Super Frugal Grocery Challenge, In Conclusion

(Read all Super Frugal Grocery Challenge posts here!) 

Dollar amount of food consumed days 29-31: $2.49

Total "spent" on food according to our rules: $193.94

Dollar amount we actually spent on food this month: $188.68

We made it!!! 

I'm honestly super relieved that this challenge is over, but not because I want to go out and buy a bunch of expensive food… I just want to go back to not thinking about every single thing I eat, keeping track of it, and doing all that pesky math. From now on, it'll just be back to finances as usual: sorting receipts by category into our Your Money or Your Life monthly tabulations, rather than looking up market prices for quinoa and weighing it out by the ounce. Huzzah!

Some takeaways from this challenge: 

Our rules ended up being a lot harder to implement than I expected. I was committed to our particular method because we wanted useful data about the dollar amount of food we go through in a regular month, but I'm glad I don't have to do it again!

The amount of money we actually spent on food was far lower than normal this month. We actually did a fair amount of stocking up this month (bulk staples I bought zero waste, a bunch of spices from a local store, and quite a bit of meat from a local farmer), but they didn't make it onto the Super Frugal list because we haven't eaten them yet. But even with buying these, our dollar amount spent at the grocery/farm was over a hundred dollars lower than usual, so that's a win!

We didn't learn any huge lessons. Honestly, there wasn't anything that we gave up that we were like, "Wow, it looks like we didn't need that after all… our lives are so much simpler now." Zach gave up half-and-half in his coffee, but he'll be buying it again because he likes it. We bought some eggs and are planning to start eating more of those again, because they're tasty. One of these days we'll break out some of the meat sitting in our freezer. But in the meantime, we're going to continue eating lots of beans and grains, packing lunches and snacks, foraging and fermenting, planning ahead, and not eating out. I do feel like I established some good rhythms and habits for myself, though— such as cooking beans and grains consistently throughout the week, and keeping a rotation of homemade sauces on hand— so I hope to keep those up.

All in all, I'm glad we did the challenge. It was, well, challenging, but we gained a lot of useful data, as well as getting a sense of what it feels like to eat $200 worth of food in a month. In the future, we're hoping to do more food and/or financial challenges, but for now, we're going to enjoy our half-and-half and eggs, stay out of grocery stores as much as we can, and move on with our lives.

Thanks for following along!

P.S. Our meals for the last three days:

Day 29: Peanut butter toast (me) and eggs with potatoes (Zach), rice with chickpeas (me) or refrieds (Zach) with sauerkraut, homemade pizza

Day 30: Leftover pizza, oatmeal, crackers and hummus, lentil loaf with rice

Day 31: Peanut butter toast, burritos, lentil loaf with rice

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