It’s Day 7 of the Food Stamp Challenge, and I’m happy to say we made it through the week. (I covered what we would be eating today in my post yesterday.) The idea behind the Food Stamp Challenge was to allow families who have never lived on food stamps to experience a little of what it would feel like to live under that kind of financial pressure and to spare a thought (or a few donated goods) for a family less fortunate.
The maximum food stamp allowance for my family of three would have been $102 a week, but since the average individual on food stamps receives only about half of the maximum, I cut the maximum for our family in half as well and set our budget for the week at $50. The other reason I decided to set my budget much lower than the maximum is because we’ve been buying around $40-$45 worth of groceries on a weekly basis for many months and I wanted this to be a true challenge for me. In addition to the money we spend on groceries, we also spend between $60 and $80 a month eating out which averages to $15-20 a week in additional food expenses.
The Food Stamp Challenge did turn out to be a challenge for us, not because of the amount of money we had to spend on food but because the guidelines were difficult for me to follow. The first guideline that became a challenge was the one that said we were not to accept gifts of food from others. Our week began with both my husband and my daughter and I being treated to lunch. Several other meals throughout the week were provided by others as well. To compensate for the cost of these meals that didn’t come out of our budget, I froze meal-sized portions of leftovers that we would have otherwise eaten for that meal. We didn’t have leftovers from the week to eat for that first lunch out, but we could have easily made another meal out of the groceries I bought so I think that cost was also covered within the budget.
The other reason the Food Stamp Challenge was challenging is because one of the guidelines said to only eat food that you purchase during the week of the project. The Challenge fell during a very busy time in our lives. We’ve been working on multiple projects around the house that are eating up much of our free time, and my sister who lives in Australia was here visiting the past two weeks so whatever free time we did have we tried to spend with family. That didn’t allow for time to go grocery shopping just because the Challenge had begun. I compensated for this discrepancy as well as I could by estimating the cost of the food we did eat from the freezer and pantry during that time and subtracting it from the total available to me to spend. Had we eaten from our pantry for five days and then gone to the grocery store with the full $50 I don’t think that would have given me an accurate picture of living on $50 a week.
Eating only food purchased during a single shopping trip (even though we only did so for two days) was a challenge for another reason as well–it’s completely opposite of the way I normally shop and plan meals. It’s been a year since I first began stocking up and bargain shopping and over the course of that year my meal planning and shopping strategy has evolved to the point where I now base my menus almost completely off of the items in my pantry and freezer. Generally, the only items we purchase and consume during the same week are fresh produce and dairy products. The rest of our grocery budget for the week goes towards stocking up. I’d say that this is a fairly common strategy for bargain shoppers, and Crystal has a great post on the “buy ahead principle” here.
I found that when we were limited to eating only what I’d purchased during my weekly shopping trip, we had less variety in our diet. I was able to squeeze in four different kinds of meat into our remaining budget, but I only purchased two kinds of fruit. Fruit is one of our staple snacks around here so snacks could become a bit monotonous if we consistently only ate what we’d purchased in the last seven days. By using our stockpile, I’m able to fit more than two kinds of fruit into a typical weekly grocery trip. Because of the guidelines of the challenge, we had to give up a few luxuries as well. For example, my hubby loves his orange juice, but it wasn’t on sale this week except for a store-brand. Usually he gets the good stuff, but he agreed to compromise for the sake of the Challenge. And you know, that store-brand juice isn’t half bad!
We were able to squeeze a few items to donate into our budget, and I know we have at least a week’s worth of meat left over from that single shopping trip, so many of our meals for the next few days (or longer) will be based around the items purchased during the Challenge. I’m hopeful that the majority of our meals the next couple of weeks can be based around items from our stockpile. Perhaps we’ll have enough money left over in the budget that we’ll be able to purchase and donate even more food items to those who are truly in need.
I’d love to hear from any of you who participated. Was the Food Stamp Challenge more or less difficult than what you imagined? What made it challenging? What did you learn?
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