Topic: How Much Does Food Cost in Your Country? - page 7. (Read 1227 times)

Some may have shared about the standard cost of living here in PH, but I just want to be specific that we all have different minimum wage per region. I live in a region where the minimum wage per day is around $6 per day or that's the total of a 9-5 job with only 1 day off per week.
That kind of earning is just enough for you to survive for you or a family consisting of 3-4 members, to eat 3 times daily.
I don't want to put a specific cost of meals, rents, bills, and everything along these line, but I could only say, you'll live a comfortable life here in PH if you're earning $1k per month being single, if you're a family man you'll need at least $1500 - $2000 combined if your wife has a job.

I'm from Mexico, and let me tell you, the food here is absolutely amazing and won't leave your wallet crying. You can grab a mouthwatering street taco for just 10 pesos, which is like 50 cents! And if you're feeling adventurous in the kitchen, ingredients like tomatoes, onions, and cilantro for a pico de gallo recipe won't cost you an arm and a leg either. So, if you ever visit Mexico, prepare to indulge in delicious food without breaking the bank.

We are three in the family, and our daily consumption including snacks is around $15 every day, which does not include the food supplements and my parent's maintenance.  In my country the minimum salary ranges from


Luckily I am living in a city that makes my salary is a little above the minimum wage of NCR.

The price of the commodity is really high so I need several extra sources of income to meet our monthly needs.

Nothing is impossible, we are living in Indonesia bruh, everything can be done quite easily when money is not enough.
I live in a village and also close to the city, the average monthly income of factory workers is around $150 ($200 is too much and this is only for office workers or workers in government or companies that follow the minimum wage standards).
Even those who work in private companies can only make $100 per month.

It's quite impossible to live on $100/month, but it happens and if it's enough, it depends on how you manage the money.

The cost of living is just a number, it depends on how you manage it properly.
There are many kind people who provide free breakfast etc. and that is a help for those who earn less than $100/month.

So each region in Indonesia has different income levels.
In big cities, the income is high but the cost of living is high.
In the villages the income is low but the cost of living is very cheap.

Imagine that for only Rp.5000 or $0.30 you can enjoy rice with side dishes to relieve your hunger.

Here in the United States the average cost of an average meal differs a good bit.  It really depends on what type of meal you're looking for.  Also, are we speaking breakfast, lunch or dinner? 

I would say on average a breakfast costs around $5-7, lunch around $8-10 and dinner around $15 or so.  Now this differs greatly depending on where at in the country you plan on getting the meal from.  A dinner downtown chicago will cost a heck of a lot more than one in say Carbondale Illinois, a small little college town. 

Well, not all people are like you or us and get a good profit because we all know how to get a good income if an individual is in the field of cryptocurrency.

Here in our country, all citizens are concerned about the price of goods available. Right now, the vegetables that are sold are only the ones that are expensive in the market. Just vegetable ingredients, no pork or chicken—we spent a lot right away.

So what's happening is that instead of adding other vegetables like potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, and others, what I've done is that I don't have those that I mentioned; I only cook pork or chicken; that's all I do. I. We budget our money, and then we also budget the cooking of the dish that we will eat at the end of the day.

The cost of living for most people may vary and depends on how much income they get from work because usually the cost of living will be balanced with our respective incomes. You are free to ask anything, but are there any conclusions that we can discuss here to provide a solution to the problem?

Every day I buy rice for lunch because my house is far from work, generally the price of rice for one pack in the area where I live is between $1 to $2 because it depends on the fish or side dishes you order. Likewise regarding income and perhaps most follow the regional UMP, but for freelance work such as construction workers, employee salaries in shops and other jobs range from $191.02 and below.

I also want to know why you intend to know this price and whether it is related to the increase in the price of goods which continues to increase in the increasingly difficult economic situation in society.

This is not bad since its a Third world country, despite having underdevelopment your country manage to have low cost of goods than mine, I will share with you how much it will cost in dollar to get some of the things you listed. Today, in my country, the local currency is ₦1100 to a dollar, that is high right? To tell you that the highest domination of the country is a ₦1000. In Nigeria currently, a bag of Rice is about ₦56,000 right now and if I'm to convert that to dollar, that's going to be $50.91 for 50kg and for every KG of rice you have to spend $1.02 to have a KG of rice, almost twice of the amount you buy in your country been a third world while mine is developing country.

A kg of beef is around $3 from my conversion,  and a liter of refine vegetable oil cost $1.4 here and these prices are general except for the big men that like luxury life that prefer to buy things in super market, such market are extra costly because of there fanciness and packaging but if you check an beverage shop or central markets, the prices are all the same and slightly lower than that if you go to nothern part of the country.

The minimum wage in Nigeria is ₦30,000 and conversion to dollar, that is equivalent to $27.3, we are not too different from you guys and yet my country call herself the giant of Africa, our government need to do better.

don't know your monthly income but I'm sure it's very difficult for us to maintain 50% for savings and investments, we know the impact of inflation has worsened the condition of countries everywhere, almost all aspects of prices have experienced drastic increases so we can only save around 15-20% per month, Sometimes I think about looking for another half-day job for additional income but job vacancies are limited due to the impact of many people losing their jobs during the pandemic, but however I will try to get other income to increase savings funds for my family's needs.

Besides depending on your income you could afford more expensive food other people may not be able to afford, so I prefer to look at things in terms of percentage, so when I think about all the costs I have to pay to live my life and the amount I get paid I only need to spend 50% of my monthly salary to sustain myself and any other related expenses, which allows me to save half of my income which I eventually invest in bitcoin.

Yeah there are differences, and that is why the OP came up with this question to gather each users from different countries and know each of their responses. I'm sure that each of us knows how much is the cost of their meal even if they are not the ones who do the grocery because they can still get curious and ask that person in charge and/or see their receipts. By there, they can now calculate it easily and share it here on this thread.

It's only one thing which is food that we are talking about here so we can disregard the cost of other services. But other than attracting a customer, may be the owner's aim is also to help provide cheap food for the people? I already saw or heard a food business like this. They are too kind and I like that personality.

I am from a Third World country. Price of foods went up a lot because of the inflation happening all over the world. So here's a detail for food cost in my country (Bangladesh). Maybe it will be hard to compare a Third World country's price with USD but I will try to explain it with some example.

So the average income here in Bangladesh is around $243 US dollar. You can rent a house with $100 plus per month. Excluding the additional fees. Depending on the house you want to rent it could also be from $50 to $100. So this is an average house rental cost.

If you want a decent meal then you need to at least spend $3 to $5. If you want to have something more than average then you need at least $10 to $15 for that. That's just prepared food served in food hotels.

1 kg beef meat will cost you $7 plus.
1 kg rice will cost you $0.63(+/-)
1L soybean oil will cost you $2.5 (+/-)

All the stuff like vegetable and ingredients for cooking could cost minimum of $10 to $15. Could vary from time to time based on market condition.

Minimum wage in Bangladesh is $25. So you can imagine how most of the people are suffering and how much it costs for us to get the food.

In my region according to those who are into business they said the reason why food price keeps  getting high Is because of the increase of price of petrol which many vehicles use for transportation of goods and food stuffs. But I don't think this is a good reason why food price keeps increasing.  I think people are using the price of petrol,  inflation and the dollar price as an advantage to make more money from common  people.  I feel the government can still do something to help to reduce the high price of food stuff but it is so bad they to see that they are not making any effort to make things better.

The cost of a standard meal in my country depends on where you are having the meal, which is your location. So I will give cost for comparison under a well packaged restaurant where you can buy and eat your food there, and then a road side food vendor, where you just buy your food and take it home.

I will use our popular menu white rice and Chicken Tomato stew, spaghetti and then Beans, soft drinks which are common meals and drinks in the menu of the well packaged restaurants and the road side vendors.

Well Packaged Restaurant
Cost of a plate of white rice and Chicken Tomato stew - $6.23
Cost of a plate of Spaghetti and a protein of your choice - $6.23
Cost of a plate of Beans - $1.12 per portion, the more portions you need, the more the price.
Cost of soft drink - $1.25

If someone buys food three times daily for 30 days (3 x $6.23 x 30), that is a total of $560.7 which means that you have to be earning way more than the minimum wage to afford three meals a day for thirty days in a well packaged restaurants.

Road side food vendor
Cost of a plate of white rice and Chicken Tomato stew - $1.25
Cost of a plate of Spaghetti and a protein of your choice - $1.25
Cost of a plate of Beans - $0.37 for a small size, price increases if you want more.
Cost of soft drink - $0.31

If someone buys food three times daily for 30 days (3 x $1.25 x 30), that is a total of $112.5, which is above the minimum wage, so someone who earns the minimum wage or less will not be able to afford three meals per day for days, they will have to starve on some days.

Minimum wage as at 1st September 2023 was increased officially from $41.10 to $80.95 on paper, but some people are still receiving the old rates of $41.10 and some even less than that because some employers do not care about minimum wage.

Yes that's right. Every country is experiencing a recession, especially with war in several countries, of course this will have a big impact, with food prices increasing in every country so that whatever salary you receive will not be able to cover your basic needs in a month. So when you receive your salary, you don't have enough savings because at the end of every month you always experience a lack of money.

In my country there is also a very rapid increase, of course because of the recession that continues to hit every country. Luckily, those who live in villages don't need to buy vegetables because they can just pick them in the garden so they can cover whatever their salary is. The average salary in my country is $200 and daily living expenses for food and transportation is $15, of course a salary of $200 is not enough for a month's needs and I am lucky to be able to earn extra income from this forum.

Not all daily day needed I buy on the market and my wife hobbies is cooking to make more efficiency for monthly outcome, I will list my daily day needed regarding with my income stable above $250 in monthly, note I am farmer and not spending money to buy rice because its enough for one year from my farm harvesting.

• Fish and some time I buy shrimp with cost around 3$/Kg
• Electricity one month around $10
• Water spending $4
• Chicken eggs around $3/Kg

but some time have unpredictable outcome and keep that in my list.

10 USD can probably feed me for about 1 day and then have the leftovers of that day feed me up to lunch but that is if I were to use that 10 USD to buy myself the ingredients for the dish I plan to make since homecook meals are much cheaper and the portions are much bigger than those food that you're ordering on a restaurant. If I look at my local currency though, I can't help but feel dissatisfied because the salary in my country hasn't improved for a long time even though a recent raise in wages were approved, the inflation is evening it out so there's nothing to gain out of it.

Maybe it's not that important, but for me it's important because I can find out prices in other countries based on each person's experience where they live. That's interesting and a note for me. I have a prediction that in the next few years there will probably be a food shortage, and if I were still here I would be asking the same thing in the next few years.


Indonesia? It sounds foreign to my ears, maybe I need to open a map to find out where the country is. LOL  

Since inflation is going higher each day, we should also expect that the purchasing rate of food items should also inflate in price, people are finding it more difficult because food items are getting expensive daily, the only means to survive out of these is to go i to agricultural farming business or for our own self and family sustainability, this will reduce the cost of what we buy or spend on food items, but on a general sense, food items shouldn't be expensive to that extent that people will find buying them unaffordable, everyone should have access to what to eat daily as long as they can afford to work.

There are websites that can help get the general idea based on inputs of people who have actually lived in various countries and cities. I've used Numbeo for that multiple times, both just for fun and when planning to relocate somewhere. I think the prices are fairly accurate, but estimated monthly costs are not, they are way higher than people can normally afford.
Based on personal experience, drinks and a couple of main courses cost around $25. If you shop for food, $550 is enough for food for two people per month (but of course it's pretty subjective and depends a lot on what sort of things you buy). I can't tell you the prices for one person because I don't live alone, and prices for two people are normally lower than for one because you can buy bigger packs of things, cook meals for two, etc. As for average monthly income after taxes, it's around $550 per person.