Question

I recently read that a good guideline for food for a family is $100 per person per month (unless you are a family of 1-3, then a little more). I was thinking about our lifestyle and how to make this work. We generally buy half a cow every year (1200 approx), and two pigs for our freezer (500 approx). We don’t buy much more meat, but we do buy chicken and stuff like pepperoni and chicken nuggets. If we factor in those huge meat purchases, that leaves us with about 100 a week for our family of six. Does that seem pretty doable? I’ve been spending more than that for a long time, but we challenged ourselves to $80 a week in January and it’s seemed okay. Just trying to see longer term. We have kroger locally, sams, Costco, aldi and Meijer further away, but I don’t mind going here and there.  

Answer 1

GIRl i so need to do this. how much meat do you get from a half cow?  

Comments

@sherborne about 350 pounds

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@pang ty

Answer 2

That is pretty close to what I do. I just try to buy around sales and use fresh produce for more than one meal that week. (I also budget the full amount and save the ‘extra’ for the large meat purchases) we also hunt and if we are successful that gives me a buffer to cover the processing. Also when chicken is on sale (less than 1. 99/pound here for breasts) I buy like 40 pounds at a time to put in freezer.  

Comments

I do have to say. I did my best budgeting for food when I would take our whole food budget at once and knew it had to last the month.