Tonight my youngest asked to have meatloaf for dinner. Luckily I already had one premade in the freezer ready to be cooked up. It made it so easy to make dinner tonight. With my daughter’s request of course came my husband and son’s request for mashed potatoes. So of course I did oblige and everyone was happy.

How much does this meal cost to make for my family? Well I’m going to give you the breakdown for the cost.

Meatloaf 

• Ground beef 2 lbs $9.98
• Stove top stuffing 2 boxes $2.58
• 2 eggs $.80
• Barbecue sauce $.50

Cost = $13.86

Mashed potatoes

• Potatoes 5 lbs $5.99
• Milk 2 cups $.34
• Butter 2 sticks $1.50

Cost = $7.83

Total Cost = $21.69

Servings 9

Total Cost per serving $2.41 

$2.41 per serving is not bad. If I was able to make every meal this inexpensively for our family we would have $202.44 into our food. Here’s how I figured that out:

$2.41 (Cost of meal) x 3 (meals a day)= $7.23

$7.23 x 7 (days in a week) = $50.61

$50.61 x 4 (weeks in a month) = $202.44

Now do I think that is how our month is going to go? Absolutely not, for one we eat more than just 3 meals a day. We also eat snacks in our house, multiple a day. Why do we have multiple snacks you may ask, well we are home all the time. I work from home and the kids are homeschooled so we eat majority of our meals at home.

Honestly I would love to be able to spend only $200 for groceries and I can definitely strive for this. I think this may be fun to see what kind of meals I can make and keep the cost per serving down. What are some of your favorite low cost recipes?

EDIT

Woah, hold the phone!!! I missed a very important step when calculating cost for the month for our family. What I figured above was for one person. We have 6 in our family so now I need to multiply $202.44 (total cost for month) x 6 (number in our family) = $1214.64.

Now with this new number I can say it is more what I had expected. Geez, where was my mind when I wrote this up? I will have to say I know I can do better than $1214.64. So I think I will continue to post these meal breakdowns mainly for my own information but also to keep myself accountable. The more informed I am the better I can serve my family.

Thanks for understanding my hiccup in figuring monthly family food cost.