In a country where the weekly grocery bill often feels like a second rent payment, one Christchurch family is doing the unthinkable: feeding two adults and two children for under $100 a week — consistently.
No coupon hoarding. No skipping meals. Just strategy, discipline, and a very local approach to food.
And as food prices climb across Aotearoa, more people are paying attention.
The secret? Planning, bulk buying — and no waste
The family, who live in Linwood, started tightening their food budget in early 2023 after back-to-back interest rate hikes made their mortgage repayments nearly double.
“We didn’t want to sacrifice quality or health, so we just got serious about planning,” says Emma, the mother of two school-aged kids.
Here’s how they make it work:
- Meal plan every Sunday night for the full week
- Shop once a week only — no mid-week top-ups
- Base meals around what’s on special at Pak’nSave or FreshChoice
- Cook every dinner from scratch, with planned leftovers
- Buy bulk: oats, rice, frozen veg, and canned tomatoes are non-negotiables
- Grow basics at home: silverbeet, herbs, spring onions and kūmara
- No junk food, no soft drinks, no packaged snacks
Their weekly breakdown looks like this:
- Fresh veg (carrots, cabbage, potatoes, apples): $25
- Pantry staples (rice, flour, oats, lentils, pasta): $20
- Protein (mince, chicken frames, tinned tuna, eggs): $30
- Milk, cheese, butter, yoghurt: $15
- Extras (spices, sauces, occasional treat): $10
Total: $100 or less — every week.
Real meals, not “budget hacks”
They’re not eating instant noodles or skipping nutrition. In fact, their weekly meals include:
- Homemade veggie curry with rice
- Spaghetti with lentil bolognese
- Fried rice with egg and seasonal greens
- Pumpkin soup with homemade bread
- Egg and veggie frittata
- Minced beef tacos using homemade tortillas
- Oats with banana and peanut butter for breakfast
“It’s not fancy. But it’s filling, healthy and affordable,” says Emma. “The kids don’t complain. They don’t know anything else.”
What they’ve given up — and what they’ve gained
They’ve stopped buying:
- Packaged snacks
- Bottled drinks
- Pre-made sauces
- Takeaways (they now make their own “fakeaway” nights)
What they’ve gained? Less waste, more time together, and no stress at the checkout.
Emma tracks everything in a spreadsheet. Any savings at the end of the month go toward school shoes, power bills — or occasionally, a café breakfast as a treat.
Could more Kiwis do it?
Not everyone has a garden. Not everyone has the time. But Emma says it’s not about perfection — it’s about starting small.
“If you stop buying food you end up throwing out, you’re halfway there already,” she says. “Budgeting is like muscle memory — it gets easier.”
In a country where inflation isn’t slowing down anytime soon, this Christchurch family’s $100 food plan isn’t just impressive.
It might be a glimpse of the future.
I cannot work out how to get 28 breakfasts 28 lunches and 28 dinners from these ingredients at this price.
And what about school and work lunches?? ‘pink tax: monthly costs for mum? And this is not at all ringing true considering a pound of butter is now $10 and 2 litres of milk $5, I believe a kg of cheese has hit the $20 mark too… (We are vegan so we don’t have those costs but we do have food allergies, serious ones (gluten free, sulphites,msg,dairy ) we are a family of one adult and one young person in Christchurch our food budget is $50 and it’s scary hard! But we only use supermarkets if we have to. Otherwise we use little Indian and Asian food shops and our local dairy who sells fresh fruit and veg for pennies so to speak, it’d be good to hear of families with food allergies managing and thriving on a tiny budget like ours ..
That’s amazing, makes me realize I need to be a lot more organized. However there’s no way you’re getting milk, cheese, butter and yoghurt for $15. When butter alone is $10… Maybe $9 if on special,
Absolutely agree. Maybe 1x milk and 1x Yoghurt every fortnight but it would run out! Cheese is so expensive too. That would have to be the extra treat
I agree with Vanessa the family may as well become vegans totally ridiculous what about bathroom necessities laundry products think again!!!!!
Oh yes and bathroom consumables
How are they getting yoghurt, butter and cheese and milk for the family for $15? A block of ko-name cheese is more than $10, the cheapest butter is $9.
Milk cheese butter yogurt for a family of four for $15 is impossible.
The price of butter alone is close to $10 at the moment.
A $100 fantasy shopping list for a family of four, ridiculous!!!
For the disbelievers I’m guessing they make the cheese and butter and probably some of the other stuff too last for the full month ( maybe longer for cheese ) and then average out.
They got stuck, didn’t make headlines whinging about it, made a plan and got on with it. We’ll done! I’m off to try a meal plan 😋
No school lunch boxes and no one from this family needs to have lunch at work? No junk food but how about bags of chips? The price you listed does not work even in pack n save, especially the meat, I guess this is only a story to put in but nothing is true, maybe the writer needs to go to supermarkets and see how much the meat really is.
There’s no way a family of four is getting enough daily calories out of the amount of food listed. And they shouldn’t have to live off $100 a week either. What happens when the prices rise again? How much can you physically cut back before it starts affecting your health and wellbeing?