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Carron

Apr 7, 2005, 5:00 PM

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Weekly Food Budget

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We now live close enough to the Tex Mex border that we could cross frequently if we wanted to. (We don't!) Usually we limit our NOB purchases to about once a month. We buy gigantic bags of Old Roy Dog Food (we have 7 spoiled canine babies) and special daily vitamins for ourselves from the WalMart in Del Rio. We buy several weeks' supply of New Orleans Blend Coffee and Chicory from the HEB grocery store.

Everything else we buy in Mexico, with an emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables and lean meats.

On an unusual impulse I bought a couple of American women's magazines at the cash register as we checked out of a US store last week. One of the articles was about how to save money on a tight budget while buying healthful groceries. There were examples from real families (3-5 members, similar to ours) and their "budget" grocery lists ranged from $125 to $200 dollars per family per week. Talk about sticker shock!!

My question is this: does anyone living in Mexico (and posting on this forum) actually spend the equivalent of $200 US per week on food for home preparation--not eating out--and if so, what do you buy????

I have not yet figured out what I could ever buy locally that would cost that much.

wyhaines

Apr 7, 2005, 5:12 PM

Post #2 of 12 (1230 views)

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Re: [Carron] Weekly Food Budget

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We're a family of 5 -- 2 adults and 3 kids ages 8, 4, and 1, and we can eat well, even here in the US, on a small fraction of that budget. With careful shopping and willingness to _cook_, we can eat for a month on their weekly budget. This does include some baking of bread, biscuits, tortillas, etc..., and it does include the feed that we buy to give to the chickens and ducks so that they can turn it into eggs for us.

Even spending lavishly and indiscriminately, it's pretty hard for us to spend more than $400 on food in a month.

Kirk Haines

Carol Schmidt

Apr 8, 2005, 10:50 PM

Post #3 of 12 (1196 views)

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Re: [Carron] Weekly Food Budget

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A huge amount of fruit and veggies at Tuesday Market or one of the other farmers' markets in San Miguel costs about $20 a week for two, we can get a few kilos of chicken for under $10, a kilo of corn tortillas is around 59 cents, a couple varieties of cheese, eggs and bacon for the week come to under $10, a loaf of sourdough at El Maple is a big expenditure at around $2.25 but it's worth it, and then we hit Gigante for Diet Pepsi, lowfat milk, brand name cereals, and a few canned goods and baking and cleaning products, and that can hit $30-40.

We could reduce that amount greatly if we weren't hooked on Diet Pepsi and name cereals and if we always stopped at the small neighborhood grocery stores for the canned and baking stuff instead of the convenience of Gigante. So we're talking $70-80 for two a week and could easily do it on $50.

And sometimes we'll buy gourmet sauces at one of the gringo-oriented delis and we can spend $20 without blinking. Edible imported low-cal diet salad dressing, for example--I could spend $10 a week just on that sort of thing, and if I really bought everything I wanted at those delis I could add $100 a week. Like I really need tiny sardines in olive oil and Campbell's chicken gumbo soup and grape leaves and anchovy paste and humongous prawns and Stouffer's frozen stuffed peppers.

Add another $20 a week for all the cat and dog food though--we feed a whole lot of feral cats and our dog is on prescription diet.

If I ate the way I did in my 20s in Michigan when I was single, I could live on $5 a week--big pot of lentil or bean soup and the cheapest fruits and veggies in season! Here I could see living on $5 a week on tortillas and beans. Many Mexicans do.

Carol Schmidt

wyhaines

Apr 9, 2005, 10:06 AM

Post #4 of 12 (1177 views)

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Re: [Carol Schmidt] Weekly Food Budget

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In Reply To

Add another $20 a week for all the cat and dog food though--we feed a whole lot of feral cats and our dog is on prescription diet.

Carol Schmidt

This is a complete tangent, I realize, and maybe an administrator will move it to a more appropriate venue, but I am curious: Do you trap and spay any of those feral cats? Because, if you do not, you are only making the feral cat problem worse by feeding them. More food means more success rearing litters of kittens and more of those kittens reaching reproductive age means more feral cats having more kittens, until the population of feral cats expands to the point where your subsidy only just sustains them. Your food input is no different than any other food input into a wild population. The population will boom to the carrying limit of the food source.

You would do far more good by cutting the budget for cat food to a fraction of what it currently is, and then take the rest of it and pay for spaying and neuterings of some of the feral cats that come around to eat. Given the cost of human medical care, vetrinary care in Mexico can't be prohibitively expensive, can it? At the price that I would pay to go to a vet here in my area of NOB for a spay or neuter, 1/2 of your animal food budget per year would spay 1/2 a dozen cats. I'd expect that you can spay even more than that in Mexico, and that would have a greater impact on the number of cats, at least in your area competing for the available food resources, and on the overall health of that population than simple feeding will.

Kirk Haines

bournemouth

Apr 9, 2005, 1:39 PM

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Re: [wyhaines] Weekly Food Budget

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Kirk: You're preaching to the choir. If you had the time to go back through all the posts over a period, and I realize that you won't, you'd see Carol talking about trapping cats for spaying and neutering.

wyhaines

Apr 9, 2005, 2:23 PM

Post #6 of 12 (1169 views)

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Re: [bournemouth] Weekly Food Budget

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That's great! And yes, I do see a post from May 27, 2004, where she mentions trapping. Cool. I'll shutup on the topic now. :)

MG Rabon

Apr 9, 2005, 5:55 PM

Post #7 of 12 (1155 views)

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Re: [Carron] Weekly Food Budget

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I guess you could call us a family of 5, there are 2 of us, the major domo, and 2 mozzos. We eat out probably 6 times a week and we don't spend ANYWHERE near $200 a week including the meals out. Since the law stipulates that we feed our employees nutritious meals we don't let them buy junk, only good basic foodstuffs. All 3 of them eat at least 2 meals each here per day, sometimes more.

Are you sure that wasn't a budget for a family in the USA?

Hasta,

Compórtate bien, y si no puedes, invítame!
MG Rabon

wyhaines

Apr 9, 2005, 6:29 PM

Post #8 of 12 (1148 views)

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Re: [MG Rabon] Weekly Food Budget

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It is a budget for the US. She is just comparing food budgets for the US versus Mexico. However, I think that is a fairly lavish food budget even for the US.

Kirk Haines

Carol Schmidt

Apr 9, 2005, 6:31 PM

Post #9 of 12 (1153 views)

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Re: [wyhaines] Weekly Food Budget

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You can get a cat sterilized at the Society for the Protection of Animals here in San Miguel for 270 pesos, about $24, and we do it with every cat we can catch, 14 so far.

If they're really sick we've taken them to Dr. Vasquez, who has charged as much as $80 each for all their shots and keeping them and treating them until they are well.

The "easy catches" are gone, now all we have left are the wily old males, and the arm scratches to show for it. Unfortunately, the ones we have fixed often disappear, and then we get a new batch to catch.

I read that the average life expectancy for an outdoor cat is three years, for an indoor-outdoor cat it's seven years, and for one kept totally inside, 17 years. So we're into our second generation of feral cats now. Maybe some day we'll see the numbers reduce through the sterilizations, but so far they just keep coming.

If you had seen the sickly, skinny cats in our area when we moved in, and how healthy and happy they are now, with bright eyes and sleek bodies and glistening coats, you couldn't even think about letting them starve again. No way could I stop feeding them. I hope to live another 20 years, so they've got a cushy ride for that long.

Our two indoor pet cats detest them as they line up on our stairs and porch at 6 pm each night. Oh well, can't keep everybody happy!

Carol Schmidt

NEOhio

Apr 28, 2005, 9:04 PM

Post #10 of 12 (1090 views)

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Re: [Carol Schmidt] Weekly Food Budget

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WE are a family of three, in Cleveland, and I can say that in this suburban astmosphere I easily average $150 a week in grocery costs. That does not include the special trips to Costco for household sundries and to World Market for wines. However it is rare that I leave the Giant Eagle having spent less that $250 every other week.

I am a loyal coupon user and use the grocers card for discounts. At the end of every year the grocers will give you a print out of what you have saved using their card over the course of a year - that is what we give to a single charity the next year - this years total $1870. Blew me away.

Biggest cost - veggies and fruits. Next biggest - whole milk and butter, third is meat.

I do not know how my daughters are going to be able to afford to raise families.

scarlett_decker

May 30, 2005, 5:14 PM

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Re: [Carron] Weekly Food Budget

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We live in Santa Fe and spend about $125/week for a family of 2. I cook quite a bit and try not to eat very many processed foods. Because we eat healthy, lots of fruits and veggies, we pay more than people who fill up on macaroni and cheese and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I can easily spend $150/week here! Sounds like healthy eating in Mexico at a nice price.

Carron

May 31, 2005, 9:10 AM

Post #12 of 12 (988 views)

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Re: [scarlett_decker] Weekly Food Budget

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Then you should move to Mexico and live on the wonderful and inexpensive fresh fruits and vegetables we enjoy here. Our weekly food budget for two of us runs around $30 US a week, and that includes booze and occasional steaks. I confess that I am a fanatic about using up whatever I have in the fridge/pantry before going back to the store. Leftovers make wonderful soups and taco fillings. Rice and beans stretch everything. So do tortillas.

We do eat out occasionally and sometimes we buy take-out, which may run up the budget by $10 or so.

(This post was edited by Carron on May 31, 2005, 9:12 AM)