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$200/month to feed a family of 6??


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I read a blog post in which a woman claimed she can feed her family of 6 (I have no idea of the ages) for $200/month without using more then a few coupons.

 

I'm not totally convinced.

 

We get half a cow for free every year (my parents are awesome) and I can't do it on less then $500/month.

 

Is it possible? Please share your secrets!!

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We spend $100/week for a family of 8, but that is supplemented by lots of produce in the spring/summer (from generous church members) and meat (venison, pork, beef, etc). Dh is a pastor and we live in a farming community, so we have been blessed with lots of food. I'm thinking our grocery spending would probably be around $125/week if our circumstances were different. I'm sure our needs will increase greatly as the children grow up; I'm already seeing a big increase in the amount of food two of my boys eat!

 

 

ETA: I just checked out her blog, and her $200/month does not include stuff like toilet paper, paper towels, etc. It's just the food. Our grocery budget ($100/week) includes everything: food, toilet paper, soap, laundry detergent, garbage bags, etc.

Edited by lotsofpumpkins
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No. I looked at her lists for meals and can't even fathom how to make those meals for $200 a month. I couldn't do it and we eat similar things. I spend roughly $100 a month per person. I don't buy milk or cereal.

 

I looked at her lists and her prices and don't get it - how can any family of 6 get by with the food she mentions, the total she mentions, and have meat just about every night is beyond me.

 

ETA: The hamburger dinner, for example, would take at least 2 pounds of hamburger, the buns, and the fixings - about $12 minimum. Spaghetti is $11 for the stuff to make sauce (homemade with meat) and the noodles. Homemade pizza is $6 for the cheese alone! Grilled chicken, wild rice, and veggies is $4 for the chicken, $2.50 for the veggies (frozen), and no idea on the wild rice.

 

She is talking about spending $6.67 per day for all meals, but her meals are all individually that much or more, even based on the prices she lists.

Edited by Renee in FL
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ETA: I just checked out her blog, and her $200/month does not include stuff like toilet paper, paper towels, etc. It's just the food. Our grocery budget ($100/week) includes everything: food, toilet paper, soap, laundry detergent, garbage bags, etc.

 

So does mine but I think I'm going to start tracking it in January to see how much we're actually eating.

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As a commenter already noticed, yes, they're awfully carb heavy, very small portions of meat. I think it'd raise the price a bit if you went lower carb, but some people do just fine on that carb level.

 

I don't think it's like that crazy woman a while back who was posting about how she made flour and water baked goods for her kids or something similar. It looks okay to me.

 

I wouldn't be at all surprised if a huge saving was on not buying soda. Looking at her grocery list there's 3 gallons of milk, 3 frozen juice concentrates and no other drinks. That means her kids must be drinking a lot of water (which is great and much healthier!).

 

ETA: She also mentioned that they eat on smaller plates which greatly aids in reducing waste, and that they have a well-producing garden.

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Well, I took a quick look and was impressed. She admits to using her garden to good advantage. My grocery bill goes way down in August and September when I harvest tomatoes and cabbages and other expensive things from my garden. If she has a couple of fruit trees that would help. A cherry and an apple tree save us a lot of money. Just growing my own lettuce, green onions and herbs all year long keeps our family of four at $500 a month and I have a teen boy who eats like crazy.

 

I would point out that she is using meat as a condiment and not a huge part of every meal, which is pretty healthy. All of the pasta and corn products are fattening, but maybe her family can work it off. When you factor in that probably most of the veggies her family eats were picked the day she served them they are probably a pretty healthy family.

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I wouldn't be at all surprised if a huge saving was on not buying soda. Looking at her grocery list there's 3 gallons of milk, 3 frozen juice concentrates and no other drinks. That means her kids must be drinking a lot of water (which is great and much healthier!).

 

ETA: She also mentioned that they eat on smaller plates which greatly aids in reducing waste, and that they have a well-producing garden.

 

We do both of these (drink lots of water and use small plates).

 

We also buy very few snack/convenience foods; opting to make most things ourselves. I still wonder how she does it, because our eating habits seem to be very similar.

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We do both of these (drink lots of water and use small plates).

 

We also buy very few snack/convenience foods; opting to make most things ourselves. I still wonder how she does it, because our eating habits seem to be very similar.

 

Looking at yours, you and she seem to not be very far off. You said 100/wk for a family of 8, she said 200+60 (the non-food items) for a family of 6. That means you're spending about 12.50 per person per week and she's spending about 11 per person per week.

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I have heard others doing it too. Cost of living varies widely. If she mentions a large garden, perhaps too she has a huge store of canned produce, some fresh coming in, etc.

 

A person on another board does it too but also gets leftovers/gleaning from orchards and various other things in her community that are not available to all, so it works out for her.

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Yeah on years we have good luck with your garden I can cut it down at least in the summer months. This past year because of the weather we had next to no produce from it.

 

Garden is definitely feast or famine here too. I planted ONE pumpkin plant and we are still eating the over 200 lbs of pumpkins from it. Pumpkin bread, anyone? ;)

 

I've got nearly all of it pureed and frozen now thank goodness, just another few pumpkins to do.

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I looked around her blog - she has a garden and it looks like her kids are young (one just turned one recently). It looks like she makes most of their bread and pizza dough, which also really reduces costs. There is also a lot of junky things they seem to eat too.

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We spend a lot - around $200 - 250 per week for our family of five. I spent several years trying to hit impressive numbers like the blogs I read but finally gave up. All three of our kids have medical concerns and dietary limitations. I finally decided it wasn't worth the stress of baking our own bread,etc since that seemed to always fall on a day that someone was ill. We eat at home nearly every evening and most of our snacks are nutritional and not junk.

 

We do a huge garden in the summer and have wonderful neighbors that let us glean from their fruit and veggies.

 

I'm impressed by those who can do it, we cannot.

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I think I could come close to that ($33/ person/ month) for my family. I spend about $800/ month on groceries but a lot of that is non-food items and fruit juice which my kids drink by the gallon. So if I cut out the juice and didn't count non-food items as part of the bill, I'd be close to her amount, probably about $45/ person/ month, and I'm in a very high COL area.

 

My kids and husband eat very carb heavy, almost no meat, lots of beans, rice, bread, crackers. I do a lot of cooking from scratch, and the produce I buy is at discount stores, frozen, or on sale. Cheese is a condiment except for on pizza.

 

All of my kids except one are very thin. The one heavy one is the only one who doesn't like carbs-- go figure.

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:001_huh: Maybe if you starved your children.... Or did it in a very unhealthy way-- like living off Ramen noodles or something.

 

Here's what my husband eats... and as I said minus the juice and non-food items we're close to her level.

 

breakfast-- big bowl of generic oatmeal cooked with half water/ half milk, a handful of raisins, and a handful of nuts (whichever kind was on sale), 1-2 glass of OJ

 

(no lunch)

 

dinner-- big bowl of homemade rice and beans topped with swiss cheese and sour cream, yams, broccoli if on sale, avocado if on sale, 1-2 glasses of OJ

 

That's about 2000-2200 calories a day and pretty healthy. The kids are picky so don't all eat as well, but it's not for lack of availability of healthier choices.

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Our situations change greatly from month to month. Some months, I have 2k to spend on groceries, and other months I have $100 for the entire month.

 

Becuase of that, I tend to stock up when the sales are good, skip when there are no good sales. On those lean months, all I might need to buy is milk, cheese, fruit and veggies.

 

It's also really hard for me to answer the question how much I spend per month on food. LOL Technically I guess you could say I have a 3-6 month basic stock in my pantry. But it would be pretty darn boring. haha

 

After our year of unemployment, I have learned to feed the family for under $5 a dinner meal-- for 5 and my boys all eat like TEENS! It wasn't exciting, but doable. I did lots of research on it... Read lots of depression cooking cookbooks for ideas too.

 

The main thing is eggs, beans, pasta, rice, potatoes, bread-- fillers at every meal. Add protiens and sauces to make it a dinner. LOL ANY veggie you can afford add to make it healthier.

 

I cant look at a zuchinni right now without gagging. It's the only thing that would grow last summer with our weird weather. I made it owrk, but bleck! LOL

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We are a family of 5, but my youngest barely eats table food that much. I spend less than $300/month on groceries. We don't always have a lot of surplus(extra snacks,etc), we drink water, tea and milk most of the time and we do garden in the summer months. This year's garden did GREAT we still have sweet potatoes, potatoes, green beans, peas, and squash from our harvest. :)

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I spend about $500 a month to feed a family of mostly 4 but sometimes 6 (revolving children from joint custody). I include all of the soap, tp, shampoo, ibuprofen, tin foil, trash bags, ect. in that. I KNOW I could do a lot better because I can see how it would play out, but frankly I cook and bake enough from scratch and I don't HAVE to so.....I do make my own pasta and bread and stuff so I feel virtuous enough. One trick I have for the winter is to grow my own sprouts in canning jars with cheesecloth over the mouths. I use those in place of buying some fresh produce when the prices go up. I don't like canned veggies, so I don't can anything but tomatoes anymore. And fruit for jam and pie filling. I am hoping to talk Mr. Rainefox into a freezer next year....I would seriously expand the garden if I had a freezer.

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I think her prices are low. A few that I notice right away are:

 

Lettuce is twice the cost here.

 

Tortillas are more than twice the cost at $5.29 for a package of 16.

 

A single loaf of whole wheat bread is $2.50 a loaf on sale and up to $5 a loaf not on sale for the kind with no HFCS.

 

Butter is never cheaper than $1.99 a pound.

 

I buy 5 dozen eggs for $7.99 so that's a similar price. But we go through all of them in a week to week and a half. We would not make it on only a dozen a week.

 

We never managed to get our entire garden in last spring because we needed to buy more dirt (raised beds) and were dealing with illness for over a month during the time we should have been planting. We got a whopping 3-4 heads of lettuce and 5-6 potatoes out of our garden this year. It's a good thing we didn't waste our money on that dirt!

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One loaf of bread per week for 6 people.

2 eggs per person per week.

Ten pounds of ground beef and 12# of chicken per three months, yet they have 4 meals for each planned in just that 2wks! (ETA: The spaghetti pic doesn't have meat, so only 3 GB meals.)

 

Also, I see her list of things they eat for breakfast. It seems those things would take a lot of money to restock but none are on her list for that 2wk period or the Sam's Club list (besides flour, but for all the things she makes from scratch 25#/3mo wouldn't cut it).

Edited by MyCalling
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One loaf of bread per week for 6 people.

2 eggs per person per week.

Ten pounds of ground beef and 12# of chicken per three months, yet they have 4 meals for each planned in just that 2wks! (ETA: The spaghetti pic doesn't have meat, so only 3 GB meals.)

 

Also, I see her list of things they eat for breakfast. It seems those things would take a lot of money to restock but none are on her list for that 2wk period or the Sam's Club list (besides flour, but for all the things she makes from scratch 25#/3mo wouldn't cut it).

 

:iagree: We eat 3 loaves of bread and 3 lbs of ground beef a week here...One person can eat 2 eggs at one time...

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One loaf of bread per week for 6 people.

2 eggs per person per week.

Ten pounds of ground beef and 12# of chicken per three months, yet they have 4 meals for each planned in just that 2wks! (ETA: The spaghetti pic doesn't have meat, so only 3 GB meals.)

.

 

:iagree:

 

If they eat PB&J that means each person can have 1 1/2 sandwiches per two weeks before they run out of bread.

 

12 pounds of chicken every three months is one pound per week works out to 2.5 ounces of chicken per person for one chicken meal per week or 1.25 ounces per person if they have two chicken meals per week.

 

I wonder if there's something she forgot to mention.

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Yeah, I could do it. If I fed my family generic hamburger helper every single night and never bought any fresh produce. A lot of these people who claim to be able to do this feed their families nothing but junk.

 

 

I spend $10 a day on meals for my family, and I can guarantee I don't feed them junk.:glare: I follow a strict plan.

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I spend $800-$900 a month in our food budget but this includes nonfood and now includes the lunches at my children's schools. I have used recipes from the Hillbilly Housewife and they are not all that bad. A few times we have gone off the $70 list but substituded because for one, I don't drink powdered milk and second my younger ones refuse to drink tea. That isn'ta bad thing since then they will drink water. I was just commenting to hubby theother day I was thinking of makine a few things from the site that we haven't made in almost two years.

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Well, we vary WIDELY week to week. I may spend $200 one week and $30 the next. My goal is to get it down to an average of $350/mo. I'd be really happy if I could get it down to an average of $60/week but I don't know if that is reasonable. We eat a lot of produce. We get WIC (which we don't use half of). We use coupons (grocerygame). OH, and our numbers count paper items, bathroom items, necessities. And my daughter is GF.

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From what she's written in her other posts, it sounds as if one of her children is barely a year old and two of the others are preschoolers. In our family, all three of those children together wouldn't eat a whole serving.

 

Our children are only a couple of years older than hers, and their appetites have gone up very noticeably just in the last six months. We used to be able to feed everyone on 3-4 servings (sometimes with leftovers), but now it's more like 6-8. And ours are nowhere near adolescence, nor are they especially active. I'm trying not to think about how many calories we'll be going through if my two little boys turn into hulking teenage rugby players. :D

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I have used recipes from the Hillbilly Housewife and they are not all that bad.

 

But even she has very low prices listed.

 

She lists 10# of flour for $1.06. I just bought ten pounds of flour today for $3.98. That's buying the cheapest flour per pound, and it was on sale. That's almost 4 times the cost of her flour. Normal price for the flour would have been $5.98.

 

Carrots are listed as $1.23 for 5 pounds. Here they are $4.39 for five pounds.

 

I can get 18 eggs for the price she pays for 36.

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DH thinks she's not mentioning that they stock their freezer and pantry with their tax return.

I'm trying not to think about how many calories we'll be going through if my two little boys turn into hulking teenage rugby players. :D
:DThat's why we haven't done swimming. The food increase would kill us financially!
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We are a family of six and we spend about 325-350 per month in groceries. This includes food, toiletries, and household items. I shop mostly at Aldi's and Walmart. We eat 2 vegetarian meals per week and the rest are centered around some sort of meat, a small starch, vegetable and salad. The meals are balanced plus the children eat 2 snacks a day, and I DO NOT do processed foods or juice.

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But even she has very low prices listed.

 

She lists 10# of flour for $1.06. I just bought ten pounds of flour today for $3.98. That's buying the cheapest flour per pound, and it was on sale. That's almost 4 times the cost of her flour. Normal price for the flour would have been $5.98.

 

Carrots are listed as $1.23 for 5 pounds. Here they are $4.39 for five pounds.

 

I can get 18 eggs for the price she pays for 36.

 

Wow. Your grocery prices are high! I can get 5lbs of carrots for just under $2 and I could get 10lbs of unbleached all purpose flour for approx. $4.70

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I really can't see how she can do it even if she shops at Aldis. That is impossible. We are a family of 5 and we spend about $1200 on food a month. (We are low carb, primal eaters) We do dairy. Just not grains or refined sugar.

 

Before this primal/low carb way of eating....we shopped at Aldi and used coupons....we still spent over $200....it was more like $700 a month. Family of 5.

 

ETA:

On several primal or paleo websites....according to them my food bill is low. :) So pat on my back there.... Hubby and I feel that in the long run avoiding carb heavy foods is best for our health. Meat and veggies only. I buy coconut flour and almond flour. We do not do sweets much but if we do I use the healthy stuff such as coconut flour/almond flour, coconut sugar or palm sugar or sucanant. Yes it is expensive but we do not use this every week so its more like once a month thing. Right now we are doing it more often due to Christmas holidays. :)

Edited by Holly IN
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