It’s Saturday morning, and the first thing on your chores list is stopping at the grocery store before the busyness of the day sets in, and the items on sale get picked over. You grab a cart and follow the grocery list to navigate the store – Milk, Eggs, Bread, Ground Beef, Chicken, Veggies, Potatoes and a few other odds and ends. Of course, you’re hoping there’s a little money left over for a few splurge items.
You work hard all week and a chocolate bar and a bag of your favorite popcorn, sounds like the perfect way to unwind on a Saturday night, add your favorite TV Show and your favorite beverage, and you can breathe a sigh of relief. A picture-perfect evening that has you smiling in the grocery store. Then you remember, you’ve got $50 this week to spend at the store. Making it stretch is going to be an impossible task. Olympic level skills if you can make it past the register under $100.
You navigate quickly the stress builds with every item you toss into the cart. Landing an hour’s worth of pay with 3 items.
Bread = $3.90
Eggs = $6.99
Milk = $4.20 OH scratch that, you need Lactaid milk, your middle child is lactose intolerant making the milk $1.50 more.
You decide to skip the chocolate aisle, knowing the hope of the perfect evening is fleeting when you realize you need some snacks for the kid’s lunches and some butter & seasonings for the chicken casserole you had planned to make this week.
You’re in the checkout line quietly adding up your items anticipating the total cost. $50 is becoming an alarmingly low number in comparison to the needs of your family and the week ahead. With each scanner beep you watch the total creep up inching past $50 now; you cringe at the other items still waiting to be handled and tallied to the total.
“$98.79 is your total will that be cash or card?”
You shudder at the sound. For a moment, everything stops.
What can I live without? What can I put back?
Flustered, you try to determine the difference between what your family needs and what they can go without. You know you need almost all of it. Now it’s a question of what you need more.
We All Know This Feeling
Maybe your grocery budget isn’t $50. Maybe it’s $100, $150, or more. But most of us have noticed the same thing: our dollars don’t seem to go as far as they used to.
When your paycheck already has a job before it even hits your bank account, there isn’t always much left over. And when something unexpected happens, a car repair, a reduced paycheck, an emergency expense, it can throw an already-tight budget completely off track.
How Do We Make $50 Go Further?
There may not be a magic formula for making today’s grocery prices feel like they did 5 years ago, but there are ways to make the money you have work a little harder.
Take Stock of Your Pantry First
Before heading to the store, take a look at what you already have. That half-box of pasta, canned tomatoes, or bag of rice might be the starting point for dinner.
Plan Meals Around What’s on Sale
Instead of choosing meals first and shopping second, look at what’s on sale and build your meals around those ingredients.
Choose Ingredients That Can Do More Than One Job
A package of chicken can become tacos one night, a casserole another night, and sandwiches or soup later in the week.
Don’t Overlook Frozen
Frozen fruits and vegetables can be affordable, convenient, and less likely to end up in the trash because they spoiled before you had a chance to use them.
And What If It Still Isn’t Enough?
Our Resource Center is proud to support our community in whatever they may need. Supplemental food after a rough week, or financial support during emergency situations, and so much more. We are all facing hardships but not all of us have support from family or friends. We want our community to know that we are here for you in those seasons of life that require a helping hand and a supportive voice to bring you through.
And needing a little help doesn’t mean you aren’t working hard.
Sometimes, it just means life happened.
That’s what community is for.