My family of four, on average, eats for
a grand total of $200 a month. Sound impossible? It's totally
possible, but first you have to know what you are currently spending
on groceries. I'll hold your hand, because it's pretty scary when you
actually know.
The most flexible portion of any
budget, after entertainment and dinners out (if those are in your
budget), is groceries. When Hubs and I found ourselves suddenly
living on one income, I sat down and figured out a budget that
allowed $400 for groceries. I figured this was pretty close to what
we were spending, but knew I needed to know for sure. I kept grocery,
restaurant and fast food receipts to figure out how much it cost us
to eat one month, and the grand total was staggering. We spent nearly
$700 just on food. That was a number that was incompatible
with our financial solvency, so we immediately:
- Cut out all food not cooked at home.
- Eliminated almost all pre-packaged foods.
- Began keeping a log of all the food we had to have, where we bought it, when, and how much it cost (per ounce).
Soon I began to notice patterns at my
local grocery store. Sales repeated every three months, so I learned
when to stock up. We were blessed with a small freezer at the perfect
price (free), and I discovered that just after Thanksgiving, turkeys
went on clearance for 59 cents a pound. That freezer holds seven
large turkeys, I discovered.
Within a couple of months of finding
the best prices per ounce for staple foods, following sale trends and
getting back to real, homemade food instead of processed food, we cut
down to $400 for our grocery spending. That's when I got creative, and
shaved off another $200 a month for a sustainable average of $200 a
month to feed all four of us. And that, my friends, was just the
beginning.
