An estimated one in three American households has to carefully plan their budgets and spend accordingly. Budget-allocation and spending-behavior models often implicitly assume that budget-constrained shoppers are knowledgeable about the total price of their shopping basket as they shop (Bénabou...

Although almost one in three U.S. households shops on a budget, it remains unclear whether and how shoppers track their in-store spending to stay within those budgets. A field study and two laboratory studies offer four key generalizations about budget shoppers in grocery stores: (1) They...