About This Budget-Friendly Clean Eating Menu Plan
This menu is meant to be super inexpensive. It is survival-mode real food, for when you are dead broke but want to avoid processed food. This means the menu plan is heavier on good carbs, like potatoes. If this is too carb-heavy for you, adjust it to your needs and budget. Use cauliflower instead of potatoes, replace peanut butter sandwiches with egg salad lettuce wraps. Use it for inspiration, then tweak it to your needs.
Some of the meals are repetitive. This is because when you are in survival mode, you want to stretch your ingredients across as many meals as possible. If it’s too repetitive for you, switch the days around or make something else budget-friendly that night.
How to Use This Menu Plan
This plan assumes you have some basics, like spices, herbs, olive oil, baking powder, garlic powder, etc. When we were really broke, we replenished these slowly, buying only 1-2 of them per week as needed.
The highlighted portions of the menu plan are links to the suggested recipes for each meal, but feel free to make recipes that work for you!
We included a “Prepare” section on some of the days. These sections tell you what you can do that day to ensure you have good, budget-friendly food ready for tomorrow.
Do the Groceries Actually Cost $60?
For us, yes. The groceries for this meal plan cost about $60. This list uses average prices from where I live when I price shop for good deals (without going too crazy). Keep in mind that food prices vary from region to region. The cost of this grocery list in Australia or Canada will be vastly different from the Midwest United States. Additionally, your costs will be different if you are a family of 4 with 2 teenagers or a family of 4 with 2 toddlers.
For more context, we are a family of 5 big eaters and we comfortably fed ourselves real food (including some organics!) for $80/week during our #RealFoodCheap Challenge.
Download the Budget-Friendly Clean Eating Menu Plan Here!
Need More Ways to Save Money & Eat Healthy?
If you love menu plans, check out our 4-Week Budget-Friendly Menu Plan!