How to Feed a Family on a Budget

If you're like many people today, you're living on a modest income and trying to find ways to cut corners. Unfortunately, when you have a family to feed it's not always easy to stick to a budget, especially when your family includes ravenous and ever-growing children. While you can't really limit their food intake, there are some ways to ease your budget and still feed the family well. Read on to learn how.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Create a food or grocery budget and stick to it. Decide on a reasonable amount of money that can be spent on groceries each week and withdraw that amount in cash. Bring the cash (and only the cash) to the store with you when you shop and use it only for food, not extras like shampoo and toothpaste--those supplies should come out of a separate budget. When the cash is gone, you'll have to make due with the food you've purchased.
2. Frequent discount and dollar stores. Many dollar stores carry basic food supplies like flour or pasta, as do other discount stores. These are supplies that don't really need to be name brand and purchasing them at this type of store can stretch your food budget further.
3. Draw up a weekly menu, particularly for large meals like dinner. Knowing ahead of time what you will be cooking not only allows you to match your shopping list to your menu, but it also cuts down on impulsively picking up fast food or ordering out to feed the family.
4. Purchase meat in bulk. Check around to see whether there is a butcher near you that puts together packages of different types of meat for individual customers at reasonable prices. Though the initial expenditure may be slightly more than you would like to pay, buying a month's worth of good quality meat can save you quite a bit of money per pound.
5. Be inventive in your cooking. Don't be afraid to come up with new recipes or to make substitutions if you don't have all the ingredients you need. Someone created all those recipes you use regularly--probably because they were on a budget! The worst that can happen is that you cook something that nobody likes and you don't ever have to make it again.
6. Feed everyone the same thing at mealtimes. Many a family has found themselves blowing a food budget because of picky eaters. Unless you have family members who are on a special diet due to age or medical condition, there's nothing wrong with insisting your children eat what you cook. Let them know that your home is not a restaurant and you are not a short order cook.

Tips & Warnings

• Leftovers make great lunches for the next day, which will save you from the temptation to order out with the rest of the office and spend money you don't really have.