A couple of weeks ago I read an article on KSL.com. The article is titled, “Salt Lake County Mayor Tries Food Stamp Budget.” According to the article a family of four is allotted $110 a week in food stamps. The purpose of having the Mayor shop on a food stamp budget was to “raise awareness about the challenge food stamps recipients face.” The Mayor ended up spending $90 for the week, so I don’t know if the exercise raised much awareness.
Does $110 a week for groceries sound like a generous amount for anybody else besides me? I personally try to stick to a food budget of about $250 a month. (That amount includes food and household items such as cleaning supplies, toiletries, diapers, and wipes.) I know people who spend a lot more than that, but I also know people who spend less. I think $110 a week would be difficult if you had two teenage boys, but besides that situation $110 should be very sufficient for most families. The only catch is that it would require planning and preparation. The article alluded to the fact that it’s difficult to eat healthy on the food stamp budget. I think you can eat healthy and still not spend a lot of money. It’s just a matter of choice on what you want to eat.
I don’t know if it’s really that good that I spend only $250 a month on food, because like I said, I know people who spend less, but I work at only spending that much. Like I wrote in a previous post I shop sales, use coupons, and shop at thrift food stores. I cringe when I have to pay full price for things. One example is-I don’t like to buy cereal unless I can get it for under $1 a box. Right now we have forty boxes of cereal in our food storage. Last week I brought home twenty boxes of cereal and for all those boxes I only spent $10. Chad rolled his eyes a little when he saw how many boxes I bought, but only because we haven’t been eating much cereal lately and he was worried about how we were going to get through all those boxes. (Chad is often the only one who eats much cereal and he mostly gave it up a couple of months ago in exchange for oatmeal.) No worries though, the cereal is good for a year and for less than $1 a box it’s a cheap, healthy breakfast.
Living on a food stamp budget would also require sacrifice, but it’s good to learn that you can’t always have exactly what you want. Sometimes I will give into cravings and splurge on something at the grocery store, but most of the time we eat what is on sale. A couple of weeks ago at the thrift food store I got a five pound block of feta cheese for $7.00. I froze some of it and I gave some to a friend, but for the past couple of weeks we’ve been coming up with different things to use it in and on. Yesterday for lunch I made a chicken, bacon, feta sandwich on a ciabatta roll. For dinner we had a delicious salad consisting of mixed greens, feta, caramelized walnuts and balsamic vinaigrette. Tomorrow I’m thinking we should have veggie omelets with feta.
As I was writing this post I realized that I am truly fortunate that I have a mother who taught me about meal planning, shopping for deals, and cooking. I probably would spend more that $110 a week on food if I didn’t really know how to prepare it, because I would have to buy things that were already prepared. I am also lucky that we can afford to buy food at all.
1 comment:
Wow, $110 a week really does sound like a lot of money for groceries. I don't have a strict budget for food and instead have just tried to spend as little as possible and always shop sales. I only go grocery shopping every few weeks if I can help it, spending $50-75 each time. I would say on average we probably spend $125 a month. Even taking into account that we are only a family of 2 and dividing the money in half, if we lived on food stamps, we would still be eating like kings.
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