Hey there!
This is my second week of semi-meticulously tracking and photographing not only how I spent money on groceries for the week for a family of 3 adults, but also what I actually made us to eat and the cost of those meals.
I hope this gives you some inspiration for your own life, whether that be for ideas on how to cut costs from your grocery budget or ideas on what to actually make for dinner if you’re feeling stuck. It is definitely possible to eat well on a budget!
As for some disclaimers:
- We all have different dietary needs.
- We all have different preferences.
- We all have access to different food sources.
- We all have different ideas of what a healthy diet looks like.
If you just looked at this short list of disclaimers and are thinking, “Yeah, but…” then I encourage you to have a look at my original post where I talk about the how’s and why’s of my meal budgeting and prepping in a little more detail. TL:DR I am well aware that there are different ways I could be doing things, and there are various reasons I do things the way I do, and I am not advocating that anyone should be doing things my way vs whatever way works best for them and their family =)
On to the food!
I’m going to give both the total we spent on groceries, and the totals that each meal cost to make, because we don’t necessarily use every ingredient we buy each week or all of each ingredient. There are also certain staples that I try to keep stocked in our pantry regardless of whether we plan to use them that week (pasta, rice, flour, etc).
So the total amount we spent on groceries between Food Lion and Aldi was $47.16.
The total spent for all of our meals from Sunday night to the following Sunday afternoon was about $45.93.
I estimated and added $5 to the total to account for random bits of food here and there that may have been eaten as a snack like a pb&j sandwich or my delicious raspberries (that were on sale for $1.29!) and to account for our coffee and creamer.