The last grocery receipt of the year went into the spreadsheet this morning: $38.16 at Aldi for milk, bananas, tortillas and a bag of shredded cheddar, because three kids on winter break go through cheese like it's a hobby. That puts December at $1,283, and I'm calling it closed. If somebody needs milk tomorrow, it goes on January's tab. Bookkeeper's privilege.
Our 2025 grocery total for a family of five came to $13,741. That's about $264 a week against a budget of $250, so we ran $741 over for the year, a little more than $14 a week. I'm not thrilled about it, and I'm not embarrassed about it either. Here's where it went.
What counts, and what doesn't
The grocery line covers everything we buy at a grocery store to eat at home, plus basic household items like paper towels, dish soap and trash bags. It includes Aldi, Kroger, Walmart, Costco, H-E-B, the occasional Tom Thumb run, and the meal kits we tested, since they replaced groceries the weeks they came. It does not include diapers (about $52 a month for Rosie, tracked on their own line), restaurants and takeout (about $160 a month), or State Fair corny dogs, which I filed under entertainment and nobody can stop me.
I've logged every receipt since January 2022. It takes about five minutes at the kitchen table every Sunday, right before the next week's dinners go on the paper plan on the fridge.
2025, month by month
- January: $1,071 ($247 a week). Freezer clean-out month, and one of only two months under budget.
- February: $1,034 ($259 a week). The lowest total, but only because February is short.
- March: $1,102 ($254 a week). Lent Fridays and the start of Wyatt's baseball season.
- April: $1,118 ($258 a week). Eggs at $4.67 a dozen, an Easter ham, and the first HelloFresh boxes.
- May: $1,131 ($261 a week). Two more HelloFresh boxes, Wyatt's tenth birthday taco bar and two class parties.
- June: $1,187 ($274 a week). School out, three kids home for lunch, and groceries for Galveston.
- July: $1,218 ($281 a week). The Fourth of July cookout and the full force of summer snacking.
- August: $1,252 ($289 a week). The chest freezer died, we restocked it, and school lunches started.
- September: $1,092 ($252 a week). Back to a routine, even with two Home Chef boxes in the mix.
- October: $1,079 ($249 a week). Our best month of the year against budget.
- November: $1,174 ($271 a week). Thanksgiving week alone was $398.
- December: $1,283 ($296 a week). Tamales, cookie plates, Christmas and the start of winter break.
The highs, the lows and the meal kits
Summer costs us more every year because breakfast and lunch for three kids move from the cafeteria and the lunchboxes into our kitchen, and the snack drawer empties itself by Wednesday. June through August averaged about $281 a week. August was the worst month of the year, and roughly $210 of it was replacing what we lost when the old freezer quit in a 108-degree garage. I still think about that ground beef.
December was the other spike, and I saw it coming. Four dozen tamales ($72), twelve cookie plates ($54) and the extra groceries that come with kids home from school all landed in the same three weeks.
The quiet months were January and October, the only two under $250 a week. January was clean-out month. October was just a normal, boring month with no holidays and no trips, and five pounds of taco meat did a lot of heavy lifting.
The meal kits deserve their own line. HelloFresh in April and May cost $460.04 for four boxes, and Home Chef in September cost $189.27 for two. That's $649.31, most of the $741 we ran over. Subtracting it outright wouldn't be fair, since we'd have eaten something those nights anyway. But if I swap in what those eighteen dinners would have cost from Aldi at our usual $2.75 a serving, about $248, the year lands roughly $340 over budget instead of $741.
Speaking of that $2.75: home-cooked dinners averaged about that per serving all year, roughly $14 a night for the five of us. It's the number I watch most, because it's the one I control most.
Next year's budget
Starting in January, our weekly budget goes from $250 to $265, or about $13,780 for the year. Raising a budget can feel like admitting defeat, but a budget we beat in only two months out of twelve isn't really a budget. It's a wish.
Some of it is prices. Ground beef was $5.29 a pound at Aldi in April and it's $5.99 on my latest receipt. Coffee went from $8.99 a canister to $10.49. Eggs came back down, which helped, but Wyatt eats more every month, and Rosie has gone from nibbling to having opinions.
A few things already on the 2026 calendar: the usual January freezer clean-out, one more meal kit test (EveryPlate, the cheapest one, starts next Monday), and more bulk meat now that we own a vacuum sealer. My hours at the preschool also go up to 22 a week in January, so office-day dinners have to get even more automatic.
The new tab in the spreadsheet is already set up, named 2026, with $265 typed into the budget column for every week. The first receipt is going to be milk.
