I see a lot of people ask about grocery budgets. What is a standard budget for a family of 4? 2? 29?
I love reading the different answers and getting advice on how to trim my own budget down.
I go over budget, I stay under budget, I spend everything down to the last penny, but I always try to follow a few basic guidelines. What's our budget? $300/mo. I can usually keep it at $250 and we use the rest for eating out. (Yes we eat out, but only if it's in the budget)
When trying to save money in the grocery budget, I start in the kitchen!
1. Making your food go further: combine a low price item with a high priced item to streeeeeeetch it. Beans, beans, good for your heart. The more you eat em.....the more bang you get for your buck. Tacos are a prime example for using beans with meat. Instead of using 1 pound of ground beef, use 1/2 pound and add a 1/2 can of beans. Or make the whole pound, add a whole can, and freeze half. Or add veggies (green peppers, corn, onion, etc), divide into thirds and eat 1/3 freezing the rest. Not only have you stretched your 1 lb of ground beef, but you've also made food for another busy night and added a variety of flavors to your tacos. Win-win-win.
2. Go without: Recipes are a trap. Let me clarify... Pinterest is a trap. It baits you (me) in with "These are soooo easy" and "The most delicious things in the whole world". More often than not, you (I) don't actually need to make the 78 recipes that you (I) have pinned to the (my) "MAKE IT NOW" board. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE recipes. but recipes C-O-S-T money. I try to tell myself,"Buy your staples. Feed your family." If I have cash left in the budget, I'll buy a few ingredients to make a couple of recipes on the "DIVINE DESSERTS" board. Special trips to the grocery store to buy ingredients for those amazing, "too-good-to-be-true-because-they-are" recipes will end up draining the budget fast. If you can't afford it, go without. Rice over brownies, people. Even if they are Super triple fudge chocolate covered chocolate with caramel...
Oh man....
Now I just want a brownie.
3. Staples: Not the metal kind you shoot from the stapler. The ingredients that hold your meals together. For us its: canned tomatoes (from the summer garden when possible), beans, rice, frozen veggies (again from summer garden if possible), typically a meat of some sort, pasta, and fat. Mmmmmm, fat. Lard, coconut oil, EVOO, buuuuutttttteeeeeer. Oooooh yea. A friend of mine and I confessed to one another that we had, in fact, both eaten butter by itself. Solo. (wo)Man vs. butter. With these ingredients, I can make a wide variety of foods. Sometimes, the meals are not elaborate, but they are tasty, healthy, and filling.
4. Whole food- Limiting the number of processed foods in our kitchen really helps keep our budget at bay. Chips Ahoy call my name in the cookie aisle and I just wanna grab a package and scream, "AYE MATEY!". But then my wallet looks at me in a malnourished way and reminds me how Chips Ahoy cookies (...aye matey...) are not in the budget. Bulk buying whole food is wonderful. Sometimes, buying organic things in bulk is just as inexpensive as buying the commercial equivalent in smaller packaging. Buying things without a package can also help keep the budget toned and trim. I have found a new love...the Amish produce auction. My dear friend and I busted out our Ergo backpack carriers, tossed the toddlers on our backs, and took the Amish auction by storm. Well, not quite. we got a lot of stares and were amateur auction customers compared to the others there. But I had so much fun and got really great prices on huge amounts of produce to freeze and can.
5. Work for it- Work it, work it. We have started to work work work for our meat. Hunting has been something my husband enjoys for a while, but recently, I joined him. We skin and butcher ourselves to save money on processing. Recently, we traveled to the home of an Amish family who help us butcher hogs. We rendered lard, ground sausage, made liverwurst, boiled bones for stock, chopped, sliced, and packaged. We love to learn new skills, especially those that help us maintain our budget. (I also really like knowing where our meat came from and how it was handled)
These are my 5 steps to keep peace in the Kitchen budget.
I hope they benefit you as much as they do me.
Wishing all of you out there Kitchen Peace and ...HAIR PEACE!
3. Staples: Not the metal kind you shoot from the stapler. The ingredients that hold your meals together. For us its: canned tomatoes (from the summer garden when possible), beans, rice, frozen veggies (again from summer garden if possible), typically a meat of some sort, pasta, and fat. Mmmmmm, fat. Lard, coconut oil, EVOO, buuuuutttttteeeeeer. Oooooh yea. A friend of mine and I confessed to one another that we had, in fact, both eaten butter by itself. Solo. (wo)Man vs. butter. With these ingredients, I can make a wide variety of foods. Sometimes, the meals are not elaborate, but they are tasty, healthy, and filling.
4. Whole food- Limiting the number of processed foods in our kitchen really helps keep our budget at bay. Chips Ahoy call my name in the cookie aisle and I just wanna grab a package and scream, "AYE MATEY!". But then my wallet looks at me in a malnourished way and reminds me how Chips Ahoy cookies (...aye matey...) are not in the budget. Bulk buying whole food is wonderful. Sometimes, buying organic things in bulk is just as inexpensive as buying the commercial equivalent in smaller packaging. Buying things without a package can also help keep the budget toned and trim. I have found a new love...the Amish produce auction. My dear friend and I busted out our Ergo backpack carriers, tossed the toddlers on our backs, and took the Amish auction by storm. Well, not quite. we got a lot of stares and were amateur auction customers compared to the others there. But I had so much fun and got really great prices on huge amounts of produce to freeze and can.
5. Work for it- Work it, work it. We have started to work work work for our meat. Hunting has been something my husband enjoys for a while, but recently, I joined him. We skin and butcher ourselves to save money on processing. Recently, we traveled to the home of an Amish family who help us butcher hogs. We rendered lard, ground sausage, made liverwurst, boiled bones for stock, chopped, sliced, and packaged. We love to learn new skills, especially those that help us maintain our budget. (I also really like knowing where our meat came from and how it was handled)
These are my 5 steps to keep peace in the Kitchen budget.
I hope they benefit you as much as they do me.
Wishing all of you out there Kitchen Peace and ...HAIR PEACE!
No comments:
Post a Comment