Eating (Pretty) Well on a Budget: Breakfast

I grew up almost always eating cereal for breakfast. My mom was pretty strict about sugar when we were growing up, so it was Cheerios or Corn Flakes or Shredded Wheat, but it was easy, relatively filling and something that we could get for ourselves. When Greg and I first got married, cereal was our staple breakfast. Occasionally we'd have bread for toast and the weekends was usually pancakes or waffles or the like. It didn't take that long for us to realize how expensive cereal actually is for breakfast compared to toast, oatmeal or eggs.

We've started making our own bread now that costs about 40 cents a loaf to make. A loaf of bread lasts us about a week and we usually have eggs with our toast so it's more filling and satisfying. We try and stock up on eggs when they're 99 cents for a dozen which ends up being about 12 cents an egg. If we have toast and eggs every morning, it costs less than $2 to feed us both every week.

Let's say a 21 ounce box of Cheerios has 21 cups of cereal in it (general internet consensus is that 1 oz=1 cup) and costs $3.64 for the box. That's about 17 cents per cup of cereal. To feel as full as I am after toast and eggs, I need at least a cup and a half of cereal. That's a little more than 25 cents a serving, not including the cost of the milk used, but I won't get that picky. So we'll go with 25 cents a serving. For two of us to eat that every morning, it would cost $3.50 a week. Over the course of a year, that ends up being a difference of $78 and we're not even factoring in the cost of milk used for the cereal.

Even if you don't want to make eggs every morning, you could have yogurt or milk to get some protein and it would still be cheaper than cereal. Other cheap breakfast ideas include oatmeal, smoothies (buy fresh fruit in season in bulk and freeze, or buy frozen fruit from Costco, and add spinach or kale to get a serving of veggies), pancakes or waffles made from scratch or a mix, or eggs and hash browns.