How We Check Our Prices
How does Mami's Budget check its prices and figures?
Every number on this site comes from a named, published source: a federal statistical series, an official program table, or a dated retailer price check. Before a page publishes, the figures are transcribed from the source table, one worked example is recomputed by hand, and the source and its date are printed on the page. When a source publishes new numbers, the affected pages are updated to match. This page lists, source by source, exactly where each kind of figure on the site comes from.
Every number on this site has a source, a date, and a person responsible for it. That person is me, Jennifer Beckett, and this is the method I work to.
The rule I work by
No number goes on this site without a named source and a date. If I cannot point to the table, series, or agency page a figure came from, the figure does not publish. Where sources give a range or a median, I show the range or the median rather than dressing it up as a precise prediction for your family. And every calculator shows a worked example, computed by hand before publishing, so the math printed on the page can be checked against the math inside the tool.
Where each kind of number comes from
Grocery budgets. The USDA Food Plans, published monthly by the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, price a healthy diet at home for every age and sex at four budget levels: thrifty, low-cost, moderate, and liberal. Our grocery pages and the grocery budget calculator are built from those tables, using the same family-size adjustments the USDA prescribes. The plan month is printed on the page.
Grocery costs by state. The USDA plans are national, so our state grocery pages use the MIT Living Wage Calculator, which adjusts food costs to state and local price levels. Each state page shows the family figures from that calculator and names it as the source.
Childcare prices. Our childcare pages and calculators use the U.S. Department of Labor Women's Bureau National Database of Childcare Prices: median prices for center-based and home-based care, by age group, built from county data across the country. The current database vintage is the 2023 estimates, and our pages say so, because childcare medians move more slowly in official data than they do in real life. A median is a negotiating anchor: half of families pay more, half pay less.
Baby's first year. The first-year calculator takes its childcare line from the Department of Labor database above, state by state. The remaining lines (health care, feeding, diapers, gear, and clothing) use the published national figures named in the sources section of the calculator page, and the example on that page shows each line separately so you can replace any of them with your own quotes.
Benefits and eligibility. SNAP maximums come from the USDA Food and Nutrition Service allotment tables for the current federal fiscal year; they reset every October 1. WIC and other income limits are expressed against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services federal poverty guidelines for the year, at the percentage each program sets (WIC uses 185 percent). State-level programs (state earned income tax credits, energy assistance, unemployment maximums) come from the IRS, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration respectively, and our state guides link to the state agency that actually runs the program. Only the agency can approve an application; our screener compares your income with the published line.
Price trackers. Our tracker pages for eggs, milk, bread, and diapers are built on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Average Price data, the federal series that records what shoppers actually paid across U.S. cities each month. Where a tracker also shows a store price, it is a dated spot check of the retailer's own published price, and the page says when it was checked and warns that shelf prices vary by store and week.
Seasonal tools. The Thanksgiving, holiday, birthday, and back-to-school tools price their baskets from the USDA figures above and from retailer prices listed on each page. Where a tool uses a planning assumption instead of a statistic (for example, how much of a holiday budget typically goes to gifts), the page labels it as an assumption you can change.
How a price check actually works
The routine is boring on purpose. I open the source table or series, note its publication date and vintage, and transcribe the figures the page needs. I recompute one example by hand: a family of four on the thrifty plan, a month of infant care at the state median. Then the page is written with the source named and dated at the foot of the page, and the example printed next to the calculator so you can redo the arithmetic yourself. If the hand check and the tool disagree, the page does not publish until I find out why.
How often the numbers are updated
USDA food plans are monthly, and the grocery pages follow them. SNAP tables are annual, every October. The childcare database updates when the Department of Labor releases a new vintage, and the state pages are reviewed against it then. The price trackers refresh when the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes each month's average prices. Between scheduled updates, if a source issues a correction or a reader reports a mismatch, the affected page is checked and fixed out of cycle.
What these numbers cannot do
These are estimates for planning, built from averages and medians. Your store, your county, and your child's age will move your real bill up or down, sometimes a lot. A state median for childcare describes the middle of thousands of arrangements, not a quote for the center on your street. Nothing on this site is financial advice, and for decisions with real consequences (a lease, a job change, a benefits appeal), the official source and the agency itself outrank anything published here. Where this site and the official table disagree, believe the table, and then please tell me, because that is a bug.
If a number is wrong
Email [email protected] or use the contact page with the page address and the source you are comparing against. I check the figure against the published table; if the site is wrong, the page is corrected, and material corrections are noted on the page. Error reports from readers are the single most useful email this site receives.
Questions
Do you make up prices to fill a page? No. A figure that cannot be traced to a named source does not publish, and where a store price could not be verified, the tracker says so instead of estimating one.
Why does my store charge more than the tracker? The trackers show national averages across many cities, and shelf prices vary by region, store, and week. Treat the tracker as the trend line (are eggs rising or falling, and how fast) rather than a promise about your receipt.
Can I rely on the benefits screener? The screener compares your income with the published limits, which is the right first step. Approval depends on the full rules of each program and is decided only by the agency, which is why every benefits page links to the official application route.
Written by Jennifer Beckett, editor of Mami's Budget. See also our editorial standards.