Eating costs a lot of money.
If only we didn’t have to buy food, we could save lots of money, right? But eating is also rather important to live, so I guess we have to just make the best of it.
The problem is, our little family eats a lot. Andy, Gabe and I can put away a crazy amount of food per meal.
I once read an article about feeding two people for $25 a week. Awesome! But HOW? $30 a week is stretching it for us. So I read the article again, and noticed that the lady talked a lot about serving sizes.
The next couple weeks, I started watching how much we actually eat, and found out that when a box of pasta says 6-8 servings, THAT is how much we eat.
Hmmm.
I thought I would make a list of things that helped us eat for less. Since Andy and I got married, we have stuck to our $30 per week budget.
It might have to change soon, as we move to Alaska where food averages 2-3 dollars more expensive than here, but we plan to live on canned goods for a while. 🙂
1. Do A Once A Month Shopping Trip
This was huge for me. When we first got married, it felt like there was never enough money to go around when it came to food.
I went to the store every week, but if there were sales, I never had enough money to stock up and therefore felt like I would never get ahead. Then I began shopping once a month.
It made all the difference! At the beginning of the month I set aside $20 for milk, and $20 for the middle of the month for fresh stuff or getting things that I run out of.
Then I have $80 left to work with, and with that larger chunk of money comes the ability to get ahead by stocking up on cheese, butter, coffee – more expensive items – when the price is reduced.
2. Make A List
Don’t go into a store without a clearly laid out list! If you do go without a list, particularly if it is around lunchtime, it will be impossible for you to say no to items that you really don’t need.
I write out a list of the things I need, and sometimes put a star beside the ones I really can’t do without. This helps me discriminate in the store if I don’t have enough money to go around.
I also try to get one or two things that are NOT on my list so I can go home actually feeling like I had more than enough money, and came away with something “just for fun”.
3. Make Menus
It really isn’t that hard to make menus. You just have to sit down with a cookbook or two and DO IT.
If I can make time for this when I have two children under two and a full-time job, you can too. 🙂 If you can’t do a whole week’s worth of menus in one sitting, by all means, do a few meals now, and then a few more later. But for the sake of your budget, MAKE MENUS!!
It will help you create a list of grocery items you actually need and will use instead of them sitting on you shelf for a few months. It will also help you not buy things impulsively.
Here’s what we had last week. It was yummy, and it was all well-within budget for us!
Monday – eggs and toast
Chili soup and cornbread
Deer steaks, sweet potatoes with butter and maple syrup, sauteed asparagus
Tuesday – blueberry baked oatmeal with milk
Leftover soup, bread
Spaghetti, salad
Wednesday – eggs, scrapple, and hashbrowns
grilled pb&j sandwiches, corn
Tomato soup and cheese sandwiches
Thursday – raspberry scones and Chia pudding
pizza quesidillas, green beans
Leftovers
Friday – biscuits and sausage gravy
beef and vegetable stew and leftover biscuits
mac and cheese casserole, peas
Saturday – Pancakes
leftovers
Pizza and fresh asparagus
Sunday – granola or coffee cake (made the day before)
Chicken Alfredo casserole, green beans
Hotdogs, baked beans, salad, chips and salsa, brownies (had a cookout with friends)
We like our food. But it isn’t usually very fancy, and it usually doesn’t take lots of ingredients. We also rarely ever have dessert. It just adds to the grocery bill and isn’t good for us anyway. We go through enough sugar as it is, just putting it in our coffee every morning. 🙂
4. Don’t Buy Too Many Items
When I am in other people’s kitchen’s, sometimes I wonder what on earth they put in all their massive cupboards. The other day I found out! Food!
I could hardly believe all the different kinds of food in one place! It looked like a grocery store! If you want to try a small budget, something that will seriously help is if you only get a few items.
Staples for us are rice, pasta, potatoes, and flour, as well as coconut oil, butter, cheese and cream cheese. I don’t buy mixes, and we use spices to make our food taste good.
We don’t get many fresh fruits and vegetables, particularly if they are not in season. They are simply too expensive to buy year round. We eat fresh out of our garden, and during the winter months, we eat canned or frozen stuff.
5. Grow a Garden
Not everyone has the space to do this, but it seriously helps the grocery bills when you grow your own food and in turn, can or freeze it for use later.
6. Take Advantage of Cheap Stuff
Most of our meat is either free or almost free. you just have to be willing to get your hands dirty. Andy hunts, so some of our meat is deer that we butcher ourselves.
A neighbor with a dairy barn had a cow with a broken leg who needed put down, so he gave it to us. We butchered it, the steaks and roasts were tough, so we made it all into hamburger and ended up with over fifty pounds of meat in our freezer after giving a bunch away, and splitting the rest with Andy’s parents.
For pork, Andy got a small pig at the auction that went cheap – $3.27. We spent more on sausage seasoning than we did on the pig itself!
For chicken, we often do chores at the local chicken barns while the owners are away on vacation and noticed that when the chickens leave to go out to the processing plant, there are always lots of runts left behind.
The owners were happy to have us take a few birds home, so we gathered up about fifty small birds, took them home and fed them a couple weeks till they were nice and fat, and butchered them ourselves.
So I guess we had a little bit of cost for feed, and then the time we spent butchering them, but still! Cheap meat!
7. Make Your Own
Making your own baked goods – bread, cornbread, biscuits, coffee cake, pizza crust – really helps out with costs. Even if you never have before, it isn’t too hard to learn.
There is every kind of recipe imaginable on the internet, and they usually have very detailed instructions. It’s never too late to learn a new skill!
8. Stock Up
If there is a sale on something you use frequently, by all means, buy a lot! Not only will you not have to spend money on that item for a couple months, it will help you out cost-wise in the long run.
Especially if an item has a good shelf-life or is freezable, this really helps the budget.
I heard someone say that they don’t have the pantry room to stock up on stuff.
Ummm… I don’t have a pantry, and I live in a motorhome. If I can do it, you can too!
So these are a few ways we have made a small food budget work for us. It’s not for everyone, but if you want to try it, I hope this helps you!
I can see your point, Mel. I come from the perspective of one having grown up watching my Mom and sisters bake, so some knowledge was ingrained in me before I ever learned to do it myself.
>Even if you never have before, it isn't too hard to learn. There is every kind of recipe imaginable on the internet, and they usually have very detailed instructions.
I think I disagree slightly with this assessment of where the world of bread and and the internet collide. If you don't know anything, you don't know even enough to know what you don't know. Most likely if you don't have a clue about baking bready stuff, it would be best to learn to bake one kind first from someone who does know, then start branching out to other kinds as a you gain confidence. As you gain experience, you will be able to tell what recipes are going to work for you that you run across on the web.
Just my $0.02 🙂