“We live in a culture with a lot of entitlement,” Steph Jenkins said during this interview. That’s not a word in her family’s vocabulary, because they’re all about boundaries, budgets, and priorities.
When food prices rise, she doesn’t complain about how much she’s spending, she makes a conscious decision whether she’ll increase her grocery budget or not (spoiler: she didn’t) and then adjust spending or from-scratch cooking choices accordingly.
This girl can make anything work, and it’s inspiring to hear her story!
I’m so honored to introduce you to my dear friend “The Cheapskate Cook,” and I know you’ll learn a lot and be encouraged by her stories of both how to create and keep to a grocery budget and the process of teaching her boys to cook and become more independent with life choices.
We get into
- Organic vs. gluten-free vs. inflation
- How it feels to watch our kids fail (and why we let them)
- What it means to be an adult
- The summer experiment she did with her older kids that they’re looking forward to repeating
- Why our choices are important!
Listen for the gems of wisdom from this intentional mama who has GOALS for her family that she’s not going to let go of, no matter what life throws at her!
Can’t see the video? Watch Grocery Budgeting for Kids here on YouTube!
No time for the video? Here are the notes!
Teaching Kids to Grocery Budget
- 0:32: Stephani Jenkins is a contributing writer for me at Kitchen Stewardship and blogs about real food and budgeting as the Cheapskate Cook. Here’s the list I mentioned of the 35 ingredients you need in your pantry to make healthy food on a budget.
- 1:23: Stephani shares how she grew up in relation to food and grocery budgeting. She went from a standard American diet as a young child to a whole-food, goat-raising teenager.
- 5:46: Once Stephani was married she had a $25-a-week grocery budget. They made it work without going into debt to buy food.
- 7:35: Some of Steph’s top tips are to be creative with what you find on sale, do the best with what you have and lean into the real food you can afford instead of compromising with cheap processed food.
Do you forget everything immediately? (My hand is raised …)
That’s why we created the one-page summaries of each podcast episode, in a simple Google Doc so there’s nothing to download.
Print them off and make yourself an actual handbook or just view online and search for what you want!
- 11:00: Steph has 3 boys now. She shares how things changed in their food budget when they started having kids.
- 12:59: Steph’s family has gluten and dairy sensitivities so she has experience working with food allergies on a budget. Buying processed allergy-free alternatives can be super expensive, but you don’t have to buy those if you have food allergies.
People have been feeding themselves for 1000s of years and doing just fine without convenience foods. – Stephani Jenkins
- 17:02: Stephani has taught her boys to cook to train them to be independent adults and to take some of the pressure off of her since they cook so much from scratch.
- 18:50: Let’s hear some fun stories! Stephani shares some of the bumps in the road as she’s taught her boys to cook. Here’s the post she mentioned about giving her older boys 2 weeks to plan, budget, and cook their own food.
- 22:36: It’s so important to allow our kids to experience for themselves why we eat the way we do. Steph’s son experienced during this experiment that eating frozen pizza every day gave him stomach aches. We don’t want to have so much control that our kids binge when they’re out of our control.
Wish you didn’t have to feel nervous when your kids ask to use knives?
- 26:03: What are some of the benefits of teaching our kids to cook? If you want some great motivation to get started listen in on this part!
- 29:18: We’re recording this in the spring of 2022 so food inflation is skyrocketing. Many of us can’t adjust our budgets right now, so we need to make our expectations fit our budget. Steph gives specific examples of how they’re changing their grocery shopping to account for inflation.
- 34:37: Having a budget is so important! It gives you peace, and allows you to set priorities and work towards goals. There are times to increase the budget and times to make your shopping fit in a tighter budget. You get to be the adult and decide where your money is going.
- 38:00: We leave you with a super practical step you can do today to get more control over your grocery budget. Search for your town and “average food budget” to get a general idea of what is realistic.
Resources We Mention for Grocery Budgeting
- Stephani Jenkins is a contributing writer for me at Kitchen Stewardship
- Here’s the post she mentioned about giving her older boys 2 weeks to plan, budget, and cook their own food
- Find Steph online
- Follow Steph on social media: YouTube, Instagram
- 1-Min Email list (learn how to save money and eat healthy in 1 min/week)
- The only 35 ingredients you need in your kitchen to save money and eat healthily
Empowering you to save money and eat healthily, Stephani Jenkins runs CheapskateCook.com, where she shares recipes, grocery hacks, tutorials, and daily motivation to guard your health and your budget. Follow her on YouTube and Instagram for real-life silliness and practical inspiration, and go here to get a list of the only 35 ingredients you need in your kitchen to save money and eat healthily.
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