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 financial 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. There are ways to ease your budget and still feed the family well.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Create a 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. Take 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. When the cash is gone, you'll have to make do with the food you've purchased.

2. Frequent discount and dollar stores. Many dollar stores carry basic food supplies such as pasta. These are supplies that don't really require a name brand; purchasing them at this type of store can stretch your food budget.

3. Draw up a weekly menu for meals. Check the items on sale at the grocery store ahead of time and plan meals around the sale items. Clip coupons for items you purchase regularly and visit the store on double-coupon days. Knowing ahead of time what you will be cooking cuts down on impulsive purchases or stops for fast food on the way home from work.

4. Purchase meat in bulk. Check around for a butcher near you that puts together bulk packages of meat at reasonable prices. Though the initial expenditure is large, buying a month's worth of good-quality meat saves 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. People created all those recipes you use regularly -- probably because they were on budgets.

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 a family member who is on a special diet due to age or a medical condition, there's nothing wrong with insisting your family eat what you cook.

Tips & Warnings

• Leftovers make great lunches for the next day, which saves you from the temptation to order out with the rest of the office and spend money you would rather use elsewhere.

References

• MSN Money: Can a Family Eat on $100 a Week?

Resources

• Prevention: 20 Ways to Feed Your Family for $100 a Week