How much does your family spend on food each day? Our target is always $10 per day, total, for our family of 4. We hit that, on an average basis, every month, and we have for 18 months now. Do we go out to eat? Absolutely! Do we eat well? Absolutely! Our children are healthy to the point that the physicians, during their scheduled checkups, comment on how healthy our kids are compared to most children they see.
What do you spend per day? Why? Do you need too? What is your per person cost to feed? What consumes the bulk of your food money? Which meal costs the most?
Chronicle what you spend. Anything that goes unmeasured will go unimproved. Measure your spend. You may find that by simply substituting one staple for another, you can drastically cut down your spend. We did, but we would not have found the biggest food costs had we not diligently logged what we were doing with our money.
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I think we spend $4 for the three of us and the baby eats free. We eat all whole, non processed foods and go to a friend's to milk their cow... extreme? maybe, but we like it this way :o)
ReplyDelete@Brittney Harmon: That is fantastic Brittney!! $4 a day is less than most people spend on themselves when ordering at McDonalds.
ReplyDeleteExtreme is a relative term, and since it really doesn't matter what others think, the term doesn't even apply here!
If I had a friend with a cow, and they allowed me to get my own milk, you can bet your quart of milk that you'd see our family milking away. Maybe I need to get some new friends! ;)
You're totally right, extreme is relative. I would classify us on the "extreme" side of frugal (we're even talking about moving in with some friends so that we can save more and get out there faster). We've always held the belief that no debt is good debt. If we don't have the money right now in our pocket we don't buy it. But to people in Madagascar (where we almost moved a couple years ago) people would have thought we were extremely spendy. I think it's like $1 a week to feed a person for a month (sure they only eat rice and coconuts, and free range chickens, but they seem happy to me).
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, you should totally get some friends like we have! They're amazing and doing everything they can to see our vision become reality as soon as possible (yes, all of them. We have cool friends).
We're kind of hippies if you haven't guessed. HA!
full disclosure : We do go out to all you can eat sushi ($14 per person) once every 6months... so that might raise our %. Still gotta live the life you love, right?
ReplyDelete@Brittney Harmon: "Still gotta live the life you love, right?" - BH
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. That is our entry condition. We won't sacrifice loving life for anything. We know our levels for loving life; we engineer everything around to support those levels.