A $100/Week Grocery Plan for a Family of Four (Tested 4 Weeks)

If you've tried to keep a Singapore family of four fed on $100 a week, you know the feeling. You add three things to your trolley and you're already at $32. The number $100 feels less like a budget and more like a polite suggestion the supermarket isn't listening to.

But it's possible. We did it for 4 weeks straight as an experiment for this blog. Two adults, two kids (one primary school, one preschool). No takeaway. Two hawker meals across the month for sanity. The rest cooked at home.

Here's the actual plan, the actual receipts, and the boring tricks that made the difference.

The ground rules

• $100/week, average across 4 weeks. Some weeks slightly over, some under.
• Food only. Toiletries, cleaning, alcohol — separate budget.
• Two hawker meals a month allowed and accounted for separately at $32.
• One restaurant takeaway allowed at $40 — also separate.
• Real food. No "rice and soy sauce for a week" stunts.

The base shopping list (every week)

These items appeared every single week, with quantities adjusted slightly:

• White rice (2.5kg, FairPrice house brand) — $5.20
• Eggs (30s tray, Sheng Siong) — $7.40
• Chicken thigh (1.5kg, Sheng Siong) — $11
• Frozen mixed vegetables (1kg) — $4.20
• Tofu (4 packs) — $4
• Bread (wholemeal loaf + soft buns) — $5.80
• Milk (2L UHT) — $5
• Bananas (1kg) — $2.50
• Apples (1kg) — $4.20
• Onion, garlic, ginger — $3
• Tomatoes (500g) — $2.40
• Leafy greens (kang kong, chye sim, or bok choy) — $3.20

That's $58 of staples. Same every week. Boring. Effective.

The rotating $42

The remaining ~$42 went on rotating items so we didn't lose our minds eating the same things:

• Week 1: salmon (small fillet, on promo), cucumbers, yoghurt, peanut butter, oats, frozen prawns
• Week 2: lean pork mince, capsicum, mushrooms, cheese slices, pasta, canned tomato
• Week 3: whole chicken, potato, carrot, curry paste, coconut milk, oats
• Week 4: beef strips (small), broccoli, mango, hummus, pita, biscuits

This rotation gave us roughly 14 different home-cooked meals across the month, plus snacks and breakfasts.

Weekly totals (real receipts)

• Week 1: $97.40
• Week 2: $103.10
• Week 3: $94.80
• Week 4: $101.20

4-week average: $99.13/week. Slightly under target.

The boring tricks that did the work

• One protein on promo dictated the week. If chicken thigh was discounted, we built three meals around it. Followed the deal, not the recipe.
• Frozen vegetables. Cheaper than fresh per gram, last forever, and nobody can tell once they're stir-fried with garlic.
• Eggs are the best protein-per-dollar in Singapore. Run out of meal ideas? Fried rice with eggs. Done.
• Hawker breakfasts on weekends. $4 for two adults to share kaya toast and kopi at the right place. Cheaper than home, frankly.
• Cooked once, ate twice. Doubled portions on weeknight cooking and packed lunchboxes the next day instead of buying them.
• Used Tokku to plan. This is the unglamorous truth. We dumped the weekly list into the AI assistant, let it tell us where each item was cheapest that week, and adjusted. Roughly $12–18/week of the savings came from items being meaningfully cheaper at a different store than our default.

What this isn't

This isn't a $100/week plan if you have specific dietary needs (gluten-free, organic everything, halal-only premium meat) — those will push the number up by $20–40/week and that's fine. It's also not for households with hungry teenagers, who in our experience can eat a $100 budget by themselves.

But for an average SG family of four with kids under 10, this number is realistic with a little planning and a willingness to break supermarket loyalty.

If you want the bigger picture, read the real cost of groceries in Singapore, use the Tokku AI 90-second workflow, and compare eggs, milk and dairy prices.

→ Build your own weekly $100 plan with Tokku AI — tell it your family size and dietary preferences, and it'll generate a starting list.