The Great Recession-Proof Food/Cooking Experiment!

One of the things I've always wanted since I left home was a full pantry of the basic necessities so that when push came to shove, I could whip together a dinner that would be scrum-diddly-umptious without having to run to the store and buying half of the ingredients of the recipe two hours before. Unfortunately, living a vagabond gypsy life for the past five years didn't help in this dream. It gets annoying lugging around flour, rice, dry goods, spices, vinegars and oils and the like around from temporary shelter to temporary shelter every three to six months. So this idea was shelved and filed away for when my life was a tad bit more stable.

And then a two things happened. (1) I got married, and (2) the economy crashed.

Marriage allowed the pantry dream fulfillment. When done right, getting married can grant quite a bit of stability to one's life, and we took the opportunity to buy large bags of bread flour and rice, along with the staple dry goods. Consolidating our spices helped and getting a brand new collection of spices for a wedding gift helped out a lot too. And we got a whole bunch of new kitchen appliances and such, though we have nary a free space on our counter now because of it.

The economy crashed, and now money is constantly on our minds, mostly, how we can make the most of what we have. And thus, The Great Recession-Proof Food/Cooking Experiment was born.

The Premise:

We spend a lot on food; but, generally, we don't need to. Most of the money goes to eating out, but I also tend to buy things when grocery shopping willy nilly, not really thinking about what I'm buying or whether I'm actually going to need it or eat it (continuing our trend of becoming a non-traditional married couple, I took upon myself most of the cooking duties). A lot of food goes to waste this way. Thus, even more money is wasted. That's a lot of extra money we could have lying around! So, the idea of this experiment is to save money by being prudent with how we spend money on food.

The Goal:

The goal is to save lots of money. Dantzel, through her accounting witchcraft and mysticism determines that some months, we will spend upwards over a hundred dollars a month just eating out! But we spend a lot on groceries too, a lot of it that never gets eaten. The numbers, to me, are appalling. You mean, if we didn't eat out for a whole month, we'd have enough extra money to buy a Zune? Of course, at this point, my patient wife would chide me for saying such things; we'd stick it in a bank or save that money for college. Yes, it is somewhat unsettling realizing that you could spend all that money for college instead of eating out.

So the goal is to spend only $50 in thirty days on food - this includes eating out, grocery bills, what have you. In reality, it won't be too hard to achieve. We've got our basics, and we're supplemented heavily by Dantzel's parents; apparently they have lots of fruit trees (so we got our fruits covered in the summer and fall) and chickens (who woulda thunk?!) so we get a small box of eggs every week. Most of her family hates eggs, so we a lot of organic eggs for free.

The Prize:

It’s a lofty goal, I realize it. They say to motivate yourself into achieving a goal, it’s useful to attach a little reward at the end; as my economist friend would probably say, it’s all about incentives. Well, last month, we spent $186.90 at restaurants, $190.12 at grocery stores, and $163.73 at Target and Walmart. Admittedly, the Target and Walmart total is most likely only partially groceries – there were a lot of family birthdays this past month, and things like toiletries and other knick knacks. But even just totaling the restaurant and grocery store bill, we spent a good $377.02 last month on food alone.

So, this month, if we only spent $50 on eating out and groceries, we’d save a hefty $327 dollars. That’s a prize more than enough to motivate me.