Reader Question

 A reader wrote to me on Facebook and shared this with me;

"I'm looking for ways to stretch my food stamp money (we get $58.00 a month for 3). Any meal planning and couponing tips for that would be great!!!"

I  am not an expert with food stamps, however my ideas would be to use them on items that you cannot coupon for, ie meat and produce, because it can eat most of your grocery budget.

Try meal planning around whatever is on sale so if whole chickens are on sale one week, you eat chicken and fix other things with it, I will cook a whole chicken for us (we are also a family of 3) it makes dinner for 2 nights and lunch for 1 day!  I would use it as roasted chicken for night 1, lunch is chicken salad, and dinner is salad with chicken in it (I like Chinese chicken salad).  more information on meal planning can be found here and here.

You could also use your food stamps to stock up on what items are at their all time low as talked about in the post on Sale Cycles.

Also, I read recently that food stamps can be used to purchase seeds and or plants that produce food!  So if you are into gardening try to look into that option further here.

Please feel free to comment with other ideas that may be helpful also if you have an area you would like more information on please feel free to contact me via e-mail at Nicole.Riens@gmail.com or Facebook.