Staying on a $60 Vegan Budget: Week One

• You become creative!  Who needs fresh onions when you have dehydrated onions in the cupboard!  (Oops… forgot to budget in onions)
• Your husband puts snacks back at Target because… well.. uhhh… NOT IN THE BUDGET!  AWKWARD!!!
• You find yourself eating leftover crockpot oatmeal with water because you can’t spare the kids’ almond milk.  Did I mention that I don’t really like crockpot oatmeal?…(DON’T WANT TO WASTE FOOD…).
• Your husband realizes that you were serious about this budget thing and begins to regret being supportive.  (Really… you can’t use your own money to buy snacks!)

 

I must admit that the challenge of spending only $15 per person on vegan food for the week has been a lot of fun!  Right now, it’s become a bit of a game.  How can I incorporate the food that we already have with the food that I purchase at the grocery store to feed my family healthfully and deliciously for only $60?  I’ve mentioned this challenge to a couple of parents at Laney’s school, and they have no idea how to do this.  I think that’s why this challenge is so important.  Families need to know how to save money on groceries.  So, I will show you how this worked for me and our vegan budget.  I took more time than normal planning.  So, that’s key to this exercise, plan ahead.  I made a spreadsheet of an estimated cost of all of the items that I purchased, and while I was at my first store, I wrote down the actual price.  I tried to over-estimate prices when planning my shopping trip to give myself a little wiggle room.  This actually worked out pretty well. By the time I ready to make my shopping trip to my second store, we needed some new things that were not on the original list.  Before leaving for Kroger, I checked for coupons for the items on the list, and I found a couple!  SCORE! 

Here are my new spreadsheets which show my estimated prices versus the prices that I actually paid.  In the end, I was really amazed by how much I was able to get with my $60.