Grocery Budgeting

Last weekend, Gwyneth Paltrow was all over the interwebs for taking a Food Stamps Challenge by living on the $29 per week (per person) that they estimate a person on SNAP receives, and she posted what she got for her $29 at the grocery store. Of course, everyone on the web lost their ever living minds over the amount of food and her choices.

Before I go further, attempting to see how people in less financially fortunate circumstances live is commendable. I do not judge her harshly for it. 

A lot of people have weighed in on how difficult it would be to eat for a week on so little and how doing so week in and week out is not reasonable. In my experience, it is actually much more difficult to do for a single week than it is over an extended period of time - we stock up when things are on sale, so we can stretch our dollars much mo. We live quite comfortably and healthily on a budget that is equal or less to this and have been for years. Oh, and yes - we eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.

First of all, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a staple and are on the menu for lunch almost every day. Buy bread at a bakery outlet (we pay 80 cents a loaf for whole wheat bread most of the time but sometimes can get 2/$1 depending on the day) and stock up on peanut butter when it is on sale (maybe $2 per week total). I make homemade jams and jellies, so the PB&Js are not such a deprivation (and the jams are cheaper than purchasing it from the store). It takes a fair bit of time and energy, but it is worth it. Apples, oranges, and bananas are less than $1/pound (bananas come in less than 40 cents a pound at our local gas station). Lunch for a week runs about $2-$3 per person. For the week. If we're splurging, I will get a bag of Aldi's brand chips for less than $2, and it lasts over a week.

Breakfast is an inexpensive meal. Eggs on sale run about 99 cents a dozen. Otherwise, we are looking at $1.29. Two eggs (about 20 cents or less), a couple of slices of toast (12 cents) and a piece of fruit, makes a healthy breakfast for $3-$4 per week per person. For a change up, oatmeal is filling and an even better bargain.

We have breakfast and lunch covered for easily less than $10 per person. Now, we've got about $20 each for a week for dinners. There are plenty of websites that have recipes that you can make for $5 to feed 4 people. (This generally means 2 meals for us). If we are eating those strictly, it costs us less than $10 per person for the week. That leaves an extra $10 at the end of the week for any additional items that we might need and to allow for stocking up on sale items.