Initial Preparation and Q&A

We are now about 48 hours away from starting our challenge and we are in full scale preparation mode. About a week ago, Stacie and I sat down to try and put together a preliminary list of food items and meals that we thought would be enough to get us through the week. Obviously everyone would probably approach this a little bit differently, but we decided that we would try to plan through Friday leaving ourselves with about a $20-$25 budget "cushion" for the weekend. Since this is new to us, we didn't want to exhaust our entire budget up front only to find out that we didn't have enough food to get us through the week.

In response to my introductory post, our sister-in-law Angela posted a number of questions about how we are approaching the challenge, so I thought that I would kill two birds with one stone by answering her questions while at the same time going into more detail about our preparations.

Ang's first question was whether we are allowed to take advantage of sale/coupon items and whether we are limited to purchasing items on the SNAP approved list. The answer to this question is somewhat complicated in that it differs from state to state, but in Maryland, the answer to her question is that we can take advantage of sales/coupons, but that we are limited as to what we can buy. In Maryland, SNAP funds are received electronically. Each person or family who is eligible for SNAP receives what is called an Independence card which is credited monthly with the amount for which that person or family qualifies. Rather than specifying what items can be purchased with SNAP funds, Maryland places restrictions on what cannot be purchased with an Independence card. For example, you cannot use your Independence card to buy non-food household products, alcohol or tobacco, vitamins/medicine or pet food. Interestingly, you are also not allowed to use your Independence card to buy "hot meals." Only uncooked foods, fruits, vegetables etc. So, in theory, you can't use it to buy fast food.

Ang also wanted to know about whether we were going to try and eat healthy during the challenge week given the budgetary restrictions. While the answer to that question is yes, it has definitely created the most difficulty in terms of our preparations. Stacie is very good about ensuring that we maintain a healthy eating lifestyle more often than not buying organic food, both for us and for Hailey. When we started reviewing our food options on a $95 budget, we very quickly realized not only that organic food was out for the week, but the greater challenge which was trying to maintain a healthy diet on a limited budget. The sad reality is that healthier foods tend to be more expensive than non-healthy alternatives. We are fortunate in that our normal budget allows us to be more discerning about our food choices and we choose to invest more in our diet because eating healthy is important. People on food stamps do not have that luxury and as a consequence, they tend to have less healthy diets.

We tried as best we could to incorporate some healthy options into our diet for the challenge week, but it certainly was not easy. As I mentioned, organic food is out, including Hailey's wholemilk. For the rest, we are trying to balance food quality vs. quantity on a restricted budget. For example, we have chosen to buy bread that is a lot less healthy than what we normally eat simply because we cannot afford to spend $5 on a loaf. We also are buying a family pack of chicken thighs mainly because it is the most cost-effective way of  including protein into our diet, but it is certainly not as healthy as our normal practices. We are also not buying as many fruits and vegetables as would normally be the case mainly because the fruits and veggies we normally buy are too expensive. In fact, even the non-organic options are more expensive than we can afford. We are including bananas, sweet potatoes, carrots and peas. Hopefully that will be enough for the week. If we find that we need more, we can always use our "cushion" funds to supplement over the weekend. There are countless other examples of our choosing less healthy options to save money in order to ensure that we make ends meet for the week.

Ang's last question was about shopping strategies - another good question. Stacie and I decided on the following plan. As I mentioned, we started our planning about a week or so ago. We have a Safeway about two blocks from us which is where we do most of our shopping. The first step in our planning was to go online and look at what our various options were including looking at food prices. Stacie created a spreadsheet in which we calculcated the number of meals we thought we would need for the week and then the cost of those meals. When we intitially found that we were a little over our 5-day budget, we went back and made some adjustments to reduce the cost. Now that we have our gameplan, we are going to the grocery store together tomorrow afternoon. Safeway always has a lot of sales and coupons and by going together, we can make last minute changes based on what is on sale which - hopefully - will reduce our anticipated cost even more. Stacie also mentioned that certain fruits and vegetables are less expensive at Trader Joe's, so we are going to buy those items there. For example, bananas are 16 cents each which is a lot less than at Safeway.

Needless to say, a lot of this is trial and error for us and we have no idea whether our approach is the right one. I guess we'll know by this time next week! Hopefully this answers all the questions and helps give some insight into our preparations. Keep the questions coming folks.

I'll plan on posting my next blog update after tomorrow's shopping trip, so stay tuned. And thanks again for all the encouragement and support.

Neil, Stacie and Hailey