i am looking for a reasonable amount that should be spent on grocery money for a family of 3. We include shampoo, TP, paper towels, and soaps in this budget. I am a vegan, DH is a big MEAT eater, and DD is somewhere in btwn. I currently spend around $500 or so (usually more btwn weekly trips to the grocery store) on meals for the month. I have heard people with a family of 3, getting down to $150 a month! That sounds insane to me. How do they do it?
Can you give me some direction, and some good recipes that would work for my family and keep us CHEAP??
THanks in advance.
Nicole

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:muahahahah:

Nicole

With your eating style I'm not real certain what to offer up.

A lot of folks that eat on the cheap are doing one of several ways....

eat a lot of processed ready to eat type foods - stuff there are a lot of coupons out there for

eat nothing processed and cook everything from scratch and bulk in bulk

add a few meatless meals as week - vegetarian meals are often cheaper than meat eating meals.

Personally, we do a blend of it all. Also I threw away most of the receipes I had that called for strange ingrediants, stuff that was very pricey or hardly used.



Have you made a price book? Made an inventory of ingrediants needed to make the top 30 meals in your house, that way you can stock up on certain items that yuou know will get used when you see them on sale.


In terms of resonable, it's different for each family. We don't eat much meat, but when we do it's always organic which costs more per pound. Likewise on milk, I only purchase organic, so what might be cheap for others, would be garbage in my house. No matter the cost my family is not going to eat boxed mac n' cheese or hormone filled milk. So there is no resonable across the board as each family has different needs and different standards.

Good luck

A vegan and a big meat eater must make meal planning really challenging. No advice there.
For the paper products, have you tried a warehouse store like BJ's or Sam's? It always seems like a lot of money each time we go, but we don't go very often. Also, some of the drug stores like Walgreens or CVS or Rite-Aid sometimes have great deals on paper products or just a few grocery items. Usually, there's only one or two items I consider worth buying at those stores. I comb the sales flyers each Sunday and see what coupons I have. I think it's much more time-consuming than just relying on the grocery store, but sometimes the deals are worth it.

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~Jeweled

Just a couple of ideas...

Stock up on the bulk packs of meat when they are on a really good deal and put them in small freezer bags with a serving - it will stretch your meals a lot further.

Have pasta regularly - it is pretty cheap and can be easily adapted - tomato sauce with veggies for you, add a few meatballs or ground beef for your hubby.