Bestwifeever
Moderator Emeritus
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2007
- Messages
- 17,774
$176/mo/person? Piece of cake.
I would cut back on almost everything else before I would cut back on food.
I swore to myself when I was a just a young lad that when I grew up I would buy anything I wanted at the grocery (my family often ate poorly due to lack of funds). The fact that I now can is sufficient in and of itself to make me feel rich. I would cut back on almost everything else before I would cut back on food.
I feel this way about my heating bill. I swore to myself when I was in college that I would never be cold in my own house again once I started working.
That's what I thought too until last month. This is the first winter for me owning my own home. My electic/heat bill went from $42-48 for may-oct to $101 for nov to $248 for dec. So for Jan I heated my bedroom to 70 but only heated the rest of the rooms to 50. I stayed almost exclusively in my bedroom all month. I'll get my bill in the next couple days. Hopefully it went down even though the temps went down too. I HATE being cold but I hate being broke even more so i'll do what's needed to keep all future bills under $200.
Surely you spend more than $200/month for a family of three??
Wow, maybe I need to reevaluate my budget. Just stopped by the store today and picked up groceries for two weeks (only for me).
Cost $150... @ 3 meals/day * 7 days/week * 2 Weeks => $3.57/meal
I Thought I was eating pretty cheap...
The two of us spent over $4000 last year on food - which included cat food & litter & sundries - probably spent more than that since i know some cash transactions didn't get entered - so maybe $400/month. Nearly all our food is from Costco (their chickens play a leading role in our diets), lots of processed heat & eat stuff. Far cry from earlier times when i budgeted a meager amount. My gal doesn't tire of telling about seeing a budget i had done that went out three months and included $5 for fun each month. This when we first started seeing each other - figure that demonstrates that a woman sees a man and thinks he'll change, while a man sees a woman and thinks she'll never change - and they're both wrong.
I hope you didn't further annotate your spreadsheet with
Fun [1] $5
Food $100
Rent $500
Total $605
[1] Off-brand condoms.
Please share with me how it's possible to do this for a family of three. I spend no less than than $950 monthly for a family of 4. We are two adults and 2 girls, 9 and 7. We are all quite thin and don't eat a lot. Our diet consist of primarily of fish, some chicken, vegtables, fruits, and rice. The vegetables, fruits, milk and eggs are mostly organic. My husband, I and my older daughter are lactose intollerant so we tend to buy lactose free products as well as soy based products. For the life of me I can't figure out why our food cost so much. We generally do not eat out and eat at least two meals at home a day. Is this normal for others? It boggles my mind how you can feed a family of three for so little. Please shed some light.
What kind of wine would be in this budget?
And the milk products that can't be broken down in your intestine will be removed by simply increasing your fiber intake.
So either way, you would end up with gas
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
No, I actually didn't know about this.
Interesting.
tmm
Last time I looked, Two Buck Chuck is now Three Buck Chuck.
From this link Eligibility -- $176 is the maximum monthly benefit for 1 person. That will be reduced by 30% of "net monthly income", since they figure a family should spend (up to) 30% of its income on food -- a figure I think is derived from a survey in the mid-1960s.
Most seem to be missing the fact that folks who get food stamps are poor.
Which posts led you to this conclusion?
We are not extravagant eaters, but I do tend to buy a lot of organic products and we mainly eat fresh. Never buy steaks, but lots of fish. We spend at least $150 a month on fresh organic blueberries which we have for breakfast every day - they were $5.99 yesterday for a small punnet. We only drink organic milk which is about $4.89 a gallon. Last week when I purchased organic apples it was nearly $7 for 5 apples. If I buy ground beef (maybe once a month) it is always the 7% fat or less if available. When we buy cheeses it is usually imported, because we prefer the taste.