New data proves what women have always known: Men are bad shoppers

The next time you are bored, head over to TikTok and search for #HusbandGroceryShopping. The results lean a little hard into "clueless men" tropes, but they are funny. In one video, a woman laments that her husband's grocery haul "gives me a heart attack every time." In another, a woman says her husband seems to have picked up " a bunch of random snacks lol no meals." One popular theme: women realizing they've left their phones on silent after sending their partners to the grocery store, only to find streams of desperate, confused mid-shopping texts asking what to do.

Of course, not all men are complete noobs when it comes to roaming the aisles, but couples may want to do some extra inspection of what's being bought and how much is being spent when the male half goes to the store. The issue may not just be that men are buying things at random — they may also be inadvertently breaking the budget.

A recent National Bureau of Economic Research working paper examining the impact of remote work on shopping found that people working from home increase their spending. People buy more products, get a wider range of products, and move toward pricier products, eschewing discounts. The wrinkle: The increase in grocery prices paid is concentrated among married households and, more specifically, when the person working from home is male. When a man switches to remote work (and, in turn, takes on more shopping duties), the family spends about 5% more on similar products. While that may not sound like a ton, overall prices in the US are up by more than 25% since 2020, and every little bit counts.

Stephanie Johnson, an assistant finance professor at Rice University and one of the paper's authors, says there could be a lot of factors in play here. It may be that men are less experienced at doing the shopping, so they're less familiar with prices and deals. Men may spend less overall time shopping — say because they're on their phones or on a lightning-fast trip to the local store — so there's less of a window to browse and compare numbers.

"It could also be that they're somehow different in terms of the just general level of price sensitivity," she says. "Maybe they just don't care as much."

She adds that the price effects are long-lived — spending doesn't dip back down over time — and that they hold across online and in-person shopping.

They don't have the same experience, and they're eminently less disciplined because they're used to shopping for themselves.

The NBER study isn't the only piece of data pointing to men's lackluster shopping skills. A 2023 YouGov survey found that women tend to be more price-conscious than men about basics such as groceries, clothing, and shoes. Women are often more cautious shoppers and more attuned to inflation. That doesn't mean the "pink tax" doesn't exist, where products specifically for women are often priced higher. But it does mean that many women have been socialized to comparison shop, follow prices, and compare discounts on items such as groceries and family basics. Men tend to "hunt" when they shop: They want to get in and out, which may mean trading price for efficiency.

"Women come in having done the grocery shopping and tend to do it reasonably quickly and reasonably disciplined, whereas men are often doing some of the shopping in grocery and in drug stores where they are much more clueless," says Paco Underhill, the founder and CEO of Envirosell, a retail consulting firm, and the author of multiple books on consumer behavior and psychology. "They spend longer, they get lost easier. And yes, they do tend to spend more money. There's more impulse purchases."

Underhill chalks it up to who each gender is accustomed to shopping for. Historically, women have shopped for themselves… on top of their kids, their partners, and even their parents. Men, on the other hand, typically only have one person in mind.

"They don't have the same experience, and they're eminently less disciplined because they're used to shopping for themselves," he says.

While household chores are getting more equitable, it remains true that women are more likely to be in charge of groceries, and men are in charge of the household's broader finances.

An oops-filled grocery trip can get an eyeroll or laugh from a partner, but it can also cause conflict. Women may come to feel their husbands are engaging in "weaponized incompetence," where they feign helplessness to avoid responsibility for a task and get someone else to do it for them. Of course, disagreements over money and spending can take many forms. Some people hide purchases — known as financial infidelity — in order to keep their partners in the dark. Historically, women have been dinged for that one more often.

If you're not doing the household shopping, you lose sight of how much things cost.

Jenny Olson, an assistant marketing professor at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, tells me people tend to marry their financial opposites because they dislike their own spending habits and seek balance. Eventually, that leads to disagreement, which couples can find hard to discuss.

"We tend to expect that talking with our partners about money is going to be a lot worse than it is," she says. "We don't think we're going to find common ground or a conclusion."

The end hypothetical result in this husband working-from-home situation: The husband gets a taste of handling the shopping and is a bit lost on where to start. And when the wife realizes he's spending too much on toilet paper, pasta sauce, and bread, she doesn't want to say anything about it.

"If you're not doing the household shopping, you lose sight of how much things cost," Olson says.

On Reddit, women's frustrations can mount. Browsing some subreddits for working moms and frugal people, you can find women complaining about their partners failing to take on the mental load of writing grocery lists, forgetting basic items when they go out, and only shopping for themselves. For the frustrated ladies out there, there is hope. Practice makes perfect, and husbands may get the hang of things over time. One user recently posted, expressing her joy over her "un-frugal husband" for buying marked-down lamb and spotting a sale on rib roast, instead of employing his usual "want it, grab it" approach. "I feel so proud of my dear spendthrift being cagey and snagging us some deals!" she wrote.

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Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.