By Ashley Sipocz
I love grocery shopping because strangely, I find this routine household duty quite relaxing. To prepare for Day 1 of the SNAP Challenge for my two-person household, we went shopping for our $56 worth of meals for the week. After shopping with a little more than half our usual weekly food budget, I learned just how stressful grocery shopping can be.
With one of us paying student loans and one of us still going to school, we’re no strangers to dining on a budget. Nutrition is also important to us, so we usually take some time to plan healthful, budget-friendly meals before heading to the store. Here’s what a typical prep sessions for our grocery store trips is like:
- Look through weekly grocery store ads for sale items and coupons.
- Search online for coupons.
- Decide on meals and snacks for the week and needed ingredients.
- Make shopping list.
This week the process was still very much the same, but it took a lot more time and creativity with the limited SNAP Challenge budget. Planning meals required more thought because I had to figure out what items could be used multiple times to get the most out of our purchases.
When planning meals, I usually love to try to add new healthy recipe each week or sometimes we’ll allow ourselves a splurge like a decadent ice cream. Incorporating items like avocados, spinach, quinoa, almonds or a $4 pint of gelato would have done a number on our budget so those preferences were out. I also recognized that most people who receive SNAP benefits often don’t have access to the resources to obtain coupons or travel to multiple stores for deals like us.
Shopping on a SNAP budget makes for a very different grocery shopping experience. It was hard not to choose items we were accustomed to like almond milk, Greek yogurt, or apples, having to opt for less nutritious but cheaper items. Some items we had to do without like coffee. We love coffee and drink it daily but it would have cost an eighth of our food budget so we had to pass. While making these choices, it was very sobering to realize how expensive our food preferences are. These are luxuries that more than 938,000 Missourians can’t afford, and we often take for granted.
Trying to make sure we stayed under budget made me feel uneasy, especially at checkout. At one store, a bag of oranges put us a few dollars over budget, which normally we wouldn’t have thought twice about. With a strict $56 budget, we didn’t have the flexibility to to spend a little more than intended, and so we had to ask the cashier to remove it from our bill. The request puzzled the cashier so I had to repeat myself a few more times while those waiting became annoyed with the confusion I created. I felt ashamed I couldn’t buy the oranges and am worried about what we were going to eat instead – feelings that are likely too often felt by people on SNAP benefits.
Our two grocery trips combined cost of $51.04. Because we were $5 under budget, we plan to use a few items totaling that amount from our pantry. Here’s what we’re working with for the week:
We’re planning on doing the challenge for the entire month so I’m curious to see how much our shopping strategies and eating habits will change as we go along.
Do you make plans for your grocery shopping trips? What strategies help you eat healthy while on a budget?