Have you ever really been down to the wire and had to really put some effort into stretching the grocery money for a week? How did you get by? What is the least amount you ever spent for a week's worth of food? This can be per person or for the whole family. I'm curious to see how creative people have managed to get, since there are some very savvy, creative, people on this site that really know how to save money. Just think of this for fun. It doesn't need to be exact. It can be approximated or rounded off. If this hasn't ever been a thing for you, how far could you stretch $40 or even $20.00?
I have never really tried that challenge, but I just got a few days worth of groceries for like 12 bucks. I have enough for this weekend for sure, and I picked up a box of coccoa puffs for 1.56, so that will last me a couple of weeks. It is all in knowing where to shop, and what is a good price, and what is not.
I think I could honestly get away with spending $50 for my family of 4 if I tried. I think we would be living creatively on pasta dishes, rice dishes, maybe more veggies in a stir fry, perhaps hot dogs, hamburgers, things like that. I would definitely have to cut out desserts or it might just be what cookies are on sale that week or I'd have to bake my own. I think on average I spend at least $150 on food for the week. I have tried to go a week without shopping at all and living on just what I have in the fridge, pantry and freezer. I like to stock up on things so I know it is possible to go a week without spending too much.
I think the least I had to spend on a weeks worth of groceries was around $20. That is when I literally only had that to last me for the whole week, and I had to figure it out. I bought some bread, eggs, and pretty much everything that was on sale or the cheapest things I could find in the grocery store.
I lived on $8 one week when I was really struggling, and I did manage. It's possible to eat well, I had frozen veggies, made sure I had wholemeal bread and pasta, and also eggs. I've learned how to shop well and to stock up, so that if need be you can live on less than $10 a week.
I remember one time only having $1.30 to last to the end of the month. Thankfully we had food in the pantry and freezer. So I bought milk with that last bit of change and we made it til payday!
While living by myself I was always able to get through a rough week with lots of different flavored topramen and cold tea. Nowadays, we are a family of 5 and I still buy lots of topramen and tea when money is short but would also eggs and bread. I like to get at least a box of cheap cookies so we have something to munch on. Stocking up is a good idea and helps when money gets tight.
I can stretch like $10 to the week no problem lol, but I'd have to shop for $30 to get it really low. A week is ~14,000 calories at minimum, so you just need to be getting 1400 calories per $1 for that. Skimping though, I spend about 5~15 a day like clockwork, but I can easily do it for $20. I just like food
I can live off of under $20 for a week, but that is because I stockpile a lot of canned goods, frozen foods and I bake a lot from scratch.
Beans and rice, are great cheap sources of protein. My great grandparents raised 11 kids during the depression, and my great grandad, was chronically under and unemployed. They ate a lot of baked beans. My grandmother's baked beans were the absolute best. Also, some families during the depression ate potatoes like they were going out of style, another nutritious and versatile food, that could be added to anyone's grocery budget, when trying to save money.
When things have been really tight we've had less than $30 to last for the entire month for the whole family, including our pets. It was like that for around a year. It was tough but we managed. It's all about knowing where to get things from. We also had a neighbour with an apple tree that let us have a bag of apples so that helped too. Rather than doing a "normal" grocery shop we'd go late at night and pick up all the bargain food at low prices. We got a huge bag of bananas, at least 50 bananas, for £0.10. We also managed to get some salad onions for £0.05 and while that doesn't sound like much, if you put them into a glass of water they'll continue to grow, so we were able to get additional flavouring for meals out of them for the entire month. It helps when you only have repetitive food to have things like that to make the food a bit more flavourful I think. We didn't have much meat during those months because it's so expensive but we did buy a bag of frozen sausages for £1 and those gave us a little bit of meat to have every now and then. It helped when we just felt like we needed some meat. We bought big bags of pasta and rice too which were able to bulk out the vegetables we managed to get cheaply late at night. We did run out of these by the end of the third week, but then we were able to get some potatoes cheaply to get us through the rest of the time. You can also pick up a can of potatoes for about £0.10 sometimes here, and those are better than nothing if things are really tight. They actually make quite good mashed potato anyway. I'm happy to say that we have a little more than that to live on now though so things aren't quite so tight!
$5 a week would be about as low as I could manage - as although we wouldn't go hungry - as I could feed us fairly substantial nutritious meals for that amount - eating could get somewhat boring as I wouldn't be able to provide much variety. That said - as we only eat real, totally natural food prepared from scratch in my household - the bulk of which consists of really inexpensive natural plant based foods - such as rice, pasta, beans, lentils, chickpeas along with fruits, vegetables etc and my regular weekly grocery bill - even though I'm not on a restricted or tight budget by any stretch of the imagination - is generally way, way less than $40. Providing us with 3 very substantial, non repetitive tasty nutritious meals a day for a whole week - for well under $10 wouldn't be a problem at all - especially as I could easily do it without having to make any sacrifices - which I guess is one of the benefits of eating a healthy balanced diet consisting of real food - rather than the average diet of factory prepared overly processed convenience “ foods “.
Ah, yes, potatoes are a mainstay. You can do a lot with them, and they are quite filling. They are always a good food item to have in a pinch. I ate many, many potatoes when I was growing up. We had mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, boiled potatoes, fried potatoes -sliced and shredded- (and sometimes fried potato sandwiches), and LOTS of potato soup. Potato soups were a staple in our home throughout the winters (I haven't touched a cup in years, but it certainly worked at the time). You will not go hungry if you have potatoes. You can also use them as fillers to stretch other meals and stretch every dollar that way.
My dad just went to the market today, and he claims that the food that he bought should last for a week. He bought a bunch of vegetables, plus meat and chicken. He said the whole thing cost him $14. We are only 2 in the house, so I guess if you know how to cook then you can cut it down to that amount.
Last year I spent $16 for the week to feed my family of 7. Now of course, I had already had a pretty well stocked pantry with sugar, rice, flour, olive oil, vinegar, oatmeal, pasta, nuts,and beans. I would also like to mention we also got a lot of stuff from the garden. The stuff I bought from the store for that week were all things on sale. I bought two dozen eggs, a gallon of milk(had a coupon for a $1 off), two avocados, two whole chickens, about 3 lbs of bananas and about the same amount of some peaches. I made pancakes with a peach syrup, oatmeal and bananas, oatmeal and banana muffins and chicken biscuit sandwiches. I made homemade tortillas which could be used for sandwich wraps, to make chips and dip. I made some salsa and I also had beans on hand, so it wasn't an issue to whip up some hummus and the hummus could be used in a delicious veggie wrap. Remember I have a garden so there was an endless supply of veggies that needed to be eaten. Salads, again my garden to the rescue! Large pot of black bean soup and a large pot of chicken and veggie pasta pesto. Okra, tomatoes and rice stew. Zucchini and squash fritters. I believe that's most of the things I made that week. I'm always challenging myself to see how far I can stretch my money and our meals and the majority of the time I can stay under budget. I believe my money stretching capabilities come from a lot of planning, the garden, keeping a well stocked pantry, and making a lot of things from scratch.
There was a time when I had to plan my meals by myself so it was both tiring but at the same time it was also a bit easier since I didn't have to plan for anyone else. This is when I really got to save because I thought to myself that if I could stretch the budget out as much as I can then I'd have more money to spend on other things like shopping for clothes. I did realize this was only temporary though so I had bit more liberty in just grabbing processed cheap food though if I had to endure this for longer I imagine I would have been a lot more careful and I probably would have looked up more vegetable dishes that could be preserved for longer.
