Wednesday, September 21, 2016

SNAP Challenge - Shopping Day

by Nicole Milbradt, Director of Marketing

With my list in hand, I marched into my local grocery chain store, determined to come in on budget.

I bought mostly store brands and only got the quantities I needed. I assumed that a SNAP family would also get WIC benefits so I skipped things like milk, juice and eggs hoping they would be covered.  Again, I didn’t buy any lunch items or breakfast foods for my two kids during the week. I again assumed they would eat breakfast and lunch at school through the free-and-reduced lunch program.

As I worked my way through the produce, I was pleased find a salad option that was inexpensive. It was a bagged green salad with carrots for $1.78. In our house, we have salad almost every meal and I thought this would be a good way to keep fresh veggies on the menu. I couldn’t really afford to add anything to it like tomatoes or cucumber but it would just have to work.

I knew produce and meat would present the biggest challenges. When I looked at the options for ground beef, there were three to choose from. It all had to do with how lean they were. There was 93/7, 85/15 and 73/27. Obviously the option with less fat (93/7) was the most expensive but I couldn’t bear to go all the way down to the 73/27 option so I chose the one in the middle.

I also found a bag of chicken breasts for a fraction of the cost. It was from a trusted name so I had no reservations about buying it.

As I started adding it all up, I couldn’t help but think to myself… “I got this.”

Whaaaa… I don’t got this. I was $27 over budget. I went super lean. Super thrifty. How did I go over!?!

Determined to come in at $112 for the week, I started making adjustments. I traded fresh fruit for canned. I eliminated the salads with every meal. I adjusted the soup meal to JUST the soup. I was still over. 

I bagged all the snack items and traded a couple of “splurged” brand names (like the Kraft boxed mac and cheese) to the store brand. I was STILL over.

I knew what I had to do. I had to go down to the 73/27 on the ground beef. It was not an easy call. I really hated doing it. But with that final move, I was down to $110.77... $1.23 to spare.


The challenge was on…

5 comments:

  1. Many seniors and disabled are not qualified for wic (as wic stands for women, infant and children) vouchers so important proteins like peanut butter, cheese , and milk have to be included in that budget.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Many seniors and disabled are not qualified for wic (as wic stands for women, infant and children) vouchers so important proteins like peanut butter, cheese , and milk have to be included in that budget.

    ReplyDelete
  3. And can you tell me how nutritious the breakfast and lunch meals are at school? Some schools are serving corn dogs and other cheap crap. And when the kids are NOT in school, what do you do?

    ReplyDelete
  4. WIC only provides (at best) for a child during the first 18 months, and food for the mother only as long as she is breast feeding, unless the rules have changed.

    ReplyDelete
  5. BTW, Nicole, I can share some recipes with you--I have done this challenge myself, and learned a few ways to make things stretch.

    ReplyDelete