The Frugal Life of Newlyweds: Food

I remember growing up my parents always telling us the same stories about when they were first married.  For a date night they would scrounge up the change in the ashtray of their car in hopes that they could play a round or two of Ms. Pac Man.  I always thought that was ridiculous.  How could they be so poor that scrounging for change in the car to go on a date? And then I realized Ben and I were doing the same thing Friday night at Yogurtland; we pulled out the change in the side of our door and hoped we had enough to get our frozen yogurt.

This got me to thinking about the financial situations of most newlyweds: you have no money.

I have always been cheap frugal.  And I'm always looking for ways to save money.  One way that I do that is by food storage.

Ben may or may not have thought it was silly that I bought an entire case of tomato soup in the spring and stored it all summer.  Or that when we got married I brought boxes and boxes and boxes of food into our tiny apartment.  Or that I was grateful when my parents moved that they left a good part of their freezer and a lot of their food storage with me to take to Utah because they couldn't take it to Minnesota.

But, we are both SO grateful now that we have this food storage built up.  Seeing as we have no money, it has been a great blessing for us to spend less that $15 a week on groceries at Macey's simply because I make our meals based off of what we have on hand.

Now, we don't just spend $45 a month on groceries.  We also are grateful to have a Sam's Club membership (especially since we didn't have to pay for it! Thanks Mom :) We shop there about twice a month and we can get lots of food for lower prices than at the regular grocery store.  In a month we go through a 5 lb bag of potatoes, a huge bag of onions, 2 blocks of cheese, 4 gallons of milk, one box of granola bars (next month I want to try making my own though), 2-4 loaves of bread (depending on the month), 2 dozen eggs, and 2 30 packs of tortillas, all from Sam's.

We have yummy, healthy foods every day.  I make dinner pretty much every night.  And lunches are usually leftovers from the night before.  On Sunday's I usually make a big batch of something for breakfast for the week that can be frozen/refrigerated so we are getting a "real" breakfast in the mornings.  (I discovered how quickly I got tired of cold cereal and how expensive that could get!)  And I'll usually make a treat on Sunday for the week too.  (This is mostly for me to fulfill my sweet tooth, but I don't think Ben minds :)