How much does your family spend on food?

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Chickabator (((((Hugs)))))

I know all too well what it's like to live like that. My husband and I have struggled, and still do at times, for years now.
We're doing everything we can from month to month making ends meet and we always barely make it.
We recently let go of our cell phones which we've had for about 4 years and two months ago we had no propane, no heating oil, no electricity for a couple of days AND our only vehicle broke down and cost $1000 to fix.
And this is with my husband working two jobs, one of which as a USPS mail carrier.
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The stress of it all is no good. Most of my serious anxiety attacks are due to always feeling like I'm teetering on the edge of being alright and doomed. I hate that feeling. DH and I fight alot about it too.

We play powerball every week and we pray. We don't want the jackpot, that's just greedy. Just enough to pay the bills and not worry about things being shut off all the time.
 
I also wanted to comment on the fact that they have made things so that buying convenience food is cheaper than cooking from scratch.

I could spend about HALF of what I do if I bought all pre-packaged junk and processed food.

An example is that a box of mac and cheese at my local discount food store is .33 and to make a pound of homemade mac and cheese costs about $3.00 if you already have milk and butter in the house.

How freakin' sad and wrong is that?!

And they wonder why America is the Obese Nation
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Agreed...you can get a regular size bag of cheap chips for .99cents, but a bag of potatoes is going for close to $5. It really is cheaper to eat junk food.
 
We have 8 kids so there's ten of us here.

We average about $500-$600 a month on food, toiletries and paper products. I prepare most all meals from scratch. We have a huge freezer so we can buy in bulk when things are on a good sale. I also have a pantry area in the basement so we can buy staples when on sale also.

We were spending a HUGE amount of money on milk (we easily drank 16 gallons a week at $3.75 min. per gallon that was costing us $60/week or $240/month!!!! ) so we got dairy goats and have cut the purchased milk cost to zero. Even factoring in the cost of feeding the goats (about $60/month) you can see we are saving a lot there and goats milk is far healthier than cows milk for us.
 
Our average is about $200 a week for a family of 4 for food & toiletries. Sometimes a bit more, sometimes less. I make most meals from scratch. I admit though, we don't buy the cheapest of everything. We buy lots of produce, local and organic if possible, we buy local bulk organic/free trade coffee. We get our pastas/grains/sugar/legumes in bulk at the local health food store, which is cheaper than the fancy packaged organic ingredients, but more expensive then the cheapest mainstream versions. We are vegetarian, but even tofu is $2.30 a block any more, so it doesn't save any money. I don't even want to get into how expensive the frozen fake meat products are. We have really cut down on them. Whole wheat flour is more expensive than white, even though it's less processed (you'd figure less process=less work=less money
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). Whole wheat pastas are a lot more expensive as well. There have been many times where we've had to do on a whole lot less, and we end up eating a lot less healthfully. I'm sure we'll have to do it again, but I'll cut back everywhere else first.
 
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I have always said that the poor are fatter because it's cheaper to eat unhealthy food! It is so true! At the bottom of the barrel, we ate kraft mac & cheese with no milk or butter. hey it fed us. We may be there again shortly. Things are not well in this country with alot of families, and finding ways to cut back is really hard!
 
9 of us live here.....but the boys and SO's and gkids eat here most nights for supper so I feed anywhere from 9 to 14 every night.

We spend about $600.00 a month on food, paper products and what not. We utilize Angel Food Ministeries and also shop in bulk for just about everything! Our goal is to get below $500.00 a month but I can only make a casserole go so far LOL!

I am hating to do it, but I am slowly encouraging the older kids (29, 25 and 23) to start making their own meals or at least bringing something to the family table. They are all gainfully employed and need to contribute. Times are tough for all of us, but with innovation and lots of beans we can all make it through!

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:aww
 
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I had my own family and responsibilities at those ages. Don't feel bad, the adult children should be contributing to utilities and food at that age, at the very least. They should each be cooking at least one dinner a week, at least, with the ingredients their responsibility and expense.
 

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