Wednesday, March 3, 2010

The $20 a week grocery budget experiment

Out of necessity I have adopted a $20 a week grocery budget for our family of six. My budget is actually running through the first week of April, so today I withdrew $100 in cash, and put it in my grocery-only wallet.





Included in this budget is all food, plus all "household"...toiletries, paper products, cleaning supplies, etc. I am starting out with both my chest freezer and the one in the fridge FULL. I am well stocked on meat/protein, and have a fairly nice sized stockpile of canned/frozen veggies, fruit, pasta, cereal, etc. I have $16-17 worth of bottles to return (thanks to the Michigan 10 cent deposit!). I will add that to my grocery budget, since paying the deposit in the first place came out of my original grocery budget. Even though this month it's neccessary to keep our grocery spending as low as possible, I am actually oddly excited. I love me a good challenge.

I went shopping this morning for the first time this month (which is why there isn't $100 in the picture above!). I bought:

5 lbs apples $1.99
3 lbs carrots $2.79
1.04 lbs asparagus $1.55
broccoli $1.49

Total = $7.82





I *may* need another gallon of milk on Friday or Saturday, but otherwise, I'm done for the week!


Grocery budget left: $92.18

7 comments:

  1. Good luck with the challenge-I bet you can do it if you plan well :)
    sara http://myfrugalfunlife.blogspot.com/

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  2. Good luck!! I totally think you can do it if you have a good stock pile and, like Sara said, plan WELL. Make those meal plans and don't buy anything else :) I'm excited to follow you and see how you do!

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  3. Thanks you guys! I'm actually pretty excited about this! It's almost like a game to see how long I can go...I have visions of continuing on past the five weeks. Of course I say that now, while it's only 4 days in, lol.

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  4. Sounds like you are off to a great start. I've adopted a $25/week budget running the same timr frame as you and also out of necessity. Maybe, we can use each other for inspiration. I must admit, you family is larger and budget smaller, so I am impressed by your goal

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  5. try to stick to milk and produce and free items or nearly free just pennies and you should be fine!

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  6. Wow! What an aggressive goal! Good luck! Thanks for sharing your story with the bloggy world! Quite an inspiration!

    You can do it!!!

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