By Meleah Collier
Cooperative Extension
Organizing your family’s schedule, activities and budget every week can be a daunting task. When it comes to planning for your food budget, it is important to find ways to maximize it. Even if you already receive benefits such as SNAP/FNS (formerly known as food stamps), saving money can be a challenge.
Today, we are going to share some money saving tips for your child’s school lunches.
We have adapted the Take Charge America list of tips below to help you plan and prepare school lunches that are both nutritious for the children and beneficial for your bank account. You can also find these and more tips on budget saving at the More In My Basket website (morefood.org).
Reusable Lunch Bags
Instead of constantly spending money to replace brown paper bags or plastic zipper bags, invest on reusable lunch bags that your family can use multiple times in different situations, including school. If you replace disposable sandwich bags with re-usable food containers, you can take this item off your grocery list. This will help you save long term, and it helps you avoid too much waste.
Involve the Children on Planning
Asking your kids what they would prefer to eat can go a long way in both planning their lunches and teaching them about the decision-making process. For older kids, this can also become a good introduction to budgeting. Allow them to choose food items they enjoy within reason, making sure their lunch is still nutritious.
Buy in Bulk
Spending a little bit more upfront can reduce the cost per serving. Bulk purchases can help your SNAP benefits go further and reduce how much of your own money you will need to spend. Family size or larger portions of products such as trail mix, dried fruits, yogurt, or applesauce will cover more lunches. Just be sure that you can use the quantity before it becomes stale.
Leftovers
When cooking meals for your family, a good strategy is to prepare enough to create lunches the leftovers for the next day or two. Keep in mind, however, that there might not be a way to heat up leftovers in school, so focus on leftovers that can be served both cold and hot such as pasta or chicken dishes. A cooked whole chicken can be deboned and used for chicken salads, sandwiches, or pasta dishes.
Smaller Portions
Keeping track of your child’s food habits at home can also help you when preparing their lunch. If they only eat half a sandwich at home, instead of sending them to school with a full sandwich, give them half and complete their lunchbox with a snack item to round out the meal. Start with smaller portions and increase as needed. Children are not likely to tell you they have been wasting their food.
Flexibility
If your budget allows, do price comparisons between how much you would spend every week when sending you children to school with packed lunchboxes versus how much it would cost them to buy lunch at school. Especially for parents who have more than one child attending school, you may not always have time to prepare lunches for all of them before they leave the house. Choosing a couple of days a week where your kids may be able to buy their lunch in school could help you with busy mornings.
Using SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) can also help your budget. For questions about SNAP or to receive application assistance, contact the More In My Basket staff on their website morefood.org or call toll free 1-855-240-1451 (for English) and 1-888-382-7105 (for Spanish).
Source: https://www.takechargeamerica.org/how-to-save-money-on-kids-school-lunches/
