Lawmakers Find $21 a Week Doesn't Buy a Lot of Groceries

[AGDee]

I dunno where you're buying milk, but you're getting royally ripped off if you're paying $3.49 for a half gallon. I never pay more than $1 for a half gallon of milk because Kroger has it on sale every other week with their 10/$10 sales. I buy a couple chocolate and a couple skim and freeze one of each so I have some for the week it's not on sale.

I disagree that healthy food is more expensive than unhealthy food. Frozen pizzas are $4 a piece (unhealthy) but you can get 4 packages of frozen veggies for that when they're on sale. If you watch for the sales, you can get ground turkey for the same price as ground beef. Lite/Wheat bread costs the same thing as White bread. Not counting "staples" like sugar, flour, spices, etc, I think I could easily eat for $21 a week when I really think about it. Bananas are really cheap. A bag of oranges are $2.99. It wouldn't be super fun but it's doable. Concentrate lemonade and orange juice of the store brand also go on sale at 10/$10. I have to say, I love Kroger for their sales. Also, they don't require you to buy 10 to get the savings. So, 10/$10 also means 1/$1. Not all stores do that.

Family packs of pork chops, chicken and ground beef generally go on sale on opposite weeks from eachother. I buy one family pack of meat each pay period. One pay, I get pork chops, the next I get chicken, the next I get beef. I freeze a lot of stuff. In fact, my biggest cost saving feature is a large freezer in the basement.

I buy turkey lunch meat and freeze it in individual servings as soon as I get home. If I put it on a kids sandwich frozen, it thaws by the time they eat lunch. I can also grab a slice and toss it in with an egg for scrambled eggs and ham (add green food coloring to make it fun for the kids.. green eggs and ham). Before I started doing that, the lunch meat would go bad before we ate it all and I was throwing a lot of food away. Now I use every slice. It's little things that take a little effort but save you a ton of money.

Anyway, those are some of my grocery savings tips. I use them along with my time saving tips. For example, when I get that large package of ground beef or turkey, I immediately make a couple dinners worth of meatballs, a meatloaf, some hamburgers and then brown a bunch and make taco meat or sloppy joes. They all get frozen so when we have to eat fast because the kids have activities to get to, it's just a matter of warming things up. Super easy to make some nachos if you've pre-grated the cheese, chopped the tomatoes and just have to nuke the meat. Make it from turkey meat and you have a pretty cheap and easy meal. I spend about 2 hours every Sunday doing "pre-cooking" like this. I also wash/cut up all the fruit and put it in baggies for individual serving sizes. I used to end up throwing fruit out too, but when it's ready to eat, it gets eaten first.