Family Budget Meal Round Up
How often is it meatloaf-wrapped-in-bacon dinner night in your home? (My personal favorite.) Or, do you have a lot of taco, veggie, or Hamburger Helper themed family dinner nights? After all, the average cost of ground beef is $3.50 to $5.40 per pound. Bacon can cost about $6 per pound.
This is not even counting the cost of keeping a family home stocked with staple foods, like bread, eggs, milk, butter, flour and sugar, fruits, vegetables, and snacks. It can cost a lot to feed a family of four sufficiently every week.
Monthly Costs for Family Meals
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the average American family spends anywhere between $150 to $300 every week on groceries. So, that makes for a monthly grocery budget of $600 to $1,200 a month. Or, $7,200 to $14,400 annually. These costs increase exponentially in families with more than four members.
To cut down on family meal costs, learn to cook as a family and get in the habit of making budgets. Here are a few family meal budget plans and menus that may help you out.
1 – Taste of Home
Taste of Home collects and publishes family dinner plans and budget recipes from its online readers. Here is a recipe list of 60 family meals. Each meal can feed a family of four and consists of an ingredient list that costs $10 or less. Make sure you try the Teriyaki Chicken Thighs and Fruit Glazed Porkchops recipes.
2 – Busy Budgeter
This site is run by a married couple with kids who mastered budgeting their meals, buying quality but cheap food, and mastering stir-fry. They allot 15-minutes prep time for some meals. Also, they claimed to have save over $23,000 annually with their $70 per week food budgets. They even share their 90-Day Budget Bootcamp planner for saving money.
3 – Eating Well
This is another family-run budgeting blog for meal planning. You’ll find recipes, meal plans, sample grocery lists, and budgeting tips here to help you spend $100 weekly on meals for a family of four.
4 – Don’t Waste the Crumbs
Yes, another family-run blog. This one has a $50 per week meal budget plan with a 7-day outline and menu.
Stretch Dollars and Resources
To save as much money as possible on family meals, budget and plan as much as beforehand. Research and compile cheap but filling budget meals. Make dinner theme nights according to budget. Add veggie meals often. Stretch the leftovers. Always be on the lookout for grocery sales and deals.
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Not everyone understands why you need to maintain a family budget, because expenses will not go anywhere, and incomes just won’t increase from just the right approach, so many continue to spend money randomly, not fully realizing that with proper planning and distribution of the family budget you can find significant amount for larger purchases. Properly maintaining a family budget is the achievement of long-term goals (for example, the purchase of an apartment, a car or the same vacation abroad, a new refrigerator, etc.). After all, what major purchases can we talk about if every month all your money goes to zero, and sometimes you even have to borrow. Good luck!