I am re-running the information from last year’s Food Stamp Challenge. This social experiment helps to shine a light on the issues of food insecurity, which plague our land of plenty. I look forward to exploring the different issues and roadblocks to feeding my family of four for under $404 during the month of July. (Keep in mind I have two teenage boys, which essentially means I’ll be feeding four adults!)
I welcome you to join in the challenge, whether you eat below these numbers or above.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without”
Welcome to the July Food Stamp Challenge, where Non-Consumer Advocate readers attempt to feed their families on the amount they would receive if they were food stamp recipients. Some of us already meet this description, while others do not have to budget for our family’s food needs. I am suggesting that participants donate any money saved to their local food bank.
As the July 1st Food Stamp Challenge start date draws near, it’s time to pin down the specifics.
How much can I spend?
The SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) website states that “The average monthly benefit was about $101 per person” which is what I’m going to work with. This number appears to be based on 2008 numbers, but is the most recent info on the website. This number simplifies the challenge, although your state, (Alaska and Hawaii) may have a higher allotment.
The “Maximum Monthly Allottment” is much higher, and is actually significantly more than my family spends per month, including eating out! Here is a chart from the SNAP website:
| People in Household | Maximum Monthly Allotment |
|---|---|
| 1 | $ 200 |
| 2 | $ 367 |
| 3 | $ 526 |
| 4 | $ 668 |
| 5 | $ 793 |
| 6 | $ 952 |
| 7 | $ 1,052 |
| 8 | $ 1,202 |
| Each additional person… | $150 |
What is included within that amount?
Foods for the households to eat, (bread, cheese, meat, cereals,etc.) Seeds or plants who produce food for the household to eat.
What is NOT included in the amount?
Paper products, alcohol, pet food, vitamins and medicine, soaps, household supplies, hot food, food to be eaten in the store.
Can you glean produce from public areas or do some urban foraging as part of sticking to the food bank budget?
Absolutely. I encourage participants to get creative about food rescue and alternate means of food “shopping.”
Do I have to donate to my local food bank in order to participate?
No. Although I am going to donate any money saved beyond my normal monthly food budget, you can choose to participate in any way that feels right to you. (Note — I spent $350 for the month of June last year and donated $100 to The Oregon Food Bank.)
What if I Qualify for WIC? (Women, Infants and Children)
The Oregon WIC website states that “WIC vouchers provide an average of $44 in nutritious foods to each participant monthly.” Those served by WIC are pregnant women, breastfeeding women whose babies are 12 months or less, non-breastfeeding women whose babies are six months or younger, and infants and children under five years old.
You can add this amount to your monthly food stamp challenge if you meet these criteria.
Confused yet?
$101 per person for the month is the amount that I set. Although it is only the “average amount” a food stamp recipient receives, it feels right to me.
For my family, this adds up to $404 for the month of July.
I am going to withdraw this amount from my checking account and only buy food from this stash o’ cash. I will give some to my husband to simplify things for him. (The poor guy is awfully worried that he’ll be uncomfortably deprived!)
The SNAP website has a helpful frequently asked questions page if you’re craving more information.
Please e-mail me at nonconsumer@comcast.net with any additional questions concerning the July Food Stamp Challenge.
Now, let’s plan some delicious, healthy and inexpensive meals for July!
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without”
{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
My niece is staying with us this summer so our total will be 5 this year. So I guess, $505 per month. That is well under what I believe we spend for a month of food. But, I am going to really track in July to see if I am really spending that. Should be interesting!
I look forward to giving this a try as well, though there are only two people in our household. Thanks to your blog and the Frugal Girl I’ve been motivated to keep a better eye on food waste recently which I hope will help with this challenge. I think I am going to follow your lead, Katy, and take out my budget in cash. I have a bad habit of stopping at the grocery store for “just one more thing” which is not conducive to success with this challenge, nor even with my normal budget =)
Thanks for setting this challenge again this year!
I normally spend about $75.00 a week for 2 adults, so I guess I fit the Food Stamp qualification! I buy only fresh ingredients or basic staples and often the college girl, who is also a server at an upscale restaurant, says what we eat belongs on a menu, it is so tasty. Cutting out processed food keeps the budget down and the food much healthier.
Feeding teenage boys, though, is an entirely different matter! Good luck!
Me and my fiance currently spend $30/week on food for the two of us, which is $120 a month. Then we spend about $80/mo for household items, including pet supplies. So it looks like we’re already within the food stamp budget!
It might be nice to see, rather than cutting out more $$, if we could use any of that for better quality items or different things. We shall see! Good luck in July 🙂
Wow, I find this really interesting, because if my family of 2 really “only” gets $367 a month in food stamps then we are actually averaging below that. This last month we spent $336 and our budget was $300. That said, I think I will go with the $101 per person because that’s much more of a challenge for me. That would be $202 total, which is almost $100 less than we spend now. I’m a little nervous, but I think we can do it! Although I do wish I hadn’t spent the last month cooking out of our freezer so much 😛
My family receives food stamps…$230 per month for 2 people, and we never spend the full amount. Even staying beneath $202 shouldn’t pose a problem for us. So I may keep track in July to see just how low we can go without compromising the quality of our diets.
i think this is such a great challenge for people of all income and awareness levels. i’m excited to participate this year. it should be pretty eye-opening. i’ve got the husband on board, the budget ready and the initial blog post written. i’m ready to roll!
I may as well give this a try since I had already budgeted only $200 for just food for July, it’s just the Hubs and myself. We have a fair amount of meat in the freezer that we were planning to use up, so how does that work for the challenge? Garden produce? I’d like to think we would still have a garden even if getting assistence.
One challenge for us is we have a big gathering in July, there is a music concert within walking distance to our house and we always have a big group here for the weekend. Although everyone brings food and snacks there is still extras we always end up getting. We deep fry turkeys, but those are aleady in the freezer!!
Although I’m not going to officially participate because I have a stocked freezer and pantry that could feed a small city for a month, I do want to use the $101 guideline in the future.
I buy directly from farmers, try not to source meat from CAFO operations, etc., so my bill is generally higher than folks willing to buy from such sources. But I have found that I still purchase way too many convenience food items, which is the most expensive part of my food bill. I wonder how much smaller it would be if I cut out that crap? Thanks for the inspiration, yet again!
Sounds great!
I’m in! My current budget is about $200 per month anyway, which includes pet food, but lately I’ve been going over. So, I’m ready to fine tune this!
I have 2 in my household so $202 for the month…I think one of the keys is to use only cash to shop (for me anyway) Thanks for doing this again!
Last year, we got food stamps and I received $389 per month for our family of four. I’m using that amount again.
This month, we’re going to a family wedding out of state and taking Amtrak home, which adds an additional challenge of preparing meals in a hotel room to eat on the train. I’ll let you know how that goes; we’re staying on the challenge while we’re gone, with a very small dining out budget for the trip since SNAP can’t be used for hot food/dining out.
Interesting challenge, do you have to get food stamps or WIC to participate? I am participating in a no spend challenge too, they sort of go hand in hand.
I went for several months last summer and fall spending about $240 a month on ALL my groceries for me and two young adult sons. This included paper products, toiletries, and dog food. I had a separate bank account in which I had automatically deposited $200 from my check every 2 weeks – $60 of that was for a week’s worth of groceries, and $40 was for gas (I drive 54 miles a day to and from work). It was really tight, but I did major coupon saving. However, now we are eating much better food, the food costs (and gas costs) are UP, so I’m spending more and dipping into my “bills” checking account. This will challenge me to see how I’m spending – although I doubt we will ever go back to cheap food, since two of us can’t eat gluten and the third won’t eat anything with corn syrup. I do have a weight-lifter in the family, and he eats a LOT. Fortunately they contribute some to the budget. Thanks for the challenge!
I help a blind man with his bills, etc.
He gets food stamps. He gets $16.00 a month. I know someone else that is single and she gets $15.00 a month. These people have to go to a local food pantry to get food to make it through the month.
What an insult, what can you do with that amount. Believe me he does not get that much on SSDI and 1/3 of it goes to his rent (he’s in subsidized housing.
He would be thrilled to have the amount you mentioned for one person.
Maybe someone needs to look into this for him and make sure it is correct. Does he have any other investments that are being taken into account?
If he will share with you his paper work from his case manager maybe you both can go see him/her.
I cringe when I see people in need getting so little. We are a family of 5 and receive less than $500 a month from FS. We get WIC for my 3 year old. Believe me that helps! I am greatful for both programs.
I was wondering if your July budget included foods you already have on hand? Someone starting from zero level would struggle, I think, but perhaps that is another topic altogether.
We watch our food budget carefully here, too. This year we’ve averaged £108 per month for two adults. Currently exchange rates put this at $174 per month, or $87 a month per person. Cooking from scratch is the main tool, followed by limiting proteins (we eat everything, but one at a time) and serving sizes, followed by growing some fruit and veg in the garden. We’re not expert gardeners by any means, but some foods are dead simple to grow, even in NE England.
I’ll look forward to what I can learn from your project!
There are 2 of us living on social security we get $16 in food stamps
This is a great challenge and very informative. My husband and I joined a CSA, which is $500 for 24 weeks. We spend much less for two people than what is shown in your chart (never more than $40 a week, usually we spend on average around $30, some weeks even less). I would add that we have a 95% organic diet to boot and I do not clip coupons or shop sales items (they rarely have organic food on sale). So my friends you can eat very well, and not spend alot of money :).
Katy, I am in for the fs challenge and am recording it on my blog. It seems there was a place to sign up or something. Where is it?
Hello,
I want to join the challenge. I do not receive assistance, but am really needing to save some money. I am challenging myself to try this for a month, maybe even the rest of the year.
The food stamps for my family of 6 just got upped from $75 a month to $171 a month (plus we get WIC), so I’d LOVE to be “challenged” by having $404 a month (or actually according to your “averages” we would be getting $606 a month, wouldn’t we?). Holy cow, we’d eat like KINGS! I can’t conceive of having that much money to spend on food! Unfortunately, no one is going to hand us MORE money to participate in your “challenge”, so I’ll continue to feed us on our $171 a month plus WIC that we’ve been blessed with.
For the people trying out this challenge, to be fair as a challenge, you can’t use food stamps to join a CSA, buy directly from farmers, or at most farmers markets. You can buy from certain retailers and that’s it. Something to factor in to make it more realistic.
Do you spend beyond the $171?
Katy
Very very rarely…and then only to eat out (fast food *blech*, nothing fancy). This is the first month we’ve gotten that much. We were just getting $75 a month (plus WIC) and only buying about $50 or less in additional groceries a month, so I imagine this will be plenty for us!
Oh, to clarify, we actually get WIC for two kids. However, if we weren’t getting it free, I wouldn’t be buying a lot of the crap (like cereal and peanut butter full of sugar) that they give us on there.
Be sure to check with your farmer’s markets, though. I know of two in my area that take food stamps. You “buy” say, $20 worth of tokens – they charge this on your EBT card as a food purchase somehow. You take the tokens, walk around the farmers market and buy your produce. Later, the vendors turn in their tokens are money apparently. Also, we have a food co-op store here that takes food stamps, too.
Yes, that would be great to get 200$ in F.S. I believe the system is set up to really helps those with children. The ones, like myself, that can’t work because of disabilities fall thru the cracks. I wonder what they think we do? Ha, we don’t eat. So sad.
I have $415 for a family of 10. That’s what we have, so that’s what we get.
I have two children a toddler and an infant and i coupon and am on food stamps. One child has a milk allergy so she has to have most meals separate and then the infant is on formula. We usually have plenty of food in the cupboard. This month we are going on a juice fast and are trying to see if buying ourselves only fruits and vegetable will work with food stamps. Also buying the toddler food and formula.
We are students so we only get food stamps certain parts of the year.
Please remember some maybe homeless and their purchase my reflect this. (bottled water).
many states the deposit on bottles is covered on fs and when the emptys are returned for cash this can be used to purchase tp and soap.
Some items maybe for a special occasion (anniv. or Birthday) Sometimes fs help you celebrate when other wise there would be no celebration.
Yes there is a weight lifted off your shoulders when you are able to buy more than top ramen peanut butter and eggs as your every day go to food because this is all you can afford.
Just a reminder in most cases you really do not know the whole story.
we are a family of 6 and get $540 a month in FS. I must say doing this challenge in July makes it easier, because fresh produce is avaliable at a cheaper price. I would challenge you all to do it again in January when produce is at its highest.
You can live off the amount they give you if you are willing to eat proccesed crud.
Great post. Like you I already come in below the average for my monthly spending on groceries (but love your idea of donating the rest). A little late to the game but looking forward to following!
I’m finding this kind of late, but I was really interested to see what it is all about. I have a household of 2 people, and our budget is generally $210 (so only $8 shy of the FS amount!).
I do agree with others that the amount varies and can in fact be very minimal. That often depends on other factors though, such as income. My cousin (single person) received $100 a month in FS for awhile, while my disabled Aunt (single and on disability) receives only $40.
I look forward to reading more about the challenge and how others are handling their budgets!