Just realized my grandma's grocery budget from 1982 was $38 a week

I found her old budget notebook in a box from my mom's garage in Dayton last weekend. She wrote down every single trip to the Kroger on Salem Ave, and in 1982 she fed a family of five on $38 a week. I looked it up and that's about $120 in today's money, which is honestly less than what I spend just on myself now. I typed my own numbers into a spreadsheet to compare and laughed out loud at the difference. The wild part is she still had a line for coffee and a line for my grandpa's cigars, so it wasn't like she cut everything fun. I keep wondering how much of the gap is prices and how much is me being lazy about meal planning. Anyone here ever dig up an old budget from family and compare it to yours?

1 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

1 Comment

joel_hall171mo ago

Comparing 1982 prices to now is kind of unfair, since wages, farming, and how food gets to the store have all changed a ton since then. Pretty sure if she were shopping today she'd be spending a lot more than $120 too.

7