<prompt> Human: Hello fine folks of PF!Ive been reading many personal finance articles, and all seem to agree on the topic of not spending more than 30 of your income on housing. At present, my husband and I are both grad students, so we are breaking this advice until I begin work full-time in the new year. We live in Vancouver, Canada, and accepted this as our temporary status quo while were both students. I was wondering if there is a similarly agreed upon percentage for groceriestoiletries? We eat breakfast and dinner at home every day, with the exception of 1 dinner out every other week for a date night. We do not buy pop, cookies, dessert, or other junk food, and we shop the deals at the store and buy our produce from fruit n veggie stands because its cheaper. We bring lunch to campus every day - either leftovers from dinner or some weeks we buy bulk buns, luncheon meat, and sprouts for sandwiches.We havent specifically tracked our grocery receipts, but we will start to once we come to learn what percentage we should be aiming to meet. Thanks for all your help, everyone! Reading this sub helped me successfully save money for grad school and plan our budget wedding! :  <response>: Percentage rules dont make sense. A person making 1 million is certainly wasting their money by spending 20 times as much on meals as a person making 50k. If they want to waste their money, thats fine, but its certainly not a rule one should aspire to. Additionally, a percentage rule is a great way to permitencourage bloating of expenses as you make more money rather than actually having to justify increases in those expenses. If you get a 30 raise, you shouldnt just increase your expenses by 30 too.It makes more sense to figure out what the minimum you could spend on each thing is. Then figure out how much you have left over after that. Then choose what proportion of that leftover money you want to split between those things to make them above minimum.For example, maybe the bare minimum of all expenses is 700month and youre aiming to put 100month in savings and youre making 1000month. Then above the bare minimum i.e. shitty apartment, eating rice and beans, lowest internet or just internet through your cell phone, etc., you decide where to use that extra 200 to level up the things most important to you. Maybe one person puts more of that extra money toward great internet and another puts it toward better food. Thats a lifestyle choice. Its fine that one person is spending a greater percentage on food than another person. The percentage doesnt really matter. The total matters. 