Today is the first day of us sticking to our family food budget, and we started the adventure with a challenge. Scott had to head to Chicago for a lunch meeting. We didn't have food options that he could take with him (unless he wanted to eat uncooked oatmeal and bread) so Scott had to eat what was provided. Fortunately, the food was catered from a sandwich shop with an online menu, so we determined the cost and applied it to our budget. Surprisingly, it didn't break the bank, which means that Scott was probably hungry. I can only imagine how hard it was to turn down chips, cookies, sodas, and salads because of their cost.
Now that day #1 is complete, here is what we ate...
Breakfast
- Scott & Kellie (S&K): oatmeal w/ brown sugar
- Connor & Grant (C&G): toast w/ margarine, banana, milk
- Total cost for breakfast: $0.95
Lunch
- S: small turkey sandwich, 2 bottles of water
- K: soup, crackers, tea
- C&G: soup, crackers (note: crackers were a hit!), string cheese, milk
- Total cost for lunch: $7.03
Dinner
- S&K: pasta w/ oil & margarine, braised carrots, tea
- C&G: pasta w/ oil, braised carrots (note: the boys loved the carrots!), milk
- Total cost for dinner: $1.86
Dessert
- All: 3 generic Oreo cookies each
- Total cost for dessert: $0.56
All Meals Total = $10.40
This is pretty great, considering that Scott was eating outside of the home and had to "buy" the catered meal. Thank goodness they catered sandwiches instead of barbecue!! The meals that we ate today are safety meals, filling and relatively inexpensive. I hope to find a few meals that I can serve cheaply to open up space in the budget for more extravagant meals. I don't think we would be satisfied by 31 lunches of soup, crackers and cheese, and I look forward to trying to create meals that only taste expensive. But that might take a while. I'm still struggling with panic at seeing near-empty shelves. I don't feel comfortable knowing that we only have meals for less than a day. I went to the grocery store today because Scott thought we needed to have cookies for the boys who really look forward to dessert. I went in planning to buy only cookies and walked out with $11 of food, including sweet potatoes, and canned beans, tomatoes and a packet of chili mix. Maybe we'll have chili and cornbread tomorrow.
Tomorrow is Wednesday and I can use some of the coupons that I have for yogurt and soup. I'm also going to buy ground beef and maybe a ham. They're pretty big investments, but I know I can get 3 meals out of the beef and if I freeze it, we'll have ham for the entire month. Neither boy eats much meat, but ham is something they like.
Tomorrow, board meeting blues
The secret to eating on a budget is not about deprivation; it's about smart shopping. And it takes way more than a month to develop freezer and pantry supplies to support a truly frugal lifestyle. Again, it disgusts me to see you playing this game. Maybe you need to find something useful to occupy your time if you are bored enough with your rich life to calculate the cost of a tablespoon of flour.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate your comments and I agree that planning is the key to living within a financial budget. That's why I'm doing this, I hope to learn how to spend and live smarter. We aren't rich, but we're trying to live comfortably, and that means trying to achieve more with less. If you have any recipies for cost-effective meals or suggestions on ways that I can save, I would appreciate them.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that I applaud you on with the strategy you're taking is that by not using time to build up your pantry in preparation, you're mimicking a scenario that many families are going through with the current economy. I have several friends/former coworkers who went to work on a Thursday with a job and by Friday were unemployed. Those people had to make immediate changes to their lifestyle and were forced to adapt much like you have with starting off from scratch. Not many people have warning about a job loss where they can take time to identify sales at the store in order to prepare. I can see how by letting your pantry inventory go down, you didn’t take advantage of sales before you started your challenge because your experiment would be biased if you loaded up on 59 cent cans of soup or $2.00 packages of string cheese that were on sale beforehand. You’re really taking this to heart and are in a way, throwing yourself to the mercy of the sales a grocery store might have at any specific moment. I can think of many families that do the same every month and can’t prepare beforehand.
ReplyDeleteGreat forward thinking on your part to make this experiment as lifelike and accurate as possible. I think it’s also great how by calculating the cost of everything; you can prepare well rounded but economical meals for your family. Thanks for listing exactly what the meals are that you’re feeding your family. I’m impressed how you’re able to provide everyone with a good meal and it’s important for other readers to see how you aren’t depriving anyone. I think it’s essential to recognize that a lot of people take specific meal items for granted. Filet, for example, is a special item and not a necessity in one’s diet. It’s a more expensive meal and you’ve recognized meals that provide good nutritional benefit and great taste while fitting in your budget.