Archive for September, 2008
Feeding the Family on Forty Bucks
If you want to succeed in feeding your family on only $40 a week you must be committed and stick to these principles. This is not some crazy ‘clip all these coupons and only shop on double-coupon day’ type of plan. I refuse to spend hours and hours searching for coupons (although they can help, more on that later). If you do not know where every single dollar that you earn is going BEFORE payday then those dollars will become ‘lost’. Where do they go? Who knows, but if you are like me (and most of you probably are) then somehow there is always ‘more month at the end of the money’. Right now you know that $40 every week is going to be spent on food. Do you think that it’s not possible to feed your family healthy, nutritious food for only $40 every week? Does this sound like a ‘scam’ or some impossible task? It did to me. In fact, it freaked me out. I thought we were going to eat Top Ramen seven days a week (incidentally, this is not the case so read on).
The First Step
The first step in feeding your family on $40 a week is to evaluate your situation. This requires some quiet time of reflection, planning and maybe even a little bit of anger. That’s right: anger. Unless you are fired up enough to be sick and tired of not knowing where your money goes every week, then you will not stick to your plan. You need to ask yourself if you are truly committed to this idea or if are you just interested. Not 100% sure? That’s fine. Only mildly interested? You can still follow these principles and lower your weekly grocery bill, but if you are hardcore and intense like me, you can and will feed your family for $40 a week.
A little more background information on me. When I started this journey of $40 a week I didn’t have a choice in the matter. The fact was it was summer and I had been working as a substitute teacher during the year. Guess what, they don’t need subs in the summer because everyone is on summer vacation! This forced my hand. I had to change. This is when my family of four embarked on a journey to become debt-free in 18 months. You see, it was the payments to our outstanding debts that ate up the largest part of our income. We had to do something different. The largest part of this transformation was the development and implementation of a household budget. Oh no–the dreaded ‘b-word’. Just relax. Your budget for food is already done: it’s $40 a week. See, that was easy huh?
Another thing you need to evaluate about yourself is whether or not you are someone who cooks. I don’t mean someone who opens something in a box, reheats it and calls it cooking, I mean someone who knows how or is willing to learn some very simple and easy to make recipes that your family will love. My kids love the food I make for them. In fact, they didn’t even know that I was spending only $40 a week on the meals. They didn’t care, the food was delicious and it made me feel good because it was healthy.
You have to learn how to make a couple of basic sauces. Relax, I see your hand clinching the mouse getting ready to click over to perezhilton.com. Hear me out. The sauces you need to learn are the building blocks of cooking, they are called the ‘Mother Sauces’ in fancy cooking schools. I can hear some of you now, ‘I don’t have time to learn how to make a sauce and I certainly don’t have time to be cooking sauces when I get home from work. The kids have soccer practice and Tae Kwon Do and then there’s homework that has to be done. Oh yeah, I also have to clean the house and get some laundry done…’ Whew, I hear you. Life is busy. We are busy people, and what I described in my ‘rant’ above is truly what happens on a typical night in our house–yours too probably. How do we make this work then? The truth of the matter is that we make time for what is important and feeding your family healthy, delicious and nutritious food is important. It will take hardly any time to learn to make the basic sauces. The number of recipes you can make with a basic bechamel (milk sauce) is staggering. It’s also delicious and cheap.
Okay, so let’s try an example: It’s my famous Fettuccine Alfredo. My kids freak out when I tell them we’re having Fettuccine for dinner–there are never leftovers. You may be asking yourself, ‘How can you possibly be feeding your family on $40 and eating Fettuccine Alfredo?’. It’s a legitimate question and easily answered: I made the sauce myself. ‘Didn’t that take forever?’ Nope. I had the sauce made, from scratch before the noodles even finished cooking. About 11 minutes. Here’s the cost breakdown:
Parmesan Cheese: $3.28 at Trader Joes
Whole Milk: $3.29/gal at Fred Meyer
Butter: $2.99/lb at Fred Meyer
Flour: $3.89 for 10lb bag at Fred Meyer
Fettuccine Noodles: $.99 at Trader Joes
Bread: $.99 or even cheaper if you make it yourself (I’ll show you how later, relax it’s EASY!)
Frozen Peas: $.99
TOTAL: $15.43
‘Ha! I knew this was a scam. You’ve only done ONE MEAL and it’s already over 15 bucks. Loser, I’m going watch tv.’
Not exactly. You see we are not going to use an entire gallon of milk, nor are we going to use an entire pound of butter. We will use the entire bag of noodles, although when times were tight I would only use half the bag. We’ll also use half the bag of frozen peas. What’s up with the bread for $.99? Buy the cheap white bread if you don’t want to make it. Trust me, no one will notice because they’ll be sopping up all that delicious sauce with it! So what’s the real breakdown for this meal:
Parmesan Cheese: $1.64 – we’ll use half the tub from TJ’s
Whole Milk: $.41 – we’ll use 2 cups (16 cups in a gallon)
Butter: $.37 – we’ll use half a stick (2 oz.)
Flour: $.05 – we only need 3 or 4 tablespoons
Fettuccine Noodles: $.99
Bread: $.49 – we’ll use half the loaf
Frozen Peas: $.49 – half the bag
TOTAL: $4.44
You just fed your family a delicious meal for only $1.11 per person! You could make this meal even cheaper. I have a membership to Costco (I’ll show you later how to get your membership for HALF PRICE) and I buy my butter and milk there. I also make my own bread (it tastes so much better than store bought and it’s so easy I can’t believe I wasn’t doing it before). Here’s that breakdown:
Parmesan Cheese: $1.64 – we’ll use half the tub from TJ’s
Whole Milk: $.34 – we’ll use 2 cups ($5.40 for 2 gallons at Costco)
Butter: $.25 – we’ll use half a stick ($7.99 for 4 lbs at Costco)
Flour: $.58 – we’ll use 3 cups for the bread.
Fettuccine Noodles: $.99
Bread: $0 – we made it.
Frozen Peas: $.49 – half the bag.
TOTAL: $4.29
This is just one example to show you how much cheaper it is to make your own food. Here’s the biggest thing: YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT GOES INTO EVERYTHING YOUR KIDS ARE EATING. There are no preservatives in the sauce. You bought milk with no RBST (growth hormone). If you made the bread, again no preservatives. Kids not getting enough vegetables? Throw in the whole bag of peas. Chop up a couple of carrots to mix in with the peas. Whatever. The point is: YOU CAN DO THIS! Even if you have never cooked before, I will show you how to make quick and easy recipes like this for 75% less than what you would pay for a prepackaged meal.
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How to feed a family of four on 40 dollars a week! 