November $25 a Week Grocery Challenge

[Contrary Housewife]

I'm in. Husband's last day of work is this Friday, so Nov 1 we will be unemployed... though I doubt we will qualify for EBT (food stamps). We've already started cutting back on everything. Food is the least of our worries at this point.

I've started a FV blog for the challenge.

[YankeeMom]

I'm in! $600/month in JUST food? Psh! I'll come in waaay below that.

BTW, not all SSI comes on the first of the month. Food stamp recipients in NY state can use coupons and can shop at the Farmer's Market.

[chevy_chick95]

1. Spend no more than $25 dollars per week, per person in your family. So if you are a family of 4 then your monthly total is $400 i.e.
25*4(people)*4(weeks) = $400.

2. Since government assistance comes in a lump sum at the beginning of the month you may assume that you have the whole amount to spend from Nov. 1. You may spend it any way you want. If you prefer to do a big shop at the beginning of the month or dole out grocery money weekly that is fine. Just make sure you do not exceed you monthly alloted amount.

3. You may use food from your stockpile as well as any food you get for free, hunt, raise, forage, barter or scrounge. You must note where the food has come from when posting your totals and breakdowns so that everyone can see what strategies you are using.

4. Meals eaten out do count towards your monthly total.

5. Toiletries and household products do not count towards the total as they cannot be purchased with food stamps. Please do not count them as part of your grocery budget here.

7. Thanksgiving Dinner willl be an optional opt out for those folks who want to go all out, but only that one meal (day). If you use the leftovers up through the week rather than freeze them, please estimate their cost and add to the total i.e. how much would you spend for a pound of turkey and some veggies to make turkey soup? If you do a super frugal Thanksgiving please post and let us know how it went.

8. Please post a break down of your grocery bills as you inccur them. At the end of the month please post your averages along with the number of people in you family so we can see who got the lowest. You may also want to post the difference between the averages of Oct. and Nov if you have that information available.

It would also be nice if folks would post sample menus and possibly breakdowns of cost per person etc. This is not required but would be fun and helpful. The point of this challenge is to really stretch our frugal muscles and exchange ideas as we go.

Are we counting animal food?


Awesome. I am in. 2 adults.

I used to have our grocery budget down to $80 a month... then these crazy prices hit that budget went out the window. we are up to about $130-$150 now. So back down to $100, so that is actually about $12.50/person/week..

I need a good hard challenge. Especially with thanksgiving and Christmas coming up. This should be a very interesting challenge!!!

[mnmarty03]

Alright! As stated earlier, my $25 a week challenge starts out this Wednesday, Oct. 29th due to how I normally grocery shop. Tonight I did my first week's shopping! And stayed ON BUDGET! WOO! Here's my grocery list w/cost of item. I shopped at Wal Mart only.

1 Gallon 2% Milk: 3.77
1 32 oz container Yoplait Yogurt: 2.14
1 container Welch's frozen juice concentrate: 1.08
1 container off brand frozen juice concentrate: 0.92
1 lb ground turkey: 1.98
1 12 oz box Crunch & Munch Popcorn: 1.88
1 box (10 bars) off brand granola bars: 1.78
1 large box off brand cereal (corn flakes): 1.48
1 can (10.5 oz) off brand Cream of Mushroom soup: 0.88
1.17 lb Red Grapes: 1.76 (1.50 a pound)
1 Bartlet Pear (0.51 lb): 0.51 (1.00 a pound)
2 Gala Apples (1 lb): 1.64 (1.64 a pound)
1 dozen medium sized eggs: 1.33
1 package (8 snack bars) Twix candy bars: 0.97

Subtotal: 23.10
Tax: 0.58
Total: 23.68

Alright. Now. Here's my menu for the week. B = Breakfast, L = Lunch, and D = Dinner. I will list food that came from the grocery shop for that day's plan. Otherwise assume I already had it.


Oct 29th:
- B: 1 soft boiled egg, small glass milk, 2 slices bread w/jam or peanut butter
- L: 1 Sandwich (2 pieces bread, lunch meat, cheese + condiments), 1 box raisins, 1 piece of fruit, popcorn
- D: Dinner at Bible Study (cost = $2)
- Snacks: Carrot or Celery Sticks

Grocery Shop Foods: Milk (I bought eggs but have 4 left from before so those are used first!), fruit, popcorn



Oct. 30th
- B: Cereal & Milk
- L: 1 Sandwich (2 pieces bread, lunch meat, cheese + condiments), 1 box raisins, 1 piece of fruit, popcorn
- D: Turkey Burger & Salad
Snacks: Carrot or Celery Sticks. Granola Bar.

Grocery Shop Foods: cereal, milk, fruit, popcorn, turkey for burger, granola bar

Oct. 31st
- B: Egg Sandwich & Yogurt
- L: Sandwich, 1 piece of fruit, apple sauce, celery stick w/peanut butter & raisins.
- D: Turkey Leg, mashed potatoes, veggies.
Snacks: Granola bar.

Grocery Shop Foods: Yogurt, fruit
* Note: I bought the small package of Twix candy bars to give out to trick-or-treaters. I'm not sure how many kids actually will come to my apartment. So I bought a small package. If 7 or less kids come (there were 8 candy bars. I ate one.) they get Twix. If no kids come then I'm not STUCK w/huge amounts of candy. After kid number 7, no more get treats. lol.

Nov. 1st
- B: Yogurt & Fruit. Bread w/jam.
- L: Sandwich, fruit, popcorn, granola bar, carrots.
- D: "Hamburger" Gravy (Cream of Mushroom soup mixed w/ground turkey over left over mashed potatoes.) Veggies on the side.
Snacks: None.

Grocery Shop Foods: Yogurt, fruit, popcorn, granola bar, turkey, cream of mushroom soup.

Nov. 2nd
- B: Soft boiled egg, bread w/jam or cream cheese.
- L: Sandwich, yogurt, popcorn.
- D: Left over "hamburger" gravy over egg noodles.

Grocery Shop Foods: Yogurt, popcorn, "hamburger" gravy left over makings.

Nov. 3rd
- B: Cereal & Milk
- L: Sandwich, yogurt, granola bar, fruit.
- D: French Toast w/strawberries.

Grocery Shop Foods: Cereal, milk, yogurt, granola bar, fruit (not including strawberries).

Nov. 4th
- B: Soft boiled egg, bread w/cream cheese or jam. yogurt if any left.
- L: Sandwich, granola bar, left over fruit or frozen veggies.
- D: Homemade "stir fry": frozen stir fry veggies & noodles with sauce (home made).

Grocery Shop Foods: egg, yogurt, granola bar, fruit.


Ok. Whew! So there you have it. I'm able to use a lot of food from what I have left over from my normal shopping last week, which is nice. There are a couple of things I would change about next time though. I had meant to grab the apples that were 1.00 a lb instead of 1.64 a lb. Didn't realize my mistake until i was typing this up. I also would buy bananas instead of grapes for a fruit, but they were out of bananas tonight. Other than that this really is a typical type of food week for me, except that I tried harder to stay under $25.

A couple of other notes - I included "snacks" on some menu plans in case I get hungry. But I usually only eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Also I don't know how long some foods will last me, like the popcorn. If it lasts me longer in the week, then it'll get used longer. If it doesn't, oh well. I was going to buy popcorn kernels, but I am running low on Olive Oil and want to save it since it is so expensive. The Crunch & Munch popcorn was on sale.

Ok. Hope you enjoyed. I too am going to start a blog on here specifically for this challenge so that I can keep track of my own stuff easier. I'm looking forward to this weeks' meals!

[mnmarty03]

P.S. The turkey stuffing is for thanksgiving. That, my last turkey leg that I have in the freezer, and veggies will make up my turkey day meal.

And..

... that makes my total spent this month 23.68 plus money for dinner at Bible Study. Bible Study dinner is based on a free will offering, and is something that I just started attending. I'm not willing to give it up for this challenge or to go and say "Sorry. Can't eat here cause I can't afford it due to my self-inflicted grocery budget." So, it is my exception and isn't included completely. I will either add the $2 onto my budget each week if there is enough or will round up the budget to $25.00 if the difference isn't enough. If I spend $25 a week in groceries, then I will just ignore my $2 given to the Bible Study. This is realistic I feel, since if I weren't able to pay (and REALLY only had $25 a week), they would still let me eat and would let it be free.

Ok. Now I'm really done.

[Radish4ever]

Yay, I can't wait to get started! I'm staying out of the grocery store until Nov 1st, so this will be fun

[mnmarty03]

What do you mean by "warm food" ??

I originally didn't add in the full $2 cost of Bible Study... but I changed my mind about how to do it, so I will just add it in to the total every week. That puts my total this week at 25.68 for food. Next week I'll try to spend a little less on groceries so I make up for going a little over this week.

I also didn't add in the cost of my food storage stuff. I guess in my pretend world over here I assume that my life was normal and then something (like a layoff) made me only have $25 a week to live on. So I didn't add it in.

[DonnainME]

Food stamps are given at different times in different states. Social security recipients get their $ on the 1st so that's what I heard is the reason for grocers going up at the first of the month. WE always get our food stamps on the 12th. It goes by the first letter of your last name in Maine - mine is L and so that's the 12th. You CAN use coupons with food stamps. I have here in Maine and back in Florida too. Many people don't but you CAN and I DO!

Our farmer's market sucks and I don't go there much. I go by and look but rarely buy anything.

I am definitely IN on this challenge. Again, I don't get FS until 12th so everything before that is from stockpile and freezer. We shop from the 12th until the end of the month to cover then and the next 12 days.

We also get WIC - I get to keep it for 6 months after the miscarriage - hopefully we'll have conceived again before that time but that's a different story for another post.

Good luck to you all.

[wareaglemom]

I'm in! This is actually pretty close to what we've been doing already. There are four of us & my grocery budget is $125 a week, but that includes all our toiletries and household items. I don't count our Angel Food box in our grocery budget, but now I will include that. This is going to be fun!

[chevy_chick95]

Did you add in the value of food already owned? I couldn't understand if you did it or not.

That is a major question that I have not seen the answer to.

I know we can use our stockpile but do we need to count in the cost of what we paid for it?

[Domestic Gal]

For those of you wondering how to make this challenge fair using your stockpile this is how I am doing it.

My budget is $400 for this challenge. I am counting my stockpile as $200 worth.
I will only be spending $200 total for the month the rest will come from the stockpile.
I feel this will be the easiest way to make it a fair challenge for me.

[mnmarty03]

I'm not adding in my "stockpile" costs, but I also don't have much of a stockpile. It's just random stuff left over from other weeks that I didn't eat. Some flour or some eggs or milk or whatever. Just my two cents.

[StaceyS]

I'm not adding in my "stockpile" costs, but I also don't have much of a stockpile. It's just random stuff left over from other weeks that I didn't eat. Some flour or some eggs or milk or whatever. Just my two cents.

I'm also not adding in the cost of my stockpile, otherwise I'd just use my stockpile. I stockpile when I can get things free or real cheap, and will continue to stockpile with this $25 challenge.

[Parsimonious]

I've decided against participating. I love the idea (that's why I wanted to join), but I have decided that I don't have the time for the paper-work involved (posting regularly what I spent, etc.) during November. A challenge is no fun if you claim to participate, but all you do is register and then, at the end of the month, state you failed the challenge. Nonetheless, great idea, and I'm looking forward to reading all your contributions once I'm less stressed out

[fuzzybunny]

As to the stockpile questions:

You do not have to add the cost of items used from the stockpile. If I woke up tomorrow and had to begin recieving food stamps then I would not be adding the cost of my stockpiled items to my budget. I also would not refuse to use the stockpile because it wasn't part of what I had been allotted by the government.

I realize this is not "fair" to folks with smaller stockpiles, however there really is no way to make the challenge the same for everyone. For instance a single person with a monthly allotment is not going to be able to go and due the same level of bulk shopping as a mom with 4 kids who is getting $500 for the month.

If you use an item from you stockpile then just note "stockpile" next to in the break down, so that people can understand how your costs might be lower than their's.