Food is Expensive! How We Survive on $60 a Week

By: MrJamieGriffin.com How much do you spend on food every week? Everyone needs to eat, but how much you spend and where you shop varies dramatically. Also, it seems like the prices of food are always going up and our dollars just don’t stretch as far as they used to. It might not actually be true, but so many times I look in my cart and am shocked by how little I can buy. Seriously, apples, bread, and milk costs $25!? Slight exaggeration, but this is definitely how I feel sometimes. My family sticks to a pretty tight budget, so for us, price matters, and so does where we buy food. I’m going to show you three ways we survive, and I daresay thrive on a $60 weekly food budget.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

When we started our budgeting journey, we were in a dire situation. Sitting at $90,000 in student loan debt, we felt trapped with nowhere to go. It is often said that invention and innovation come from this place of intense need. I didn’t wake up one day and decide, “maybe I should start a budget so I can make better financial decisions”. We were buried under a mountain of debt, and NEEDED a way out, so we created a budget for ourselves. To be honest, if we weren’t in such a bad financial spot, it might have taken us years to actually make a change. We needed to get really uncomfortable, and trust me, our debt felt very uncomfortable.

Once we decided to live on a budget, we needed to determine how much money to spend on each area of life, including food. After some trial and error we landed on $250 for the month, or roughly, $60 a week with an extra ten of flex money. We actually started with $50 a week, which lasted for about 8-10 months. For the most part it worked, but we wanted a little more flexibility to relieve some stress. Again, because we were in such dire debt, learning to live on a frugal $60 each week became a necessity to reach all of our crazy money goals!

A Couple Disclaimers

You might be reading this and thinking, “$60 is barely anything! How is that even possible!?” It’s tricky sometimes, but we have a couple things working in our favor. First, we are a family of two, which makes it a lot easier. If you have kids, I think it would be nearly impossible to pull this off. If you can, that’s awesome! Tell me and other readers your secrets in the comments! We will for sure add more to the food budget when we have kids. Second, we don’t need to buy any special food items due to dietary restrictions or lifestyle choices. If you are buying all organic or gluten-free food, it, unfortunately, costs more.

Food is Expensive: Grocery Shopping as a Single, Hungry College Student

I hate grocery shopping. Well, maybe that’s an overstatement, but it really isn’t a super fun experience I look forward to. The idea of going shopping a few times a week for supplies seems overwhelming and an inefficient way to spend time. When I was single, I would buy food for a couple weeks at a time and wait until I had basically nothing left before I hit up the local grocery store again. I didn’t really make a plan, and even made the worst mistake of all, I usually shopped on an empty stomach. Sometimes I found myself just wandering down the cereal and cookie aisle before I remembered I had to buy food with substance. Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but I have learned a lot since my single, college days.

3 Game Changers We Used to Cut Our Costs

1. Meal Prepping Saves Time and Money

One of the biggest reasons we can survive on such a small budget each week is because we learned how to meal prep. The entire purpose is to plan and prepare your meals ahead of time. Meal prepping has saved me from multiple trips to the store (thank goodness) and helped our family save loads of money (I will explain the money saving in a few minutes)! We start our meal planning on the weekend, typically Friday or Saturday. We found it is important to plan out your meals ahead of time so we know exactly which ingredients we will need. It also helps us estimate if $60 will be enough to buy it all. If not, we adjust our ingredients or choose new meals to make it work. In full meal prepper style, we cook all of our lunches and dinners ahead of time on Sunday so we don’t need to spend much time in the kitchen during the week. Everything is portioned out and stored in the fridge, so all we need to do is take it out and stick it in the microwave! I love it! Of course, this means we eat the same meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day of the week, but that is what we are willing to do to get out of debt. Plus, we really don’t mind eating leftovers. For breakfast, we also basically eat the same meal every day. I eat oatmeal and Jenna eats eggs or greek yogurt.

[caption id="attachment_971" align="aligncenter" width="592"] Oatmeal everyday! Sadly mine doesn’t look this healthy and delicious and I don’t have cute flowers on the table.[/caption]

2. Plan Ahead and Make a List

We are no-nonsense kind of people when we go to the store. In our dream world, every shopping experience would be like the old classic show “Supermarket Sweep”. We would love to dash through the store tossing in food left and right with a cheering crowd. Sadly, it is frowned upon to run through the store with your shopping cart, so we have other tricks up our sleeves. Before we even leave the house, we have a list in hand so we know exactly what we will buy. Also, because we go to the same store every weekend, we know exactly which aisles our items are in. Our list serves two purposes. First, we never forget to buy anything. It is a horrible feeling to start cooking and realize you didn’t buy any chicken! Secondly, the list helps keep us on track with our budget so we avoid any unnecessary impulse buying. I always want to throw in a couple frozen pizzas to eat while I watch football. But if it’s not on the list, it doesn’t make it into the cart.

3. Buy in Bulk

Food prices vary greatly from store to store, so with a limited budget, it’s important to get the most bang for your buck. I love to shop local, but unfortunately local grocery stores tend to have higher prices than bigger, chain stores. As a result, we buy most of our food from big chain stores. We are lucky enough to live in a town with a SAMs club and Wal-Mart, where we buy staple food items in bulk. Buying in bulk saves us boatloads of money every week compared to our local grocery store. It’s perfect for meal prepping because it’s easy to get enough food for the entire week! Hello, economy size! Even if we can’t eat all of the food during the week, we figure out ways to freeze it or repurpose it in other dishes. Of course, there is an upfront cost of $45 to become a member, but you will easily make that up through savings in the course of a year. A couple of staple items in our household are oatmeal, eggs, greek yogurt, chicken, fruit, and frozen veggies. We buy all of these from SAMs. It really cuts down on weekly costs because we don’t have to constantly replenish our supply. A big bag of chicken will last a couple weeks, oatmeal lasts for months, and the rest only makes it a week. It turns out to be crazy cheap though!

Weekly Costs Broken Down

I want to show you the true power of meal prepping and buying bulk. With our $60, we are able to buy enough food for two people to eat three meals a day an entire week. We are talking 42 meals. If you do the math, that is about $1.43 per meal!!! That is crazy! It is about the same as buying one double cheeseburger from McDonald’s. Except that when I get done eating my homemade food, I am full and content.

Even raising the cost slightly dramatically increases how much we could spend on food. That’s the difference of planning ahead vs impulse shopping.

The math proves it; buying in bulk and meal prepping is the most cost effective way of feeding yourself. Outside of growing it all yourself maybe.

Are You Ready to Start Meal Prepping?

The numbers don’t lie. Meal prepping has completely changed our finances and is a big reason we are moving quickly toward our debt free goals! $60 a week is not a lot of money, but if you plan ahead, buy in bulk, get good at meal prepping, and avoid impulse shopping, it really is enough for two people! I would love to spend more on food, but the reality is, it would delay being debt free. And I would much rather be debt free! Republished with the permission of MrJamieGriffin.com.