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| Fresh lettuce! |
My daughter's task was to plan a family meal for under $20, while incorporating fruits/vegetables, a meat, and dairy into the meal to make it a balanced meal all around. She loved this task and did come in a few pennies under budget. While this was a "pretend" assignment, not requiring us to actually purchase anything, I think it's a valuable lesson for her to do and I plan to take her back to the grocery store sometime this summer to plan and purchase the fixings for dinner. She did learn that store brand was cheaper and foregoing ice cream kept her under budget!
Here's the game plan:
- Grab the grocery ad and show her meats, veggies, condiments, etc. that are on sale that week. I'll discuss portion size so that she can get an idea of how much meat she needs to buy.
- Remind her of food preferences (for instance, her brother is not a fan of green beans) and encourage her to buy fresh veggies versus frozen ones to maximize on the nutrition offered by the vegetable.
- Have her scan the Sunday paper/Coupons.com for coupons that may be useful at the store.
- Give her cash only! It's easier to spend more when you use a debit card. The finite $20 bill means that's all she can spend and there's no going over.
- Have her prepare as much of the meal as she can safely do.
2 comments:
That looks like fun. Do you have a large family or special food requirements? I spend $6/lb+ for my meats, and a family meal wouldn't have cost $20, so I was just wondering was there a special reason why you gave her $20 - or was it just for fun, and that you normally don't spend that much on 1 meal? Thanks. But it's a really good idea, and a good way to teach your children about budgeting and money and preparing meals.
$20 would cover costs like if she needed to buy a gallon of milk (we buy 2 gallons a week for the kids, at least). Like if she wanted to make Tacos, she'd need the shells, cheese, shredded lettuce, etc. So it's actually to buy everything needed, not necessarily relying on what I might have at home in the pantry. I eat gluten free, so if she wanted spaghetti, she'd have to buy my kind of pasta too. If she wanted to make meatloaf, she'd have to make it all gluten free (which they hate) or make a loaf for me and a loaf for them.
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