Last week I left a comment on Amy’s post ‘Are You Staying on Track With Groceries?’ that has garnered quite a few e-mails from other moms wanting to know how we stick to our $100 a week grocery budget. There were so many questions I decided to write a series of posts detailing how I go about sticking to our budget and try to offer any tips I’ve picked up along the way.
With seven growing children, six of whom are girls, it’s important to me that they eat well-balanced diets that include a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and milk. So step number one is to look at the grocery store sales ads, take stock of what’s already in our pantry, and plan a menu for the coming week’s meals. This week my daughter, Bon Bon (12), is in charge of the cooking so I sat down with her and we did this together. Here’s the menu she came up with.
Monday
Breakfast: Blueberry Muffins
Lunch: Pizza – One Cheese, One Ham with pineapple and olives, breadsticks, and a green salad
Dinner: Succotash
Tuesday
Breakfast: Corn Bread
Lunch: Enchiladas, Spanish Rice, Refried Beans, green salad
Dinner: Homemade Mac & Cheese, fruit salad
Dessert: Fudge
Wednesday
Breakfast: Coffee Cake
Lunch: Indian Tacos
Dinner: Tuna Melts or PB&J’s for those who don’t want tuna
Thursday
Breakfast: Crepes. We eat them with fruit and jam.
Lunch: Hoagie Sandwiches, raw veggies served with ranch dip
Dinner: Leftovers
Dessert: Layered Lemon Pudding Dessert
Friday
Breakfast: Yeast Pancakes, eggs, hashbrowns
Lunch: Beef Roast, mashed potatoes, green beans, jello salad
Dinner: Granola served with yogurt
Saturday
Breakfast: oatmeal pancakes
Lunch: Seasoned Chicken, corn pudding, fruit salad, broccoli
Dinner: Tomato Soup with grilled cheese sandwiches
Dessert: Maple Cookies
We homeschool our children and also farm and found it was better to have our biggest meal of the day at lunch, which means we really aren’t that hungry come dinner time. We usually have two snacks throughout the day. The snacks vary from fruit and veggies, leftover desserts, quesadillas, chocolate milk, etc. Just about everything we make is from scratch, including the corn tortillas for the enchiladas. We also serve bread and drink milk with every meal. I make 16 loaves of bread a week – 8 white and 8 whole wheat. If you’ve noticed, we also don’t usually eat cereal. Too expensive! We love breakfast foods around here and it’s not unusual to have waffles, muffins or pancakes for dinner.
As we write the menu we make a list of the items we need to get at the grocery store with an estimated guess of what it will cost. Here’s our list next to the actual receipt. The receipt was too long to fit in our scanner so I had to fold it so you could see the total.
$30 – 8 gallons milk
$5 – 2 pkgs. frozen fruit
$0.69 – cucumber
$0.59 – radishes
$0.59 – green onions
$2.50 – carrots
$1.50 – celery
$1.50 – lettuce
$3.00 – 2 quarts eggnog
$3.99 – cottage cheese
$15 – 2 cross rib roasts
$10 – half ham to get sliced at the meat counter
$2.50 – bananas
$5 – apples
$5 – tortilla chips
$86.86 – estimated cost
The total on our receipt says $82.91. But we also got a a big double bag of tortilla chips for $4.98 (that’ll last us a month) and a bag of Andes chocolate mint baking chips for $1.98 at Wal-mart. So our grand weekly total is $89.87. I also purchased yogurt because the roasts and milk ended up being cheaper than expected.
In the next post I’ll discuss shopping strategies as well as stocking your pantry. We have a well stocked pantry. As you can see from the grocery list we mostly needed to purchase refrigerated or perishable items.
If you have any questions please ask!! I’m working on creating a “Cookbook” page for my navigation bar at the top so you will have links to the recipes we use most often.
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What do you have to talk about? Join Talk About Tuesday hosted by The Lazy Organizer.
um, yeah, hi, I think you need to call your little sister and explain how this works. I think I spend that much on MYSELF per week. But I don’t have much room for staples, any tips?
I’m hooked!
I need all the help I can get in the grocery department! I’m spending 170.00 a week! And we eat out!
booo bwahahahaha!! enjoy it while you can!!! All I can say is DANG YOU GROCERIES ARE CHEAP OUT THERE!!! If milk isn’t bought on sale it’s $4+ out here. Egg Nog out here is $300 for a quart. One 2 lbs roast out here cost $12-18.
Boo she’s awesome with the budget. Using what she does it totally works to keep the budget down. We don’t get to eat as nice things out here but we usually do use Mott’s method and it’s a good one.
I want a roast. *sniff*
My participation in this thing is Green Giant prepared veggies. mmmm sooooo good and usually only $1.26 out here (people like the fresh stuff so the frozen stuff is cheap) one pkg feeds our family of 4. yum yum yum
Ness,
I’ll be addressing the fresh versus frozen issue in another post. Glad you brought it up!
The roasts were on sale $1.97/lb and the egg nog was half off. It usually is $3.00 a quart here too. It was our ‘splurge’ this week.
I am really interested in learning more about how to cut costs in groceries. My problem is that in my weekly food budget I also have to buy all the nonfoods– like toilet pape, cleaners, and medicine for my kids for their ashtma. There’s not much left for food! I’ll be watching your series of posts. Thanks for doing this.
i can’t wait to read more! what a wonderful education you’re giving your daughter(s).
WOW! You’re awesome! We have a family of 6 and I think our Costco bill alone is double that! Your menu sounds GREAT!
Your menus are very similar to ours! (except breakfast which is usually cold cereal or yogurt or both.) We also usually have the “dinner” or big meal at lunch, its healthier for you too than a heavy meal at the end of the day. We do it this way because often Paul has to leave for his plane around 5pm, and its easier to eat as a family in the evenings if its something simple like PB&J.
We have averaged about $60/week to feed our family of 4 since we moved here. We have had house guests almost every weekend, and at least 2 meals during the week we have guests whether neighbor kids or family visiting from SLC/Provo. That also includes household products like toilet paper, cleaners & food for the dog, etc. Since we have switched out most of our dairy for soy, that costs us about $5 a gallon, where dairy milk is about $3 here. However, I know most of our food except organics & soy products is about 25% cheaper than where you are.
Crystal at Biblical Womanhood is feeding her family for $35 a week!
WOW! This is truly impressive. I think I’ll be taking a lesson or two from you on how to improve our budget when it comes to groceries! Thanks for sharing your tips and plan for the week as an example. I am definitely going to be visiting back to see what other advice you may have to benefit my family and I! Very cool! :”)
(I hope you don’t mind if I add you to my blog roll on my own blog.)
laugh it up.
I have been shopping with coupons and paying attention to sales ads for the past year. The amount of money that I have saved makes me embarrassed that I did not do this before. It is amazing how much you can save just by being organized. Now, I need to study your strategies and a few others like yours to make more changes by how and what I cook.
16 loaves of homemade bread a week?! How do you do that?
I can’t wait for the recipes and more on this subject.
Thanks for all the tips. I look forward to hearing what else you have to say on this matter. We love to save money wherever we can.
You are amazing. Truly. I have come to sit at the feet of a master of frugalness and good recipe planning. I need so much help in this area! Thank you! 😀
Great ideas. Will you be posting the recipe for the homemade corn tortillas? My kids love homemade flour tortillas, but I’ve never tried making corn. Can’t wait for the next tips!
I am new to your blog, its hard to say how I got here, I have been lurking all night. I hope to be a continual reader though. Your post has hit the mark with me. I have three children and have hoped to live on a $100 grocery budget for years with only a few successes. I have heard of many people doing it I just can’t quite figure it out. Although I am a little stubborn. I don’t use coupons and hardly look at adds, it takes to much time and energy for me. Something I don’t have a lot of. But I will look forward to your advice and your recipes. Your made my mouth water. yum! Do you think that I can reach my goal even though I do not farm, and I live in a pretty expensive part of the country?
You’re amazing! My first year in college all of my roomates and I shopped and cooked our meals together. We each spent $25 a month! I do not know how we did it. I remember we bought a big box of apples once on sale. We ate a lot of apples that month!
I can’t wait to read the rest of your articles. And I want to know how you find time to bake all that bread, home school, run a farm and blog. Don’t forget to answer that one!
So do you have a seperate budget for restocking your food storage/pantry items? Or is that included in your $100 a week?
P.S. I’m irreverently snickering about your name for crepes. Please make sure your daughters don’t call them that when they leave for college 😉