$100 a Month Grocery Challenge - Meal Plan

We are nearing the last month of freezer meals for dinners, so I don't have to plan those except for the weekend casseroles, which I do monthly.  I only purchase dinner meals on the 3rd month of my budget cycle, which you can read about here.  I decided to list my plan for breakfast, lunch, snacks and desserts and you can view our dinner meal selection here.

Breakfast
Oatmeal
Egg sandwich
Egg with toast
Pancakes
Scone with jam

Lunch
Bean burrito
PBJ sandwich
Egg salad sandwich

Snacks
Carrots and hummus
Almonds & Yogurt
Popcorn and cheese
Fruit, hard-boiled egg
Shake or smoothie
Pita bread brushed with olive oil
Chips with salsa or refried beans

Desserts
Granola bars
Coffee cakes
Oatmeal cookies
More to come.....

I'm still planning what my weekend casserole meals will be as those are the meals with meat.  We have been doing lasagna twice a month and chicken divan twice a month but we are all tiring of those.  I may try out a taco casserole and chicken enchiladas.

 

How to Spend Only $100 a Month in Groceries

I wanted to explain how my budget system works with my meal plan.  With this system, I stockpile and buy enough to make dinner freezer meals for 3 months.  I spend small amounts on certain months and then a large amount the month I buy for my 3-month freezer cooking and keep my stockpile going, which will be next month in June.  It all averages out to $150 a month.  Let me explain:

Month 1 - spend $100

Month 2 - spend $100

Month 3 - freezer cooking shopping/stockpile, spend $250

Average costs of groceries over 3 months = $150 a month

So in order to make it on an average of $100 over 3 months, I will need it to work something like this:

Month 1 - spend $50

Month 2 - spend $50

Month 3 - freezer cooking shopping/stockpile, spend $200

Average costs of groceries over 3 months = $100 a month

I can't really cut down on my stockpile month too much, so that means that the other 2 months are pretty lean.  It is easy to do it on the $150 budget, but will be a challenge on this budget for sure.  I could do $75 for months 1 & 2 and then cut my month 3 down to $150 but I'm not sure I can get that month's food AND 3-months of dinner meals AND keep my stockpile up cutting it that low.  I will see how this month goes and go from there.  Once I get canning going next month, I can can soups, sauces and other things that will lower our budget even more.

The main way I save money is buy making homemade foods - this is not just meals, this is snacks, condiments, bread items and desserts.  Making homemade organic whole wheat bread, pita pockets, pizza dough and on and on is FAR cheaper than buying it from the store, and it tastes better!  This will require a LOT of work on my part but since I'm coming upon my second trimester, they say you get a burst of energy during this trimester and I'm counting on that.

I realized this was a 5-week month, so I'm trying to not do the bulk of my shopping until next week, so I can just purchase for 4 weeks.  I suppose you could call this eating-out-of-the-pantry week.  This also gave me more time to plan.

$100 a Month Grocery Challenge

I'm doing a challenge of living on $100 this month.  This does not include toiletry items like toilet paper, toothpaste, etc., it is just grocery food items.  The reason I'm doing this is because we have spent SO much money on take-out, store-bought bread and convenience items since I was on bed rest for 5 days and also being sick during this pregnancy.  Then our car messed up twice, costing us about $1,500 to fix and it is already having another problem and then the medical bills that I have incurred through this horrific experience are piling on top of all this.  There is more, but those are the major reasons besides - hello, I'm pregnant and we have a baby coming lol.  That alone is expensive!

My new month doesn't start at the beginning of the month, it starts this week, that is just how the paycheck falls and when I get my house money.  This won't be extremely hard for me to manage because we already live off $150 a month with the occasional splurges.  I'm aiming to knock out the splurges and lower the food costs by $50 from what we spend now.  This will take more work for me as I will be whipping up more snacks homemade and get back to baking my bread, but I miss that and am so tired of the store-bought items that don't seem to fill you up!

I will be following some of the ideas from when we lived off $80 a month in 2008 here, with the exception of adding in a few meals of beef and chicken on the weekends.  The meat and cheese will be the most expensive items to purchase, since we buy them organic.  I'm planning everything today and tomorrow and part of Friday and then will do the shopping.  If time permits, I will post my meal plan soon!

My mom has tried to get me to can for years, and after getting tired of paying $2.50 for organic soup, I decided it is time to make my own and can it!  So, I will be starting that up hopefully in June and will try and post the process as I learn!