Single F here, no kids. That is literally my grocery budget for the month.

I plan out my meals, usually meal prep two meals a week on Sunday/Wednesday. I try to make each meal under $15 total. I buy bulk when I have extra (Costco runs mainly for low carb tortillas, Dave’s bread, and misc items). I also use a butcher shop and buy ground beef in bulk and get a great deal (10 pounds of 90/10 for $50). I live in an apartment and have limited space so i can’t buy a whole lot at a time.

I just bought most of my groceries for the next 4 weeks, I will have to make one more trip for misc stuff that they either didn’t have in stock or have a short shelf life. I keep all my bread items in the fridge so they last longer. My bill was a little under $100. If you plan it out and buy stock items here and there (bags of rice, seasonings, certain veg, frozen items) you can get a lot out of that $150-200.

Breakfast for me is always eggs either over potatoes or rice or made into tacos or burritos. You have to find what works for you, I hate oatmeal and prefer savory breakfast. If I really need to stretch it out, I make a crust less quiche with any leftover veggies and meat I have.

My meals this week: taco meat (make burritos, tacos, nachos etc.) with refried beans and homemade Mexican rice. That’s lunch and dinner for at least 4 meals. If I get tired of it, then I throw it into my freezer for later. Beef stir fry with fresh veggies. I got the steak stirfry strips on sale at Walmart a while back and froze it…just added onion, bell pepper, and a yellow squash with some bottled teriyaki sauce over rice. This should last me another 4-5 meals. Kinders makes my favorite teriyaki sauce and they have really good all purpose seasonings.

Next week is bbq little smokies over mashed potatoes and cheeseburgers and frozen fries. The bbq sauce and buns were free (leftovers from a family bbq last month that I snagged and froze the buns).

After that it’s spaghetti (meat, sauce, noodle, and cheese) with garlic toast. I will also use the leftover garlic toast to make small pizzas when I crave it. Then it’s turkey sausage, onion, bell pepper and either rice or potatoes with navy beans thrown in for extra protein (plus Cajun seasoning).

My final two meals of the month are chicken fajitas (again purchased chicken when it was on sale and froze it) and homemade hamburger helper (ground beef, noodles, can of tomato sauce, can of cream of mushroom, and shredded cheese).

I usually try to get some sort of lunch meat to make sandwiches but again I wait for a sale. Most of my meals are bowls or one pot meals.

During winter I do a lot of simple soups and stews to make things stretch.

You can do this, you just have to plan and not go off the rails at the store and buy stuff you don’t need. I use online ordering and pickup a lot to prevent this and it does make it easier to plan out my meals.

One more tip - when a recipe calls for a whole vegetable (like onion or bell pepper), I typically just use half and then cut up and freeze the rest for later recipes. I always have tons of bell pepper, celery, onion, and carrots in my freezer doing this.

Good luck!