monthly food budget

Being single and only having to provide food for 3 people on weekends and eating out once or twice a week, I spend on average $150 - $200 a month on food. Being an admittedly lazy shopper when it comes to groceries, I suspect I'm overly spending on food by a large margin given my home situation. So I did a quick search online to find out what other people were spending on food.

Next to the rent or the mortgage, food comes in as the second biggest expenditure one will make in one's lifetime. My quick survey revealed that large families (4-6 members) spend somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 - $1000 per month. Frugal families spend around $300 - $400 per month. I also discovered that the uber coupon clippers out there regularly save 30-40% on their grocery bills and in some cases, up to 75%!

Ultimately my research confirmed what I already knew, that, while I'm not dishing out gobs of money, I do overspend a relatively gross amount on feeding my gut. I'm able to sustain this delicious mismanagement due to my relatively high rate of savings. While I'm not wealthy, going out for a Friday night prime rib au jus and a bottle of Grolsch Premium isn't exactly going to send my bank account into overdraft.

I then came across a blog created in 2006, written by a university student who had challenged himself to eat on a dollar a day for a month.

BLOG HERE

Amazingly he did it on 27 dollars and change! He lost 18 pounds but he never really went morbidly hungry. In fact, his body simply adjusted to the lower calorie intake. Admittedly his food choices were quite bland, tasteless and astonishingly unhealthy with too many carbs (rice), mostly processed junk and little protein or fruit.

Having been on a low (mostly empty) calorie diet at one time in my life for many years, I can relate to his experience. However, it's probably not sustainable. For one thing, it affects your ability to think properly, you become sort of a brain dead, chronically depressed zomboid from the lack of nutrition...

Wait a sec...

I STILL AM A BRAIN DEAD, CHRONICALLY...

Um, nevertheless, if you need your brain like most people do for work, study, family and personal life, then eating on 30 bucks a month is impossible in the long run going about it the way he did.

Yet, I suspect, such incredibly parsimonious budgets are a reality for many who live in poverty and as a grand gesture, this intrepid blogger donated the money he had saved on his one time food experiment to the local food bank, EPIC WIN!

Interestingly, many of his critics were people of various ethnic and immigrant backgrounds claiming that, with proper planning and forsight, many do eat very healthily and satisfyingly on similar budgets.

"We live like this all the time and this is a very expensive area of California. Under $200/month to feed 6 - this includes "splurges" for holidays like Thanksgiving. We have lots of veggies. Protein is dairy, beans and a smidgen of meat."

He was especially singled out for his lack of cooking skills and basic nutritional knowledge both necessary for maintaining a low cost food budget. The really anally retentive comments further pointed out how he had failed to factor in the energy costs of preparing the food which can be a big deal for the poor.

One of the more unusual cost cutting measures is the never ending stew.

"My dad told me about never ending stew where you add a new ingredient every day to a large pot of stew (and more water) - the stew gets tastier every day as you reheat it and the flavours blend."

YUMMIES!!

Other comments,

"...Asian families in married student housing would go in together and buy vegetables from the resturant supply houses. Many a Saturday morning saw them dividing a 30lb bag of onions or a 50lb bag of rice. I'll bet that saved a ton of cash."

and,

"Have you ever tried e-mailing companies for foods you like and complementing them? A lot of the times, they will send you coupons for free items and you can do this about every 3-4 months. Bar-S (meat products) usually sends '$5 off your total Bar-S purchase' coupons, along with a bunch of coupons for $.25 or $.50 off any products... This means in the summer, the hot dogs at places that double coupons, are free up to $.50. You should try it. You might be able to stick to that $30 per month and actually be able to have some yummy food (not just rice) I can usually do $200 or less each month for my family of 4 (including buying Pampers diapers for 2 kids)"

I'm not sure if I could ever go to such extremes to save money on food, especially given my current fiscal situation, but it's quite admirable how people are able to fill their tummies nourishingly on a nickel and dime budget. If anything many of these cost cutting measures actually look fun and doable, and once I'm truely independant and living on my own, I'll most likely make some sort of adjustment to my edible spending habits.

Time to eat!