How to Feed Yourself for $15 a Week
Pedro Marques
the early 1990s. This was helped by the fact that my workplace fed me
five meals a week, but I was still carrying the weight of sixteen
additional meals (for slightly less than a dollar per meal). This was
not easy or comfortable to do — I did it by necessity — but I believe
it could still be done for $20/week in most parts of the U.S. Also,
while I was satisfied at the time, the fare was probably a bit more
spartan than most would willingly eat.
Here is some of what I did:
1. Never allow leftovers to go bad. I would cook one or two major
meals per week. Sometimes this was a full-sized lasagna, sometimes
fish that was on sale, sometimes a big pot of homemade spaghetti sauce
or soup with lots of fresh vegetables added. It always included a big
salad. This big meal would feed me dinners (and some lunches) for five
or six days, and I could not afford to throw any of it away. I would
eat leftovers almost every day. Every ounce of it was eaten over the
course of the week.
2. Supplement with inexpensive foods. Many will say this is
unhealthy. It would have been if it had been all that I ate, but I
definitely ate a lot of Ramen and macaroni and cheese. These were
bought when on sale: Ramen 7-for-$1 (a deal I’ve seen as recently as
last week) and Mac & Cheese 3-for-$1. I also could get canned tuna 3-
for-$1 easily, and once or twice a year as a loss leader for 5-for-$1.
Poor man’s tuna casserole was a staple and would feed me for two or
three meals: one package of mac & cheese with one can tuna mixed in.
3. Shop in the produce aisle. This sounds counter-intuitive,
because everyone “knows” that produce is expensive. But I would shop
for the inexpensive produce (which tended to be seasonal). Potatoes,
carrots, celery, lettuce, tomatoes (sometimes), oranges (sometimes),
cabbage, etc. These all make great food and provide snacks that
generally don’t spike your blood sugar like factory-made snacks do.
Also, this may be obvious, but I would eat fruit in season. For
example, apples were plentiful in the fall: I could get a bag for
about $1 and would get one or two bags for the week. I would have
apples with everything (and for snacks). Again, I could not afford to
throw out a single apple, so I ate them all. And at that time of year,
making an apple pie was in the budget too!
4. Never eat out. I couldn’t have bought more than four or five
meals for my $15 weekly food budget, and that’s assuming the cheap
breakfast place that had meals for $2.95 a plate. I needed to get at
least 16 meals out of that $15, so there was no room for the luxury of
eating out.
5. Have substantial cereals for breakfast. Oatmeal and Grapenuts
were keys to my success. They both filled me up and kept me filled up
for much of the day. A single container of oatmeal — not the flavored
packages, which are expensive and insubstantial, but the big boxes of
loose Old Fashioned Oatmeal — would last slightly longer than a week,
even if I ate it every day. At the time this cost about $1.99 per
container. You can get it today easily for $2.99 per container.
6. Avoid junk food. Not one candy bar, bag of chips, pre-made
peanut butter cracker, store-bought cookie, “breakfast bar”, or pack
of gum could be afforded. This didn’t mean I didn’t have snacks: a bag
of popcorn cost about $1, and if I had the money available I would get
one. Also, I had flour, sugar, water, eggs (usually), oil, and
oatmeal, so sometimes I would make oatmeal cookies (with raisins if I
was splurging). Sometimes saltines were on sale and I would usually
have peanut butter on the shelf, so I could make peanut butter
crackers if I wanted.
7. Avoid pre-cooked foods. Frozen dinners, deli-made quiche, store-
roasted chicken — all of these cost too much per serving. If I wanted
quiche, I had to make it from scratch. The ingredients were in my
budget and on my shelves. If I wanted chicken, I waited until it was
on sale for $0.39/lb and roasted it myself. I then ate it for 6-8
meals before chucking the bones into a pot to make chicken soup and
having that for another 6-8 meals.
8. Buy a basic paperback cookbook. Because I had to make most
things from scratch, I bought a paperback copy of what is often called
“The Plaid Cookbook”: the Better Homes & Gardens New Cookbook. I think
it cost $6 at that time, and was not part of my food budget, but it
paid itself back many times over. (If I wanted to make lasagna, it
told me how. Did I manage to buy a roast beef on sale? The cookbook
told me how to avoid ruining it in the oven. Pumpkin pie? apple pie?
quiche? roast chicken? all was explained, and often within my budget
because I could make it from standard, inexpensive ingredients.
9. Don’t buy beverages. There’s a reason Coca-Cola and Pepsi Co.
have been good investments and consistent earners across the years:
they are selling you water. During this tough time I did not buy soda,
or water, or coffee, or tea, or any beverage other than milk (which
was reserved for my breakfasts, and only on weeks when I was having
boxed cereal). I think I bought hot cocoa mix during the winter, and
that lasted several weeks. If I needed a sugar drink I used a
tablespoon or two of lemon juice — which I had on hand as a cooking
supply — and a tablespoon or two of sugar in a tall glass of iced
water: instant soft drink for possibly $0.10.
10. Special Bonus Tip. I didn’t do this at the time, but I now know
that using dried milk saves at least $1 per gallon. There are two
tricks to using dried milk. First, invest in a glass container. I
don’t know why, but dried milk tastes terrible when stored in plastic.
Second, chill it. If you follow these two suggestions, you’ll be able
to serve the milk to guests and they will never know. In fact, they
will likely think you buy it from a dairy. (And yes, this is something
that my family does now. We have been drinking almost exclusively
dried milk for the last 7 years.) Dried milk also saves time and gas
money: out of milk? No need to run to the convenience store, just mix
it up. In this case we save almost $2.00 a gallon because milk is so
much more expensive at the convenience store, and since the family
drinks about a gallon a day, we save as much as $7-10 per week just by
drinking dried milk.
There may have been other tricks that I’ve forgotten, but with only
$15 to spend per week I had to think long and hard about buying
anything that cost more than $1. Was it going to sustain me?
It was much harder when I started this radical budget, because I
started from nothing. But over time, it got easier, in part because
some items lasted longer than a week. For example, pantry items like a
bag of sugar, a bag of flour, a bottle of oil, and a bag of brown
sugar would generally last longer than a week. In the first weeks I
had to buy a lot of these things and they used up a lot of my $15, but
immediately they became the “money in the bank” that allowed me to buy
other staples that might not last that long.
So, yes it is possible to eat without spending a fortune. Again, my
food budget was radical by necessity, but the principles would still
work today. I think $15/wk might not be enough now, but I think $20/wk
would work, and I know that $30/wk would be fairly easy for a single
person. For reference: $15/wk per person = $65/month for one and $260/
month for a family of four. $30/wk per person = $130/month for one and
$520/month for a family of four (which is about what my family spends
on food now, and we don’t eat anywhere near the way I did back in the
’90s).
Bill
Thank you!
"Pedro Marques" wrote in message
Artys
I eat a lot of bread and salad dressing.