Thriving on a $20/week Grocery Budget
There have been some great discussions here and elsewhere on cheerful frugality.
I think a cheerful can-do attitude makes your money go so much farther. And not only that, but it allows you to enjoy the frugal lifestyle. Instead of looking at the glass half-empty and complaining about what you don't have, you can take what you do have and happily make the most of it.
That's what my friend Karen is doing with her $20/week grocery budget. While all of her ideas might not work for your particular diet, locale, or situation, you can't help but be inspired by her creative and cheerful frugality!
As Teddy Roosevelt so wisely admonished, "Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are."
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4 Responses to “Thriving on a $20/week Grocery Budget”
February 2nd, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Teddy’s wisdom isn’t nearly as appreciated as it might be. Keeping his words in mind would go a long for those who would rush to judgment, whether about $20 grocery budgets or other matter of personal expenditure.
February 3rd, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Great post. I just love to see how others stretch their grocery dollars. Thank you for sharing this!
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:13 am
I’ve started grocery shopping differently lately and I can’t believe the difference in cost! I went from spending over $100 a week for myself and my husband, to about $40 — including some treats like three gourmet chocolate bars, milk and fruit juice for him, and a few frozen pizzas.
You can read more about it here, but the basic idea is that I try to more one and two ingredient items and fewer multi-ingredient things. For example, I buy oatmeal and then buy real fruit to flavor it with instead of buying the flavored mixes. That simple (seems obvious to many, I’m sure, but I spent years eating microwaveable dinners).
The result has naturally been that I buy simpler items in larger quantities, like a large container of oatmeal instead of a box of packets and air. I’m also eating a lot better, feeling better, and am loosing weight without trying very hard at all.
I know it might not be as impressive as playing the coupon clipping games, but it’s a strategy that’s working great for us despite the fact that I’m not big into cooking. Plus, our grocery shopping trips are almost too short for comfort!
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:56 am
Small veggie patches which can be fertilized with urine diluted about 8 to 1 with water, and fed compost, including composted newsprint and cardboard, will grow enough food to make the labor and cost of seeds worthwhile – the more you do, the more you get! Wife and I can, dry and freeze any excess garden production and any supermarket bargains, too, for the slower months and we can always get at the very least, a hot bowl of soup right off our own shelves! We do spend, sparingly on store-boughten food, usually a small amount of pork-hawks or the like, to brighten our basically vegetarian, and very frugal diet. The best thing we ever grew was spices to cheer up the otherwise bland veggie diet. We do not own a car, we bicycle a lot, and will go fishing this season. again. Aquaculture is on our list of interests, but to scale it down to our size is a problem so far. With the imminent death of a way of life supported by GM and Chrysler and the supporting companies, sites like this one will be in greater demand, and I Thank You for being here now. We the ordinary folk, the new ‘proletariat’, need you now.
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