Two Americas?Follow

Are you Dave Simmon?

You could probably budget for $150/mo around here. It wouldn't be a great existence, but it'd suffice.

15 lb meat (chicken breast and pork cutlets: sale $1.99/lb): $30
30 lb vegetables (peppers, squash, mushrooms, broccoli: sale $1.49/lb): $44.70
15 lb fruit (pears, apples: sale $1.49/lb): $22.35
4 doz. eggs ($2.50/doz): $10
10 lb potatoes ($2.50/5 lb): $5
25 lb rice: $20
2 gal milk ($2.25/.5 gal): $9

You can probably fit a multivitamin in there somewhere. Maybe coffee?

Now, I have the luxury of having five different market chains within a 5 mile radius from where I live, so I can usually find just about anything I need on sale. Things like cereal, yogurt, juice, etc. bring that total up very quickly. Taking advantage of the meat prices tends to rely on having freezer space. Frozen vegetables are usually pretty cheap, too. The bricks go on sale fairly frequently.

I think that the main issue when trying to live off less is that you generally have to buy a larger volume of an item to get a lower price, so starting out on a tight budget can be very rough. $150/month might get you all of the above, but on the weekly level, that's under $35 per week. When that 25-lb bage of rice can feed you for the whole month, it still takes out almost an entire week's budget to buy. If you started with a stocked fridge and pantry, this wouldn't be bad, but if you have nothing and are trying to get ahead, it can be difficult to do.

Edited, Dec 10th 2013 10:55pm by Spoonless

I couldn't find rice in a circular so I just looked at Amazon really quick. Edited, thanks.

Also space to store everything is a pain. Shopping a sale and stocking up on something like peanut butter or mustard means you need to have some place to store it for the next several months, and that can be tough in a small apartment.

Right now we're down to about $300 a month for food for a family of four, plus additional money for things like toilet paper and whatnot. It's not terribly hard to do, it just takes some time and planning. I'm not sure it's really an option if you have two parents each working a job or three, but for surviving on one full time income it's been fairly simple.

To eat healthy meals that don't cost a lot, you need storage space and time to prepare dishes made from fresh ingredients. I always keep a supply of Rice, corn meal, dry milk and dry beans in the house, knowing that if I run low on food, I still can made a great soup from the beans and only need a side of cornbread to make it a complete healthy meal.

The soup though needs to cook all day and watched carefully to prevent it from burning. So it's not a meal you can make, when you have to work full time to pay rent and utilities. It would take longer then one day to cook in crock pot.

All the other healthy meals I would make for family of 5 with only $300 a month for groceries, took going without meat 2 to 3 times a week and making as much as possible from scratch. Since I'm allergic to preservatives prepackage food was not an option. We couldn't have gotten by if I also had to work full time and eat healthy. One costly item we went without was baby formula, as I breast fed my children.

Most working poor just don't have the time to make healthy meals from scratch, don't live were fresh ingredients are easy to get and can't afford a freezer and storage for fresh vegetables and buying meat on sale. I used to have a chest freezer that I would fill with vegetables I grew, or my ex was able to gleam from the fields around the base.

Now I have to rely on Jonwin to do the shopping and we would love to have a small chest freezer, as right now we barely have enough space for 2 weeks of meat and frozen vegetables. Gardening is out of the question, unless we hire someone to dig up the back yard, remove the trash trees and build raise beds for us. The days when I could do this all by myself are long gone. Front yard will be a herb and flower garden for cooking and spiritual needs.

Also, grocery shopping can come out to a lot more money than the food itself costs, when you factor in things like toiletries.

I forgot to put beans on that list, too.

Edited, Dec 11th 2013 8:07am by Spoonless

The thing that drives our grocery bill up so much is fish, actually. $20 of our $100 weekly bill is fresh fish, about eight servings. The frozen stuff isn't that much cheaper and is full of gross things.

If we stuck with canned tuna and salmon we could probably bring our weekly bill down to $80, though.

Well, sure. Those things could be squeezed in. The rice is a bunch of money, but will probably last longer than a month. Pasta is what, $1/lb dry? Buy day-old bread on the cheap. Seasonings cost money too. It wasn't supposed to be a great variety of food, just an exercise to show that you could live off of that amount of money.

How many coupons did you use?

That's the thing, if you want to do it you have to put time into it. Buy a couple of copies of the Sunday paper, clip and organize, match sales with coupons, and don't buy anything that isn't on sale. When something is on sale, buy a lot of it, and ration it over time. Bread gets bought at the factory outlet, meat gets bought when it has a 50% off sticker or is in season. We also combine recreation and food, letting the kids fish at the trout farm, or U-pick fruit saves money and gets them out and about. Fruit gets canned and dehydrated for off-season. We still have the money for the occasional treat, and going to McDonalds or grabbing a take-n-bake pizza or something isn't out of the question either.

It is time intensive though. Both me and the Mrs each spend about four hours a week into it. I'm clipping and organizing, she's hunting down deals and matching things, then one of us is hitting the store. I don't see how it's possible for someone working two minimum wage jobs honestly, or if both parents are working or something. You're not going to have the stamina to devote that many hours to couponing.

Depends how picky you are with the fish.

Even things like learning how to butcher a chicken can save you money, but again it takes time to carve up a whole chicken instead of buying the parts you want pre-packaged.

Obviously they hate the environment.

Any chicken part without the wings will be cheaper. Those are just in too much demand these days.