nutrition guidelines at a different price. Thrifty is the cheapest. It's the one used to set SNAP benefits, and it takes a lot of cooking from scratch. Low-cost and Moderate-cost leave more room for convenience foods and brand names. Liberal is the most generous. None of them includes eating out.
Why is my real grocery bill higher or lower than this?
These are U.S. averages. Prices are higher in big cities, Alaska and Hawaii, and lower in some regions. The USDA lists also cover food only, so they leave out paper towels, cleaning supplies, toiletries, pet food and alcohol, which many people buy on the same receipt. If you count those separately, the comparison is a lot fairer.
How does 'meals made at home' change the numbers?
The USDA plans assume all 21 meals a week, plus snacks, come from your kitchen. If you eat 5 lunches at work or out, set this to 16 and the calculator scales the grocery estimate to 16/21 of the full amount. It's a straight-line estimate. Snacks and breakfasts tend to be cheaper than dinners, so treat it as a rough guide.