I’m guesting posting over at Don’t Waste the Crumbs Today on 5 Fail Proof Ways to Reduce Grocery Spending. I’d be honored if you’d come visit with me and check it out.
Think carefully about this question and put your answer in the comments below. What would you buy to feed your family if you only had $100 for the entire month? Let’s say you have a decent pantry of staples like yeast, salt, spices, and oil, so you just needed to buy food things. I want to know what you would you get and what would you would cook with it to keep your family alive and healthy.
I think about this some times when I hear that my donation of $20 can feed a family in Africa for a week. What are they eating? Is it balanced? Would I be too proud to live on it? When my husband suddenly lost his job 8 years ago, we faced a time like this. I told Darren that with $200 I could run the whole household for the month, not just food. It was a fun challenge and one I was equally happy to have end. Not until I had to do something drastic did I see what I was really capable of.
Let’s pretend it’s drastic. What would you do?
I’m thinking $100 can only buy a bunch of carbs (oats, flour, rice, pasta), maybe dried beans and lentils for some protein. But produce, fresh fruits and vegetables ? Forget about that! No way to make that stretch and feed a family healthful meals.
Marina, I’m still crunching numbers, but hoping to find a way to get vegetables some how. This is such a fun exercise.
Breakfast: Oats (oatmeal and granola) and apples
Lunch: Flour (bread and tortillas), peanut butter, bananas, and bulk sunflower seeds
Dinner: Ground turkey, potatoes, rice, dry beans, salvage produce at City Market (usually $1/3-5lbs tomatoes, squash, green beans, berries, etc.)
And, I’d buy one chocolate bar from Aldi because realistically that would be the silver lining as we trudged through the month.
(P.S. New to your blog and the KC area. I am thankful to see someone else around here shops like me!)
Elizabeth, welcome!!! Great ideas. Welcome to KC.
That would be soooo challenging. Tires me just think about it…..but we are 10 persons…maybe if we were fewer…? Oatmeal. Rice. Beans. Homemade bread. Soups!! You’d have to eat soups.
I agree on the homemade bread and soup. I’m thinking about it for an average family of 4.
I would buy rice and black beans or pinto beans for sure – we can always have rice and beans (filler and protein)! Definitely try to get some meat – either chicken or ground beef and spread it thinly through the meals. Oatmeal for breakfast and spelt flour to make bread. Fruit and veggies with the rest. (If there is any left.) I’ve never tried to feed our family on $100 a month, but my husband is preparing to start a new business venture, so I may have to accept this challenge, whether I want to or not! Thank you for asking the question – it has definitely made me think!
I’d get a ton of produce each week (focusing on cheaper things like large bags of carrots and potatoes), eggs (actually if my hens were laying I’d buy a bucket of feed so I can keep them laying all month), and some cheap whole chickens. I already have some old gallon-sized pickle jars I fill will grains when they’re on sale, so I could make bread and sides to fill us up.
I might just have to make myself this challenge for the month of February (it is the shortest month lol). I think I would limit myself to not using the meat in my freezer but I could use my dry good pantry to supliment the $100 grocery budget. I think I would probably buys 1 whole chicken a week and make it stretch for multiple meals (soup, chicken and homemade noodles, ect). I would also buy some milk for the kids to drink and to make yogurt (no straining for greek yogurt), some eggs, and cheap product like carrots and apples and any marked down produce for variety
oh my gosh….for a month? I’d be making lots of rubber chicken I think. Buying bags of chicken quarters and making stock/picking meat off to stretch in other recipes. Dry beans. Oatmeal. It’d be ugly. I don’t wanna think about it. lol. Enjoying the comments though.
Melanie, I’m rolling on the floor. I’d come over to your house for rubber chicken and bring some taters.
In my area it would be shopping at Aldi all the way! Peanut butter, eggs, oats, beans, whole chicken, bananas, ground turkey, potatoes, carrots, saltines, cheese slices, tuna, and couple cans of tomatoes and fruit to stretch. Not to mention learn about edible weeds to make salad for side dishes. Baked potatoes, roast chicken, potato soup, chilli, and pb and banana smoothies! I remember a time when I lived basically on peanut butter, apples, and milk for a month. Not easy, but do what they did in the Great Depression and eat little, save, and stretch EVERYTHING.
We have had a hard time lately, surviving on just over this amount for our regular grocery shopping and eating out of our pantry/freezer a lot, relying on family to take us out for meals or gift cards left from Christmas. The kids’ school lunch money is not included here, that’s above the $150-ish we’re spending for the month on our family of 4 lately.
We buy meat when it’s on a great sale, and only then. We’ve had many meals with hamburger, rope sausages, and hot dogs (I know, many people won’t eat these, but we don’t have a problem with the fact that they’re not “real food”), and some with chicken. This month, I had a turkey from Thanksgiving that I bought on great sale, we thawed & ate that for a few meals (turkey dinner, leftover turkey dinner, many sandwiches). We eat a lot of pasta, thankfully we all love that! And we eat breakfast a lot – I bake muffins or pancakes, or bread for toast or French toast. We buy eggs on sale, the best price I can get – last week, a local store had a dozen eggs for 85 cents! I stocked up. 🙂 We got a bag of apples, a bag of oranges, we’ve had bananas and green peppers and broccoli crowns…lettuce for salads. Taco salad was one dinner, then nachos with the leftover taco meat another day, and quesadillas with what was left. When I buy a bunch of green onions, I cut them all up and use what I need that day, then put the roots in a cup on the windowsill. They continue to grow and produce for about 2-3 weeks! I keep cutting them, and I freeze the onion bits so I can use them in omelets, casseroles, and salad. (I’m the only onion-lover, so it’s a once-in-a-while purchase.) We get cereal for the kids’ breakfast, and milk is a big purchase – we try to get that at Aldi or somewhere on sale. Other breakfast foods are oatmeal for my husband and egg sandwiches for me, with English muffins on dollar sales at Meijer (a local Michigan store) or Save-A-Lot (which is like Aldi, a discount-foods store). Any time I buy buns for a meal, such as the sloppy joes we had two weeks back, I end up with some left over; I try to use them for homemade garlic bread with spaghetti, or breakfast sandwiches, and if I can’t use them up I cube the bread & freeze it for turkey stuffing. When we have meat left over, I try to come up with something to use it – taco meat becomes nachos, sloppy joe goes in the spaghetti sauce or lasagna, chicken goes in so many things I can’t list them all! 🙂 We make a little bit of soup – my boys only like tomato, so they eat that and my husband & I eat chicken noodle, or beef vegetable, or tomato-basil, our favorite. We usually have some kind of bread with that, grilled cheese for the kids (and sometimes us) or rolls.
I admit, I don’t make enough vegetables or fruits – we don’t get anywhere near the recommended amount per day. I’ve been very lazy about introducing these to my family, and they “don’t like” many…but we stock up on the ones they do, like corn and applesauce, when the cans or jars are on a good sale.
Please don’t say I’m awesome – I’m still trying, I’m still working to introduce more “real food” to my family, and my eldest would live on cheese pizza three meals a day if I let him. But these are my tips, and hopefully they help someone. 🙂
I would take me and my $100 and head to the nearest Aldi. Why?? Because I can get everything I need to feed my family there for less than the $100. Fresh fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs, can goods, frozen vegetables. Now I am taking into consideration that I have fully stocked deep freezer of meat (which I almost always have because of amazing meat sales at my local owned store). I am usually able to get everything mentioned above at Aldi and still have some cash left over.
After giving it a long thought,
the main problem with people having 100 D only is that they maybe don`t have as many kitchen gear to make the most of it.
Telling someone without – makes no sense.
I have a stove, fridge, freezer, oven, grill, small but working blender…
So, the 100 are pretty easy in summer/autumn, when everyone has leftovers to give away from gardening.
If not, (some) produce is super cheap. Check out and eat what you may not considered. Also beans, lentils, are great.
In the winter season I would go for cabbage, like coleslaw without anything.
We buy meat at slaughterhouse, so no extras. You can get a good bunch of bones with meat there for next to nothing. It will turn into a lot of soup/stew, all great.
Due to my husband being laid off we too have had the game to play. I keep a stocked pantry. I would save my money for fresh produce and milk, maybe meat, cheese. I would make oatmeal, cream of wheat, blender wheat pancakes, muffins, applesauce for breakfasts, dinner leftovers, sandwiches with homemade bread, fresh veggies, sprouts for sandwiches(home grown), soups with homemade rolls for lunch, burrito bar, baked potatoes and chili, pizza, soups, cass., crockpot meals. I keep a lot of food in my chest freezer and it has helped keep costs down along with being helpful when people are sick or the weather is bad.
Years ago when my husband lost his job, I cherry picked the loss leaders ads to get by (grocery stores tend to be close together, so it wasn’t hurting the gas budget too much). Not necessarily healthy that way, but we prayed it was short term– and thankfully it was. He lost his job in summer so our garden friends helped too. Soup in winter would be key. In fact in one of Jeff Yeager’s Ultimate Cheapskate books he ask the ultra-frugal what they would do if they hit hard times and the majority said make more soup!
Yes! Soup! So filling, comforting and cheap :). I’ll have to read his books. I’ve read all the Tightwad Gazette’s and love them.
I enjoyed the challenge! Chicken $24, 25# carrot bag $8, onions $5, celery $4, flour $10, 5 doz eggs $9, apples $8, peanut butter $5, cabbage $2, salad greens $5, Olives $5 (my husband insists :), sausage $6 (husband), pickles (husband). Total $100. I still have a box of potatoes left from the garden and lots of rice and beans (which we don’t care for). I would plant some salad greens and grow some alfalfa sprouts too. Lots of bone broth soup, stir fry, chx fajitas, eggs for breakfast (stretch with potatoes, sausage , and onions), salads ( grated carrots, apples, sprouts, lettuce, cabbage, celery, onions, maybe some cooked dried beans, homemade salad dressing) , tacos/burritos (homemade tortillas) maybe chicken and homemade noodles.
Michelle, I love it! Such great ideas. The olives made me lol.
Hmm… we eat a lot of veggies and fruits in this house. A LOT!! And 2 of us avoid gluten (we are 4). So 100$? I’m thinking it’s impossible if we don’t plan on eating only oat, rice, beans and eggs… But, just for fun : milk, oat, rice, potatoes, cheapest fruits (bananas, apples…), cheapest veggies (carrots, cabbage…), bread at the surplus store (for the kids), dried beans, a little bit of meat spread out, peanut butter… that’s probably already more than 100$. I gave hubby the challenge of staying under 300$ for February and he laught at me, so…. Our budget is 500$ and we make it work by planning carefully and eating cheaply, in season. Maybe food is more expensive in Canada??
We are a family of 2 with an extremely high grocery budget already. We eat A LOT of organic veggies, salad, and organic fruits and try to stay away from grains as much as we can. We also pack our breakfasts and lunches every day for work.
We definitely could not survive on $100 a month. But, I am up for the challenge….
Farmers Market:
Eggs- $2.75/dz- buy 2 dozen
Red Peppers $1 ea, buy 2
Onions $1 for a small box
celery $2
Spaghetti Squash 2/$4.00, buy 2
Italian Sausage $6.00 for 2lbs
Grocery Store:
2 Large family packs of chicken $15-19 (I usually try to buy Amish chicken but would not get as much chicken for this price.)
Flour (organic non-gmo) $6.99
10lbs of potatoes (sometimes organic can be on sale) $2.50
Rice-organic $3.99
Baby Carrots $1.00 a bag. For eating and cooking with. (I am the only one that eats them).
Bananas $2.00
Nitrate free bacon $4.00
Cashews $12.00 (hubby eats these every morning for breakfast at work)
Nitrate free Pork Jerky (from Costco) $23.00 for 2 packages (hubby also eats this every morning for breakfast at work)
Water chestnuts 3 cans $3.00
Einkorn Flour spaghetti $2.69 per box. 1 box
Pasta Sauce $2.79 (because I am too lazy to make my own sometimes!).
Chicken stir fry is a must in our house, especially for lunches-so easy to reheat. Grilled chicken and rice, potato soups, lots of breakfast casseroles, eggs and potatoes for dinner, homemade bread to go with the soups, french toast with the left over breads, pancakes, banana muffins, Spaghetti with italian sausage for lunches with pasta and spaghetti squash. Bananas and carrot sticks for breakfast-for me… LOL, cashews and jerky for the hubs.
That just sounds like a typical WEEK here. ugh. Just too hard!
*There are some super discount stores in Amish country out here so I might just have to go hit them up if I was this desperate….. 🙂
Great tips! $100 would be a bit of a challenge, and there’s only two of us! We could probably manage it though, I would just have to make sure that I ONLY shopped at Aldi! Thanks for sharing at #HomeMattersParty!
We are fortunate, in that we live in an area with wild game. So if push came to shove, we could hunt for meat. We have deer, cottontail rabbits as well as black tail jackrabbits (which I understand are something you only want to eat if you are in dire straits) and dove. We have friends and family with chickens, so we could also possibly have free (or at least cheap) eggs.
In the past (I have gotten out of the habit, but need to get back in), I have been able to buy food and household items (paper goods, cleaning supplies, hygiene supplies) for a month for my family of 4 for under $300. It takes a *lot* of dedication, and a lot of repetition with our meal plans, but in our area it is doable. (and that was without hunting for wild game or without extreme couponing) Other areas, where prices are higher, it might not be possible.