Meal Plan

Since a new month is upon us, I'm going to try to carefully plan out my food budget. I gave myself $250 to work with.

I'm at school 3 days a week (Tu/Wed/Thurs). Tu and Thurs I'm there for 10 hrs, so I HAVE to eat. Wed I'm there from 10:30-3:30, but was going to start staying until 4:30, and then going to play tennis with a friend. In that case, I'll have to eat something beforehand. Thankfully, the school cafeteria has soup and lots of juice, which may be the only things I can eat for the next month (due to the spacers/braces). In this previous post, I gave myself 12.50/wk (a total of 50/mo). Let's see how I can work with that.

Tu: lunch at home, dinner at school (soup: $3, juice: $2)
Wed: lunch (usually I just skip it), dinner at school (soup: $3, juice: $2)
Thurs: lunch at home, dinner at school (soup: $3, juice: $2)

That's $15/wk, which is exceeding my budget. Maybe instead of the juice on Wednesday, I just bring an extra bottle of water. That brings me down to 13/wk, or 52/mo. I'm going to try to bring cash ONLY to school, which will force me to stick to this budget.

That would leave me with 198/mo. I know I said I was going to earmark 50/mo for dining out with friends, but I'm going to try to reduce that to 40.

I'll have about 300 (my 150 plus my bf's 150) for the month's groceries and our eating out. I'm going to try to go to Costco the first Friday of every month, and then Ralph's 2 weeks later. Since I can only eat mushy stuff for the month (and have to stay away from certain foods for the next 10 months), I'm hoping that will reduce the bill of everything significantly... no more filet mignon for me!

My food list: yogurt, pudding, ice cream, fishsticks, applesauce, bananas, pasta, naked juice, orange tangerine juice, apple juice, grape juice, water, mashed potatoes, jell-o, soup, bread (to dip in the soup), soft cheeses, pancakes, eggs, and beans -- hopefully my bf won't mind eating this stuff as well. We're both big pasta and egg eaters, so I think he'll still be happy. ;)