As Ozempic’s popularity soared in the early 2020s, its eye-popping cost — more than $1,000 for a month’s supply, in some cases — made headlines. With more GLP-1 options now on the market, broader insurance coverage for the drugs to treat additional conditions and the proliferation of cheaper compounded versions, prices have slowly begun to come down, putting the medications within reach for more people
For those self-paying for the weight loss versions of the medications, one month of Wegovy now costs between $349 and $499, depending on the dose, while Zepbound’s prices now range from $299 to $449 for four weeks of doses.
Meanwhile, GLP-1 drugs are changing the way people shop and eat. They helped fuel the protein-maxxing craze, triggered what some have called a “structural disruption” to the food and beverage industry, and even changed what ends up in people’s grocery carts. Within six months of starting the medications, people cut their supermarket spending by 5.3%, while savory snack purchases dropped by more than 11%.
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I’ve been reporting on GLP-1 medications for years now and have interviewed dozens of people who have taken the medication. If there’s one thing that’s become clear, it’s that when the medications work as hoped, they set in motion a cascade of changes in people’s lives. Controlled blood sugar and weight loss are just the beginning for many people, who find their cravings for less nutritious snacks fade away, their desire to drink alcohol ebbs and their healthier habits and routines become easier to stick to.
The same goes for their personal finances: The cost of GLP-1s themselves is only the first of many budgetary changes that come with the weekly shot.
The associate dean saving thousands on takeout
When I first spoke to Michael Donnelly-Boylen in 2025, the 52-year-old had a new lease on life — literally. He’d felt so long that he was fighting a losing battle against his health issues that he was “preparing for death,” Donnelly-Boylen told me. Meanwhile, he and his husband were spending as much as $75 a day on delivery orders for lunch, dinner and sometimes breakfast. On the rare occasion that he or his husband did go grocery shopping, their haul was “almost entirely snacks,” Donnelly-Boylen says. “Maybe we’d buy eggs and milk, but a lot of that was just to bake goodies; it wasn’t for good use.”
Then he started taking Mounjaro — and his appetite, eating habits and spending changed.
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Now, Donnelly-Boylen only uses meal delivery services to order healthy, protein-rich foods to his hotel when he travels. That amounts to about $2,000 saved per month. It more than covers the “bougie” groceries he buys now (though, he does still get them via Instacart — “I don’t like the carts and the people, it’s just madness,” Donnelly-Boylen says). The foods he stocks in his fridge aren’t cheap, but they’re packed with nutrients and contain far less fat and fewer ultraprocessed ingredients than what Donnelly-Boylen used to eat. “If you told me two years ago that my favorite snack would be cottage cheese with berries, I would’ve told you you’re crazy — but that’s my life these days,” he says.
Donnelly-Boylen was also able to quit taking other prescriptions,including his blood pressure medication, and he’s lost virtually all interest in alcohol (which he previously spent about $200 a month on). But of course there are new expenses — including an air fryer, blender and a soft serve machine to support his new healthy cooking habits
Then there were the clothes. As Donnelly-Boylen started losing weight, his clothing size quickly went down. And each new size meant buying at least enough new clothes to look professional at work events. Eventually, though, he reached his husband’s lower weight and started wearing his hand-me-downs. Donnelly-Boylen’s husband had gone up in size, so he started taking a GLP-1 drug too and began losing weight. So the pair keep about half of their clothes in a storage unit. “Now I shop in the storage unit,” says Donnelly-Boylen.
In total, the savings — especially on takeout — mean that Donnelly-Boylen’s monthly spending is down by almost $2,000. But there’s a catch. While his own GLP-1 is covered by insurance and costs him just $25 a month, his husband’s medication is not, and costs $330 per month. “The savings that I got, a lot of that is being eaten by [the cost of] his medication,” says Donnelly-Boylen.
The stroke survivor spending on travel and fashion
After ShantaQuilette Carter-Williams suffered a stroke in her early 40s, her doctor said her weight was putting her life at risk and recommended a GLP-1. But her insurance wouldn’t cover it, so she’d have to pay $1,600 a month out of pocket. “I was like, ‘I’m gonna die because I can’t afford that,'” Carter-Williams told Yahoo in a previous interview. But then she found out she had type 2 diabetes, a diagnosis that many GLP-1 users have told me is both a blessing and a curse. No one wants a potentially life-threatening illness, but it did mean her insurance would cover Ozempic, with a co-pay of just $25.
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Food has always been — and remains — an important way for Carter-Williams and her family to connect. But instead of DoorDashing meals, regularly eating three-course dinners out with her husband and getting snacks delivered from grocery stores, Carter-Williams now shops at Sprouts and has memberships to healthiermeal delivery services, including <a href="https://shopping.yahoo.com/rdlw?merchantId=20717b5a-69bf-4a68-bd00-3c23ebeff6a2&siteId=us-lifestyle&pageId=1p-autolink&contentUuid=2d45a5e0-fecc-4ec3-8df2-0c1291b5cef4&featureId=text-link&merchantName=Gardencup&custData=eyJzb3VyY2VOYW1lIjoiV2ViLURlc2t0b3AtVmVyaXpvbiIsInN0b3JlSWQiOiIyMDcxN2I1YS02OWJmLTRhNjgtYmQwMC0zYzIzZWJlZmY2YTIiLCJsYW5kaW5nVXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly9nYXJkZW5jdXAuY29tLz9zcnNsdGlkPUFmbUJPb29UcDlQbEwxSHBYTXl4STRXT1hNdTQ0YXdOcmtpWHp1U2FYT1dvenVUT0Njb09LYkpkIiwiY29udGVudFV1aWQiOiIyZDQ1YTVlMC1mZWNjLTRlYzMtOGRmMi0wYzEyOTFiNWNlZjQiLCJvcmlnaW5hbFVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vZ2FyZGVuY3VwLmNvbS8_c3JzbHRpZD1BZm1CT29vVHA5UGxMMUhwWE15eEk0V09YTXU0NGF3TnJraVh6dVNhWE9Xb3p1VE9DY29PS2JKZCJ9&signature=AQAAAUWJD7NJc9erE9oVET9Vk3Qfp5WKkIvLYokGVhRHf4Qd&gcReferrer=https%3A%2F%2Fgardencup.com%2F%3Fsrsltid%3DAfmBOooTp9PlL1HpXMyxI4WOXMu44awNrkiXzuSaXOWozuTOCcoOKbJd&refurl=lifestyle-supernovaArticleRecsDedupe_ssr&yMarket=us&yLocale=en-us&ga_measurement_id=G-B40QGCQW3G” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>Gardencup. The individual grocery items might be more expensive, but she estimates she still saves several hundred dollars a month on food just by eating less. Carter-Williams and her husband still treat themselves to dinner out, but she says, “My appetite is not as big, and it’s more managed.”
One look at Carter-Williams on social media and it’s clear: She’s a woman with her own style. “The girlies love the clothes; bigger or smaller, that’s right,” she says. But plus-size clothing brands were often expensive. After taking a GLP-1 (Carter-Williams went off hers in February of 2025, but has maintained her weight loss), she can now buy clothes from more affordable retailers. “I can shop at a lot of different stores economically that I couldn’t before,” allowing her to buy more items she loves without a bigger hit to her wallet.
Along with new shopping destinations, Carter-Williams’s improved health has made her want to travel to new places. With her weight and key health measures under control, she was able to take fewer medications and wanted to make the most of her newfound energy. First stop: Costa Rica for zip-lining and canyoning (though, she later realized, these adrenaline-pumping activities are still high-risk for stroke survivors and those with heart conditions)
Surprisingly, traveling to new parts of the world hasn’t increased her vacation spending. “When we traveled internationally, we used to get business class so you could lay down,” Carter-Williams says. “But that costs a lot more, right? And I would have to do that because I couldn’t fit comfortably in a [standard cabin] chair.” A first-class seat on a flight to Turkey earlier this year would have cost Carter-Williams $11,000, she says. But she opted for economy. “I can literally comfortably stretch my legs out and do all those things that I didn’t realize [were] an issue until they weren’t an issue,” she says.
The plus-size influencer who’s been freed from the ‘fat tax’
Andy Neal rose to internet fame for taking “stupid hikes for [his] stupid mental health.” His therapist had recommended he take up hiking to help him recover from his binge eating disorder. Neal is also a filmmaker. His footage of the gorgeous trails he was walking, paired with his mildly self-deprecating humor and totally unironic joy, caught the attention of major brands, including Nike and REI. That marked the launch of a new phase of his career as a plus-size model and influencer. But when brands weren’t giving him free items, “the plus-size stores were so prohibitively expensive,” Neal tells Yahoo.
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Despite his active lifestyle, Neal’s weight remained consistently high. Long hikes left him debilitatingly sore. By adding time in the gym and making changes to his diet, he managed to lose 40 pounds, but the scale wouldn’t drop below 360 pounds. After some initial skepticism, Neal decided to try a GLP-1 medication in June 2025. Within six months, he’d lost 100 pounds.
The medication costs him $199 for a four-week supply of shots. “We definitely had to make some adjustments” in terms of finances, Neal says. He and his wife combed through their subscriptions — canceling streaming services they didn’t use much and Neal’s $60-per-month LinkedIn Premium subscription, which served its purpose maybe once a year — to make room in their budget for his tirzepatide. The cost has since gone up for his dose, but “it’s fine — the way it’s changed my life, I don’t mind paying for it,” Neal says.
He estimates that the medication has slashed his personal food spending by about half. But, with a growing 13-year-old daughter who’s into basketball, the family’s overall meal budget is about the same — it just consists of a lot more healthy groceries and far fewer snacks or takeout meals. And they still pay for their $110 monthly gym membership, “but I’m using it much more consistently,” says Neal. “I used to say it was a monthly fat tax.”
As for his wardrobe spending? Like Carter-Williams, Neal is spending less per item, but he hasn’t exactly saved money. “My wife gets onto me because, before, I couldn’t go into a store and buy whatever I wanted, so I’m trying things stylewise that I couldn’t before,” Neal says. As a result, he’s spending several hundred dollars a month on clothes, including suits and dress clothes that he needs to wear toinfluencer conferences.
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In total, his monthly spending has increased slightly — by about $70 — since starting a GLP-1. “I do it gladly …I know it’s privileged, but these are costs that, when you talk to your doctor, nobody talks to you about,” says Neal.
The cookbook author investing in her health — without giving up the things she loves
Suzy Chase lives in New York City — which, in her words, means that life is expensive any way you slice it. But she’s always paid for her beloved workout classes because they are “my social time, my therapy, my everything, all wrapped into one,” Chase previously told Yahoo. The one thing they didn’t do for her, however, was help her lose weight. And when menopause and the COVID-19 pandemic hit at the same time, Chase’s weight crept up.
Then she learned about the GLP-1, Zepbound. The weekly injections helped Chase lose 50 pounds and set the 59-year-old’s sights on a new goal: “training for 80.” She didn’t qualify for insurance coverage, so Chase was at first paying $1,080 per month out of pocket for her medication. Yet even with the added cost of the medication, Chase says being on a GLP-1 hasn’t otherwise changed how she spends her money or time. She still goes to the same two workout studios and pays the same amount for the classes, “but now I’m seeing my hard work paying off,” she says.
As a cookbook author and podcaster, Chase has never scrimped on groceries, and she still doesn’t. But her shopping and eating habits have changed. Instead of roaming the center aisles of the grocery store where the snacks live, “I am definitely shopping the perimeter of the grocery store a lot more,” Chase says. “I’m not saving money, [I’ve] just pivoted from a lot of red meat to vegetarian and pescatarian foods.” The biggest adjustment to her budget was replacing her wardrobe — at a cost of about $3,500 in total — as her size changed. “I’ve had to get everything new, but it’s been slowly over time,” she says.
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Chase eventually switched to getting her Zepbound from Lilly Direct, where her 2.5-milligram dose costs $299 per month. And she’s figured out a way to maintain her weight and her account balance: Chase now spaces her doses out every 15 days (instead of every seven), bringing her prorated monthly cost down to about $150, she estimates. “Tweaking my dose has been really good for the budget,” she says. “I sort of changed my mindset, and now I think about [Zepbound] as a support tool and not the solution. Spacing my doses and retraining how I think about food has made a world of difference.”
The teacher paying for her GLP-1 with takeout savings
After caring for her grandmother in the final days of her life as she suffered from complications of rheumatoid arthritis, Cassandra Smith knew she didn’t want to face the same fate. Smith had been diagnosed with the autoimmune disease by age 30 and was already dealing with debilitating flare-ups. Her doctor told her that inflammation from being overweight was only making it worse. Starting a Mediterranean diet helped, but it didn’t get Smith anywhere near a healthy BMI.
She knew that a GLP-1 drug would help her lose weight, which would, in turn, help with the symptoms of her autoimmune condition. But the medications aren’t approved to treat rheumatoid arthritis, so her insurance wouldn’t cover them. Smith instead gets her compounded tirzepatide from a telehealth company and pays $399 a month for it. That’s no small sum, but Smith told herself, “You’re not eating out, you’re cooking at home and you’re going to pay for your medicine,” she tells Yahoo. “I basically took the money [for the GLP-1] out of my eating-out habit.”
Smith cut what she spent dining out with her daughter from about $200 a month to about $50. When the pair goes to their favorite Chinese restaurant, they each order a $5 kids’ meal. “The lady there is even like, ‘Oh, ya’ll want the kids’ meal?’ She knows the drill,” Smith says
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Her grocery bill has also shrunk, from $550 a month to $320. “My bill has definitely gone down because I don’t get all the snacks, I don’t get all the different cereals, or all the flour, oil — all the extra stuff you have to do to basically eat unhealthy,” she says. Smith’s preferred proteins are fish and red meat, which can be pricey. But otherwise, she tries to eat raw fruits and vegetables most of the time. “I don’t buy as many ingredients anymore,” she says. “The ingredients I am buying are still a little expensive, but I don’t have to add anything additional to them.”
Some of Smith’s expenses have increased, though. Before taking a GLP-1 drug, she didn’t have a workout routine. Now Smith goes to Pilates at least once a week and has joined a gym. She also bought a membership to a “jump house” for kids — where she sometimes jumps alongside her daughter
Like exercise, fashion was a $0 line item in Smith’s monthly budget because she “hated” clothes before starting a GLP-1 medication. But losing weight has led to investing in a new, colorful wardrobe to match her church choir’s weekly themes.
On the whole, Smith says she’s still saving several hundred dollars a month. “If I say I’m not going to do something, I’m not going to do it,” she says. And for the moments when she’s tempted to let her resolve soften, Smith has “a little 5-year-old accountability partner” in her daughter. “It’s kind of hard to do the wrong thing when she’s always with me.”
