Shopping is getting harder and harder for some. When you have your budget down as far as you can take it, and the things you regularly buy don't go on sale, things feel really bleak. The average for Food Stamps for a family of four in my state is $484. That is $121 a week or $16.13 a day. That works out to about $4. 03 per person per day. $4 is very little money to eat on for a whole day. It would be really hard to go out and buy food everyday for $4. That means that buying individual servings is out. Buying and cooking for multiple people is the only way to get even close to $4 a day per person. For me, it would be easier to think of making meals for $16 a day for four people. If I can buy ingredients for less than $16 for one day, that means I can spend a little more another day or use the extra to stock up on pantry samples.
By paying close attention to spending, you might be able to have a dollar or two leftover at the end of the month. When I have extra at the end of the month, I have been using it to buy extra shelf stable foods. Sometimes it’s only a can or two, a cake mix or something to throw in the freezer.
Keeping track of all those prices and things is hard, tedious work. Especially if you mostly shop sales or shop around so that prices aren’t always consistent. In that case it makes it even more important to keep track of what is spent as it’s spent so we don’t come up short at the end of the month. It sounds like it’s a lot of work because it is a lot of work. Remember the saying “Everything costs something, time or money” and if we don’t have the money, we are going to have to spend time.
The only way I can come even close to keeping to our budget is by careful planning. It’s why I emphasize meal planning so very much. I look through the sale ads, I have a mental list of cheap ingredients and I keep an eye on my fridge and freezer so there is little to no waste. It’s hard, it’s exhausting sometimes and I get it. Sometimes it would be so nice to just do what you feel like doing for once. To decide, you know what, I would like to have fish and fries today instead of whatever I had planned. But keep at it. This is what we need to do now. This is how we are taking care of ourselves and our family. We’ve got this, one foot in front of the other.
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