I just left the meat market. I go to the meat market once a month. I buy a total of 150lbs of meat a month and I rotate out what I buy each month to keep a variety and buy the different meats my family eats at the lowest possible price. I buy 30 dozen eggs at the same time. Although that doesn’t suffice us for the entire month. I also throughout the winter buy a 50 lbs bag of potatoes a month. In the summer months I typically don’t need to as we grow our own in the spring. Last yr we made it through on our own fresh pulled from my back yard. In fact our container garden took about 50$ a month of my grocery bill. I buy 30lbs of cheese as well. I buy whatever I need to make 180 school snacks cause that is the requested number for the kids I have in the grades they are in. Can you even imagine that. Most of the time I find the school snacks have been eaten on the bus or smashed in the bottom of the back packs or left on the counter because they forgot them on the way out the door. I often wonder if the teachers have any clue how hard I work on snacks they potentially never even see. I think my crock pot stays on lately making apple butter and apple sauce and caramel sauce and choc sauce. I seriously cook and bake nonstop. My monthly grocery budget is incredibly low though. Although everyone always thinks we lack food we don’t. I can buy all listed above for about 180$. That is what I spent tonight. Although I volunteer at a couple of churches and go to the pantries which gets me the canned things I need and helps keep the budget low. In return I donate the kids clothes as well always give what you don’t need. My house goes through a bottle of shampoo,conditioner, and two bottles of body wash a week. If the kids are all 7 sick it takes 8 fl oz of cough meds for one days worth of doses for them. Honey is cheaper and works much better not to mention you don’t get the looks of are you taking this cough syrup to make drugs from wherever your buying it from. You can’t buy that stuff in bulk without going to jail. So honey it is. We go through 38 -45 rolls of tp a week. Yes a week. Two bathrooms increased this number greatly but I buy 68 cents for four rolls at walmart because it’s not about size of the roll it’s about number of rolls. You see the rolls get flooded and flushed and launched accrossed about the house. Some will go missing and some will get dirty. I bust my ass to make sure every single one of these needs are meet no matter what that takes. Standing in line in the snow for fresh fruit to make fruit roll ups for the week has been known to happen. I can’t imagine that someone could say I don’t deserve the 168 dollars a month in child support they are ordered to pay. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR