<prompt> Human: A lot of people here seem to ask about food budgets, spending little on food, etc.I have itemized my roommates and my receipts for the six months, January through June of this year, by category. We are three single guys in our 20s. We consider we eat pretty healthy and probably do eat healthier than almost all single guys in their 20s.Some observations: - Average of 90person, per month - We have guests over frequently - We have fruitvegetables often - We shop most of the time based on, whats a good deal? especially fresh produce - We live in the midwest - We feel we eat quite luxuriously and normally cook our own meals - We make our own bread often - We buy in bulk at Sams Club and when items are on sale meat especially is almost always bought on sale. We bought 30 boxes of brownie mix 0.99 a box because its normally 2.50 and we use this somewhat often... - Chickenpork are considerably cheaper than beef - Discounted about to go bad be used breadvegetables can be great deals -- especially bread, since you can freeze itHere is a link to a google doc. There are also two levels of categories, one more detailed than the other. Almost all the frozen food we buy is frozen vegetables.Feel free to ask questions. Hopefully this is helpful to someone trying to save money on food.EDITI am fully aware location affects food cost. Most cost of living calculators put where Im at about 20-25 cheaper for groceries than NYCSFDC. Apparently Texas is almost 10 cheaper than here, somehow.The key factors however for low food costs are the above list. Simply being very aware of your food cost when eatingpurchasing food and consistently finding solid sales can make a large difference.This isnt to suggest this sort of budget will allow you to keep your current eating style and just magically reduce your food costs. If you like really fancy meals or food which is low food value per dollar, this sort of cost per month is not for you.  <response>: So made a few changes for my version.In your Raw Data Sheet I made B2:B a drop down list using data validation and pointing to A2:A on the Category Key sheet.I also made C2 on your Raw Data sheet this: VLOOKUPB2,Category Key!A2:B,2,FALSEThen I copypasted that down the rest of column C.This way when you select milk, or curry or whatever from the dropdown list in column B it will automagically find the category dairy, canned, etc in column C. And as long as the category is accurate you are set.Finally I added a running total to the raw data sheet and then pointed the pivot table reports to that number when they calculate percentages, that allows better formatting and growth of the pivot tables. So for example cell C2 on the Large Categories sheet is: B2Raw Data!F1 