How I Feed My Family of 6 on Less Than $250 a Month
I’ve been sitting on this post for a while, trying to
discern how to convey the information without seeming preachy. My goal is to
help those who want to move toward a healthier diet* and/or trim their grocery
budget down. I’m passionate about budgeting, cooking, and keeping my family
healthy, but it’s taken me many years to gain the skills and perspective
necessary to feed my family nutritious food on very little money. If you are at
a place in your life where you need to prioritize higher-priced convenience
foods because it’s what you have the bandwidth for, well, I’ve been there and
that’s ok. Maybe you will still find one or two suggestions useful. Feel free
to toss the rest.
Any kind of drastic change requires a shift in thinking and
habits. Before we get into the nuts and bolts of how I budget, shop, and cook, I want to explain why I do what I do. This post is
dedicated to some paradigm-shifting thinking about grocery planning. In
subsequent weeks I’ll expand on techniques for maximizing your money and
health.
The first reason why we eat and budget this way is entirely
practical: we can’t afford to spend a lot of money on food. Our Dave
Ramsey-approved cash budget is very tight in this season of our lives. The
second reason is connected to the first: because money is tight, I know that it
blesses my family (especially my husband) when I save as much as possible on
groceries. Our budget used to be $100 a week, but I figured out how to get it
down to $75, then $60, and now around $50, including Birch.
Another unexpected perk we’ve experienced with our limited
finances is that we’re actually healthier for it. When you have five dollars
left for the week, are you going to spend it on nutrient-dense foods like
spinach and carrots, or on a tub of ice cream? If you said ice cream, thanks
for your honesty and let me know if you need someone to help you eat it. Ha! I
definitely used to pick up treats every time I went grocery shopping. The tighter
our budget got, the more I realized how precious each dollar was and started
prioritizing foods that gave the most nutritional bang for the buck.
My reasons aren’t purely financial or physical, though. Even
if we made more money, I would still want
to restrict myself to a tight budget because it forces me to trust more in
God’s providence. Every week on the way to Birch I pray the same prayer: “Lord,
feed me with the food that is needful for me.” This phrase comes from Proverbs
30 and is part of a longer passage which reads, “Give me neither poverty nor
riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny
you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or lest I be poor and steal and profane the
name of my God.” We live in an era and a country of unprecedented wealth and
abundance, which actually obscures our view of God as the giver of all good
gifts. Restricting our food budget means looking to God to give us exactly what
we need.
So, now that you’ve heard the monetary, health, and
spiritual reasons for my food budget, next week I’ll get into my first tip for
how to eat better and spend less!
*Our family eats a “whole foods, plant-based” diet (yes, I know
it sounds pretentious), but the same principles can be used for
all kinds of diets. When I was pregnant and having severe blood sugar drops
from inadequate protein intake, I increased my meat consumption significantly
and was able to maintain the same budget and shopping patterns.
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