Could you cut your food budget by 75%? We tried it for four weeks

A while ago, while browsing over our ever increasing monthly food spend, we decided to radically cut our food budget for a few reasons: the challenge, to save a couple of bucks and to loose some weight. So we did it, starting on the Monday 1st May 2017 and ending on Sunday the 28th May – 4 whole weeks.

We started with a couple of ground rules. We would start with a very small pantry – mainly seasoning, baking stuff and some spices. Ingredients that most would have around the house and last for months. We could also eat whatever was growing in the garden, some kale and spinach. Lastly, we would get the money in one shot, not weekly – as weekly would be a lot harder.

So looking at our food budget, we found that we had been spending between R700 and R800 per week for the last year or so, so for the sake of round numbers, we decided R100 ($7.70) per week per person would be the budget. This is a very small amount by any metric – in South Africa, food is relatively cheap – in fact, last I looked we where one of cheapest on the Big Mac index. http://www.economist.com/content/big-mac-index At the moment, standard Big Mac meal is on special at R42 ($3.20)– so we could get roughly 5 of them – half for breakfast, one each for lunch and supper! So a days worth of food on our combined R200.

And yes, you can easily go buy 5kg of rice and go on the Survivor type diet and have plenty of change from R200. But the idea is to have a healthy diet as well as variety. The challenge is not to survive, but thrive!

We started by making a meal plan based around budget meals, starting with breakfast and lunch. Breakfast was easy, two bars of Weetbix each and milk. As we were heading into winter, so was lunch – vegetable soup with a toasted cheese and onion. Had to go pretty light on the cheese – but went well with the soup.

For diners we settled on two stir fries spaghetti bolognese, a mince curry and a quiche – most eaten with rice. For snacks fruit and muffins. One thing did stand out, our milk consumption. We use 1l of half fat milk a day in cereals, tea and coffee and cooking. Even at R8 a litre this was a quarter of our budget. I experimented with watering down full fat milk, eventually finding that going one to one was acceptable for most things. You don’t notice it in cooking and cereals and only slightly in coffees and teas.

We then moved on to the spread sheet stage with a list of ingredients as well as fair prices. Armed with this, I hit the shops on Monday morning – and with an idea of what price I was willing to pay, shopping took under an hour even though I visited four shop. I cleared out a fridge, freezer and cupboard and taped shut all the other doors – keep those temptations locked away.

Then it was just a case of following the plan. During the first week we both, at times, had some hunger pangs. It never felt like we where starving, but did feel like our stomach was expecting more. We also started looking forward to items that before we might have dismissed. Apples and oranges really did become a treat. We did have a large (2.5kg) bag of flour and from this we made muffins and pancakes – which definitely brightened up the days. I was surprised to find that a tin of jam – something that usually last months, disappeared in 2 and half weeks.

We did have a bit of weight loss, for me I went from 114.5kg down to 109.1kg so a good 5.4kg. My wife went from 66.6kg down to 63.6 – so 3kg. As to cheating, we did eat out a five times – twice with friends, and burger and chips when we went to the movies and two Sunday breakfasts – something we do most Sundays. I am not sure if this is cheating or not, as this is normal for us and goes on our entertainment budget – not the food budget. Looking at the food we had left though, I think we had enough to cover the ten missing portions.

In conclusion, you CAN live in South Africa on R100 per week. You need to plan though and it helps if you had a fridge/freezer for storage. It would be very hard though if you got the hundred rand weekly, getting a lump sum at the start helps. Even having a small vegetable garden with some easy to grow greens like kale and spinach helps a lot.

• It has been a week since we stopped – both my wife and myself have added 2kg – basically, just letting go and being little piggies. It’s a good thing that we start four weeks of the Banting diet tomorrow – bye bye carbs!