A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon this blog......HERE.
This Mavis Butterfield person seems like a kindred spirit....even if she seems to be an Uber gardener.
She use to coupon heavily and went into that extreme couponing mode when it was hot a few years back just like me, and her food spending was under $100 a month for 2 years. We both stopped doing the heavy couponing for free stuff thing as we saw that most of the things you got for free using coupons were NOT good for you. Mavis' food spending shot up a little bit but still stayed under $185 a month overall in 2013 and 2014.
Now she has challenged herself in 2015 to only spend $100 a month on food for her family of 4.
Oh, and she is only grocery shopping at Costco for the year.
Yeah.
Ok, so before everyone gets all depressed and disheartened that they can't feed a family of 4 for a year on $1,200, let's talk about this.
I applaud her for doing this but really, she isn't only spending $100 a month for food.
She is going into this challenge with a whole kitchen/pantry full of things bought before the challenge started.
Condiments, spices, staples like sugar, flour, etc.
Plus she seems to have a lot of preserved food starting off too(she's mentioned a ton of frozen blueberries about 5 times in what I've read so far...lol).
Plus she is using gift cards gifted to her and getting free Zaycon credit for meats when people sign up through her referral link.
And she is doing bartering with neighbors to get a bit of variety into her rotation so no money changing hands.
She is not even 4 months into the year and almost up to $500 in spending but feels her monthly totals will be going down once she can start harvesting from her garden so yah, that should give her lower totals OOP.
But is she adding in all the costs associated with growing that food? Seeds, tools, added water use for her home, the costs to preserve the foods she grows......they all add up, don't they?
As for Costco.......we don't have one here and I've only been in one once(this past January). It seems to me similar to those other warehouse places like Sam's Club and BJ's.
Isn't the running joke you can't get out of a warehouse store without spending at Least $100 a trip? lolz
I don't know.
The large packages of stuff is fine for things you eat often but what about dishes you only need a small amount of something for?
She batch cooks and freezes dishes too which is fine if you have ample freezer space.
Back in 2010 I grew just shy of 94 lbs. of food that year. It will be interesting to see if she meets her goal of growing TWO THOUSAND POUNDS of food this year.
I'm going to continue to follow along with this scheme and see how it pans out.
Hey, I am game for anything that brings down my food bill without making us eat a less healthy and/or less varied diet.....aren't you? ;-)
And now I am off into an online suckhole looking at articles/blogs on feeding your family on $100 a month......
Sluggy
