But that’s the thing - your grocery bill may not be out of whack at all! It completely depends on your priorities and income.
I don’t think we can judge ourselves by what other people spend. I’m not interested in feeling ashamed into spending less than I can afford. That doesn’t seem useful and may lead to a reduced quality of life for me.
Oh, I agree re priorities and income! I’m pretty immune to the judging thing on spend. Everyone’s situation is different and I love seeing the big vacations as well as seeing the budgets some get by on. It’s good perspective and appeals to my frugal midwestern roots, even if I don’t live that way right now.
I do find it really helpful to understand where the large divergences are. I know our house spend is significantly above average, but those are, for now, fixed costs and we live our home at this stage of our life. I think our property tax bill alone is higher than some annual spend! So on the more discretionary stuff, it’s useful to understand what’s more ‘normal’ and what we could get by on, if we needed/wanted to.