S/O $150k a year- low food budget- how??

amother

Emerald ↓

Sun, Oct 06 2024, 1:27 pm

I have a family of 4. Live out of town. Keep cy. Host a lot for Shabbos ans YT. Lids don't get lunches in school. We spend around 1200/month on groceries. We buy from walmart whatever we can. Frozen veggies thay don't need to be checked (according to Star-k) like green beans, peppers, etc. we get there. Salmon we get from Walmart or Aldi or Trader Joe's. We don't buy prepackaged snacks. We pack chips, pretzels, popcorn, cheese slices, veggies and fruit.

We don't have fleishigs every night. One night is Shabbos leftovers, maybe another night or two is fleishigs. We do pasta one night a week but with salmon or a hearty soup. Another pareve or milchig meal a week (usually homemade pizza with Walmart dough).

If you want to serve fleishigs every night, buy bottled drinks, packaged snacks (especially fromt trader Joe's, which are expensive compared to other stores in terms of snacks) your grocery prices will be higher as you can see yours are.

Weekly grocery trip: milk, checked lettuce, bananas, apples, fruit that's in season, zucchini, carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onion, chicken, gefilte, tomatoes, eggplant, big tubs of yogurt, cheese, big bags of pretzels, chips, cream cheese, butter, small yogurts for kids, frozen broccoli and cauliflower with a hechsher.

Walmart order every two weeks: beans, frozen green beans, cereal, tortilla chips, salmon, salsa, mini peppers, pasta, rice, juice, eggs, pizza dough, bagels, popcorn ketnels, sometimes cake mix and flour, sugar, salt, etc. as needed.

We don't usually buy bread. I usually make challah and dips. Desserts I bake and freeze in batches. I buy meat only on sale and stock up in my freezer. Yes this gets factored into my grocery costs because I have a seperate credit card for groceries. But in that case I'm also counting foil pans, napkins, paper goods and sometimes cleaning supplies from Walmart.

I get grape juice from costco. Wine averages about 15 a bottle and usually we use a bottle every two weeks.

1000 for a family of six does sound a little low but if you don't keep cy that makes a big difference on cost. It does sound possible.

amother

Ebony

Sun, Oct 06 2024, 1:43 pm

amother OP wrote:

Wow thanks. We eat very differently. My kids take 4 snacks a day. We eat chicken most nights. My kids eat fresh or frozen pizza Sunday lunch. DH has a fresh bagel daily. We eat meat on Shabbos. We eat cholent and mazza and if there’s guests I serve a lot more. I also have my nespresso machine which is about $1.5 a cup.

Btw I’m also including all paper and plastic goods.

I don’t get what you’re confused about- you spend a lot on food because you want to eat like that.
We never buy frozen pizza, individual yogurts, 4 snacks - if you mean snack bags - per kid per day is a lot of money that most people don’t spend etc. of course my find bill is waaaay less than yours. No one doubts that it’s possible to spend a lot. But spending a little IS possible.

amother

Poppy

Sun, Oct 06 2024, 1:59 pm

We are a family of 6 and spend about $1600-2000 a month including paper goods. Kids eat cereal or oatmeal or pancakes for breakfast. Lunch they get in school. Kids take 3 snacks to school. Supper schedule is leftovers/milchigs, chopped meat, fish, chicken, and milchigs or pareve on Thursday. We have a roasted vegetable and/or a salad at each supper.
We host every shabbos and Yom tov. I make lots of food and I don't buy out. Challah, dips, dessert, dressings everything is made from scratch but it's still a lot of money. I daven that Hashem pays us back for shabbos and Yom tov expenses. I don't think we are very fancy hosts - we have salmon and gefilte fish one meal and the other just gefilte fish. If lox is on sale I'll incorporate that in too. I serve chicken Friday night and cholent (with some meat) and grilled chicken cutlets or shnitzel for shabbos lunch main. I find the salads to be very costly as well.
My kids eat frozen pizza, frozen French fries, cheese sandwiches etc different random times during the week too.
Food is expensive.

amother

Yolk

Sun, Oct 06 2024, 2:06 pm

I don't know what the original thread was about, but I think it's important to differentiate between what is "normal" to spend when you have the money, and what you should spend on if you really don't have the money to spare. Also that each person has a differnet amount of energy, time, cooking abilities, personality...and different ages and temperments of kids, and that definitely impacts whether they are able to make more frugal choices -- and whether those choices are smart for that family.

I'd say that we spend over 1000 a month for my family of 8, but nowhere near 2000. We eat chicken on Shabbos and leftovers, maybe one ground meat meal during the week (or something like chicken wings that's cheaper). We sometimes have a hearty soup and bread as a meal. Meatless tacos, quesadillas, things like that are common dinners here, easy on the cheese since we keep CY which can get expensive. Shabbos day, our main is cholent with a small amount of meat in it. No appetizer, my kids don't miss it. If we have company, I'll make gefilte fish or a fruit salad or something, but otherwise, it's not necessary.

Oh, and my oldests are teenage boys. Granted, for some parts of the year they eat a lot of meals in yeshiva once they hit 8th grade, and they do need more food when they're home. But this was how we ate as of last year, when only one of them was in mesivta, and his (local) yeshiva lets the boys come home a lot.

If there is a family that is not making it, then making some changes to keep costs down makes sense. That doesn't mean that every family should do it. It's fine to have cholent and deli on Shabbos if some of your kids won't eat cholent. It's fine to have fleishigs every night if your husband prefers it, or if it's easier for you to make, or if your kids won't eat the pareve options you've tried. You don't have to feel guilty for spending money you don't "have" to spend. That might be the best choice for your family, and that's fine.

But if you aren't making it, if you need the money for other things and it isn't there, then maybe it makes sense to think outside of the box when it comes to food. If I had to, there are things I am willing to pay for because they make sense for our family right now, but they're the first things I'd give up if we were really stuck. Like I buy challah every week because I've decided that the amount of time and energy it would take to make it just doesn't make sense at this point in my life. But if I needed to, I could step out of my comfort zone and start making it every week. I also buy whole grains instead of white, and I occasionally serve certain vegetables that are not so cheap, because I think it's important for my kids to get used to eating those things. But I'd rather my kids eat non-whole-wheat noodles and not eat broccoli for a while than move to a small home, or live without air conditioning, or not have the money for much-needed braces.

Doesn't mean that I'm going to cut those things out of my shopping list right now. I B"H don't need to. And I don't feel guilty about that.

amother

↑ Azalea ↓

Sun, Oct 06 2024, 2:33 pm

amother OP wrote:

My kids also take 4 snacks, but only 1 is allowed to be a snack bag- the rest are healthier and cheaper.

We have fleshigs 3 nights a week - used to be 4 till kids asked for rice and beans instead

Pizza doesn’t exist here because 2 kids are gluten free, so we generally do pasta bar for Sunday lunch.

We use Thomas’s bagels because there are no fresh bagels here, and I get minis for the kids so there’s less waste.

So they’re small differences but they do add up.

amother

Stone

Sun, Oct 06 2024, 3:19 pm

amother OP wrote:

I also have my nespresso machine which is about $1.5 a cup..

There are much cheaper ways to buy nespresso pods - I buy on amazon subscribe and save for around 25-30 cents/pod for 100 pods. You can buy so many household goods on amazon including food items and bulk snacks etc.

There are easy wins like buying in bulk or /and lifestyle choices such as type of oil, organic veg, precut veg, chicken/meat nightly etc. Also snacks. The snack culture is insane. Different conversation.

At the end of the day you either buy to a budget or just allow it to add up. We all have a choice around that. It is ok to run out of food and have no yoghurt left, and eat plainer food at the end of a week. We have 1 shabbos leftovers meal and 1 end of the week (ie Thurs) leftovers meal to manage waste. It isn't the most enjoyable but it is healthy and you eat it or make a sandwich instead.

I'm sure many posters would say this was abusive but it is just real life. We eat within a budget, and we avoid baal tashchis.

amother

↑ OP ↓

Sun, Oct 06 2024, 3:27 pm

amother Ebony wrote:

I hear you. I’m chewing this over.

We grew up 1 snack bag a day. 1 freeze pop a day etc. Only water and seltzer.

Any time we walked even a cookie we had to ask my mother.

As a teenager it was very hard for me so I vowed I’d be different and not live so frugally when it comes to food. Not be crazy- I don’t buy expensive meats and prepared foods. Mostly chop meat and chicken and I make a lot from scratch. But I think I need to find a healthier balance.

This summer, I cut out eating out and ordering in. It became way too expensive. Now I need to learn to limit snacks. I don’t know where to start though. My kids know they can take whatever snack they want whenever. I don’t want to restrict food like my mother did. However, I realized it was a bit out of hand my older one started demanding fresh pizza every Sunday lunch.

A pie of pizza isn’t $16 anymore…

But idk anyone in real life who lives in $160 a week.

amother

↑ OP ↓

Sun, Oct 06 2024, 3:33 pm

joker wrote:

I literally just sat down with my bill and added my expenses
we spent 3,054 for the month of september (includes most papergoods) dont have a lot of company but did have r"h. It does not include eating out etc.
We arent super careful about our bills, I do use Walmart delivery as much as I can but otherwise....I buy what I need
I cannot imagine how its possible to spend 1k on a family that size

Right. I have to see how much a normal month would cost us. I’d say I spent an extra $500 this month on yt meats ect. We moved in August. So I guess I’ll wait until November to really be able to see.

amother

↑ OP ↓

Sun, Oct 06 2024, 3:34 pm

amother Stone wrote:

I buy my pods from Amazon. I Will look for a subscription option.

I do leftovers Sunday night assuming we have- I might just add burgers or meatballs if needed. And on Thursday night we eat from our Shabbos food. So that meal gets stretched to three honestly.

amother

Azure ↓

Sun, Oct 06 2024, 3:41 pm

I also think Imamother skews Superwoman, I don't know how you all work full time, have a bunch of kids and never ever use frozen food. I don't know what's wrong with me but I can't do that, I work full time and have a bunch of young kids (all too young to be of substantial help) and I use frozen bourekas, frozen breaded fish, French fries etc regularly. I physically can't feed my family otherwise. And though I don't do fleishigs every night, I usually do around one night milchigs, 1 night parve and one night Shabbos leftovers, my husband is hungry by 10 pm when I don't serve fleishigs and he ends up filling up on snacks. I do it anyway because I have picky kids but I don't think non fleishig is saving any money after my husband's second supper of snacks.

amother

↑ Emerald ↓

Sun, Oct 06 2024, 3:54 pm

amother OP wrote:

I think we all vow never to be like our parents in certain ways, and then when we get older we understand exactly why they did what they did. It's part of growing up. We need to be able to pay the bills so we make choices to be frugal where we can.

amother

↑ Azalea ↓

Sun, Oct 06 2024, 4:02 pm

amother OP wrote:

It sounds like your kids are old enough to be part of the conversation: ok guys, food prices have gone up. BH we have enough money for basics, but there are a lot of extras. We’re going to list all the extras, and everyone can pick what’s most important to them to keep.

And list : a second snack bag, unlimited snack bags, weekly pizza, 4 nights a week fleshigs, etc and you may find that they’re really ok with just 1-2 snack bags as long as they get their pizza etc