For a really long time I thought that eating cheaply meant little to no variety but while it's true, you're not going to just be able to eat everything you want all the time, there are a TON of things you can make for very little money.
The hard part of this may be that cold cereal is not be an option anymore. Now, I haven't checked the prices of Malt-O-Meal cereal for a little while but I think they're around $2 a bag which doesn't seem too bad but then you have to account for how much milk you use with it too and if you're anything like me, you use a lot of milk.
For a family of four, the price of milk each morning (if you only use a cup each) is $1.32, now multiply that by 7 and you're spending $9.24 a week on breakfast milk only- that's 26% of a weekly budget of $35 (if you add 2.50 per kid)- and that's not including the price of cereal or possible fruit.
On top of this, cereal, especially reasonably priced cereal, is not particularly healthy. It's full of sugar and processed carbs that neither prepare our bodies properly for the day but can leave us feeling sluggish and undernourished which means we feel the need to eat food more to compensate.
Now the good part, options:
There are loads and loads of options for breakfast that are cheap, healthy, AND delicious.
We're big fans of hot cereal- especially during the winter and it's almost ridiculous how much money you can save that way.
Cornmeal is something that we purchase in a 5 gallon bucket but you can find it at any Walmart in a smaller canister for about $1.50. For a cup of cooked cereal it costs about 6 cents (a cup is all I can eat- Paul can eat just a little bit more). It doesn't take much butter- maybe half a teaspoon and with a little salt it's delicious and cheap.
Oatmeal is another really great, healthy option- especially if it's not quick-oats. We also buy our oats in 5 gallon buckets but if you were to go to Sam's Club, you could pick up a 9lb package for $6.98. It takes about 1.5 cups of cooked cereal to fill Paul up but that only costs 13 cents. If you add half a tablespoon of brown sugar and a pinch of cinnamon, you're only adding another cent- that's 14 cents to feed a grown man and keep him satisfied until lunch time- crazy!
Grits, Cream of Wheat, and homemade cracked wheat are also really budget friendly hot cereals to keep you warm on cool mornings.
Let's compare the cost of cornmeal and oatmeal to the cost of cereal milk for a family of 4 for 1 week. Milk: $1.32/morning $9.24/week (26% of 35/week budget)
4 cooked cups of cornmeal plus 1 tablespoon butter and some salt:
$0.31/morning $2.17/week (6.2% of a $35/week budget)
4 cooked cups of cooked oatmeal plus 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and some cinnamon:
$0.37/morning $2.59/ week (7.4% of a $35/week budget)
Hot cereal only takes 5-ish minutes to make, it's not even that much work but look at how much it saves!
But what if you don't feel like hot cereal? Can you eat anything else?
You betcha!
Homemade pancakes and waffles (with homemade syrup) definitely take more time initially than hot cereal but they're easy to freeze and reheat when needed. I'm not going to make this post even longer by detailing how much they cost item by item but homemade syrup only costs about $0.35 for 4.5 cups (that's more than a liter) and the rest of this I'll save for later.
Other delicious options are homemade yogurt, eggs, or just plain toast (so simple, yet EXTREMELY cheap if you bake your own bread).
The more you save on the main dish, the more you can spend adding to the meal with fruit etc.
After I finish going over how to get started, I'm going to post recipes that I use, broken down by cost.
Look at your breakfast totals, do you see ways you can cut back? Do you see ways you can move in a positive direction by incorporating food that costs a little less but maybe takes a bit more time to prepare?
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