Groceries: How Much Do You Spend?

[jenboo]

What do you typically serve for snacks and lunch?

Mondays are some type of pasta, Tuesday is Mexican, Wednesday is soup, Thursday is sandwiches and Friday is pizza.

Pasta: chicken Alfredo, baked ziti, veggie Mac, etc
Mexican: bean burritos, chicken quesadillas, soft tacos, etc.
Soup: tomato, butternut squash, chili
Sandwiches: cream cheese and cucumber, turkey panini etc
Pizza: bubble pizza, pizza rolls, regular pizza

Breakfasts consist of muffins, pancakes, omelettes with toast, etc

Pm snack is always veggies or fruit with dip and pita bread or muffins or peanut butter toast, etc.

To save money I do a 3 week rotating menu. I also make large batches and freeze the rest (soups, pancakes, waffles, etc). I keep things simple and make just about everything from scratch.

[jenboo]

Holy cow! How do you guys do it?! I spend about $400 every 2 weeks for 3 kids and 2 adults!!!!

How do you guys afford it?!
Dh and I spend about $150 a month on us and then like I said $200 on 6 daycare kids.

[Martha Stewart]

Roughly $300/week for 6 dck + 6 family (2 adults + 4 athletic kids, 2 teens)

Our food bill is out of control. I cook most of our meals, kids take their lunches - but one kid who runs track, wrestles and does manual labor for a job eats probably 4500 calories a day - and has trouble keeping weight on.

[sharlan]

I spend between $350 and $500 a week for a family of 7 and 7 daycare kids.

[daycare]

Oh my gosh that's insane how do you make a profit!

well if you think about it, that is only about $150.00 per person a month for food.

The food prices here are not cheap. This is one of the things that I feel is not fair that the USDA food program has their rates set across the board and don't take into consideration how expensive food is here. Since our drought, produce prices have really sky rocketed.

[AuntTami]

How do you guys afford it?!
Dh and I spend about $150 a month on us and then like I said $200 on 6 daycare kids.

I don't really know. I basically work to buy groceries and pay a couple bills. It's absolutely insane but I can't figure out where the problem is!!! I make all of our meals, avoid the "middle" of the store as much as possible, and we grow most of our vegetables in the summer(which will drop the bill some but not as much as you'd think) I take a specific list with me, very rarely stray from my list, we don't go on last minute grocery trips for that nights dinner if we can avoid it, and I've even stopped taking DH with me because he always puts a ton of other stuff in the cart.... And still. I went on Saturday; and spent $150. It's Wednesday and I'll be there again by Saturday, and it'll only make it that long because I'll probably order a pizza for lunch Friday and DH and I will go out for dinner Friday night!

[tenderhearts]

For my family of 3 and all 6 of my daycare kids, I spend between $100-$125 per week, then another $25 PER MONTH for cleaning supplies tp ect.

[Unregistered]

I spend about $140/week with my family of 3 and 4 F/T dck's. I separated it for a while and only spent about $30/week on just dc food. I shop seperately for paper goods and cleaning supplies.

[sally]

I spend about $300 to $500 per month for my family of 4 plus 3 daycare kids and any drop ins. But we have a huge pantry and 2 refrigerators plus a large freezer. I stock up on sales and mostly cook from scratch.

[ColorfulSunburst]

$350 per MONTH for food only for 6 boys who have a great appetite :: I buy a lot of organic food. I also keep 100% separate the family shopping and the daycare shopping. Even if I do it at the same time.
I do shopping in Costco and Fairway

[KidGrind]

$300 to $500 per week