On a budget

Last week the kids were able to learn about budgeting. Even though my husband and I talk to them about this topic on a regular basis I wanted them to experience it. I gave them the task to make a menu for an entire day. Each child would come up with their own food choices for a full day. I told them that I wanted them to choose healthy options though and not just something that would be cheap and taste good. My kids aren't huge fans of macaroni and cheese so that's not what I was worried about, but pop tarts for breakfast would have made it to at least one of the lists.

I also encouraged them to think about how much it might cost. PKB would have chosen steak and potatoes, but once I gave them a budget, he quickly changed his mind. They went to work going through recipes and jotting down ideas. It was so fun to see their minds at work. They each showed me their menus and for the most part, they chose good foods. Next, I had them make a list of the items they would need to buy from the store. As I went through their menus and compared them to the lists, they were missing items that were essential to making their meals. For instance, PKB wanted to make sausage breakfast sandwiches (not the healthiest choice, but I wanted them to make the choice) and he had biscuits and eggs on his list, but no sausage. =) They had to keep adding things to their lists until they had everything they would need for their meals.

Once they had their lists ready I wrote an estimate of the cost next to each item. They added up the costs of each of their items and had a lot of revising to do. Most of them were $10 -$20 over their budget. I told them that they could compare their lists to see if their were duplicate items. They circled all of the duplicate items and talked about whether or not the item could be shared between multiple meals. This dropped their cost quite a bit.

These are the moments moms live for! To see my children all working together to figure out how to make it work was so awesome!! They finally got their lists in order with their budget and decided they would just put all of their money together when they went shopping.

Looloo stayed with me so I could let the older kids focus on making their lists work. I let Looloo do what she could in finding what she needed, but she did need a bit of help. Baby was happy to be along for the ride.

At the store I wanted them to go by themselves to figure out where things were and what they should buy. I did give them some advice before sending them off. I told them to check the prices of the different brands of the item they would be buying. The first one they see may not have the best price. I showed them how to compare prices by looking at the tags that have the price per item. They did a pretty good job. They spent an hour going back and forth through the store trying to find everything they would need. Obviously this was good for them to find out where things are in the store. All the times they've been with me didn't help much.

They passed me several times in the store. Always going the opposite direction from the last time I saw them. =)

 

 

Although this isn't exactly how my cart would have looked, they worked hard and did great! PKB took their cart to the checkout on his own. I was worried they might be over their budget, but I didn't jump in to try to help. He was clearly confident about their budget because he didn't hesitate one bit. After he paid I went over to see what the total was and they were $15 under their budget! 

 

After loading the groceries into the car we talked about their experience. They said that it was more fun than they thought it would be. They had to change their menus as they shopped because they were worried about going over. I came to realize that they scrimped so much that the meals may not be enough to feed our family of 7. Two of the kids have done their days. They were so excited to be able to make all of the meals for the day. We did have to add to a few of the meals for them to be filling enough, but overall they did super! I'm so proud of their hard work.

 

This was basically a trial run to see how they would do on their own. I will now add to their knowledge and see if we can make it even better next time. I'm thinking we may do this once a month to give them lots of learning opportunities. We will be learning more about nutrition in the coming days to help them come up with even healthier menus.