The Economics of Feeding a Teenage Boy
January 18th, 2008 by Ana
Well, it started off with a joke after Gibble (GLBLguy) and I posted about teaching teenagers about money. I made the remark: “We forgot about the cost of FEEDING a teenage boy in those articles!” Folks, if y’all have a young boy in the house, you will NEED to become debt free before he hits the teenage years…just so you can afford to feed him! If you have more than one that will be teens at the same time, it becomes even more imperative.
My son is only 14, and already eats enough to feed a small village in an emerging market. No, I don’t think I am exaggerating here. He goes through a 2 pound bag of cereal every 4-5 days, plus a gallon of milk quicker than that unless we keep an eye on him. Let’s not forget that he can take down an entire regular sized box of macaroni and cheese in one sitting. Gibble says his 13 year old boy ate two double cheeseburgers by himself last night.
I saw my mom go through this with my younger brother. At his worst, my brother would go through one pound of peanut butter, one large jar of grape jelly, and THREE loaves of bread…PER WEEK! And that was just his “snacks” since he would also cook up two boxes of mac n cheese at a time for his dinner. The irony is, to this day my brother is rail-thin. My mother claims I was an eating machine from age 12 to 15, during my growth spurt, but that still didn’t prepare her for my brother’s eating years.
Hubby says he was the same way as a teenager. If it couldn’t run away from him fast enough…he ate it. His brother, two years younger, was also the same way, and my in-laws had two of these teenage bottomless eating machines in the house for more than three years. For the record, hubby can still take down an impressive amount of food for dinner!
One would think with me being a bit of a math nerd, I could provide numbers for this food phenomenom. But, I started a budget last year…after my son had already hit those dreaded teen years. I can’t say for sure feeding a teenager will increase your food budget by XX% because I wasn’t tracking expenses before my son hit that stage. But I can assure you, and Gibble can assure you, your pantry will take a hit when that cute little boy gets abducted by aliens and replaced by a pod person known as a teenager. It’s kind of like feeding an infant again: they want to eat about every two hours…but the volume of food to satisfy them is much larger.
Just yesterday, my son came home from school at 3:30 and raided the pantry for a snack. By 4:30 he was staring into the refrigerator looking for yet another snack. At 5:30 we had supper, and he of course sat down and ate a regular sized portion of that. Around 7:30 he was browsing the pantry shelves again…and this was a NORMAL evening!
As another example: Today for lunch the boy came home from his half-day of school, immediately poured himself a bowl of cereal, then half an hour later warmed up a generous portion of pasta bake which he ate while hubby and I fixed hot dogs and french fries for lunch. When hubby and I sat down to eat lunch about 10 minutes after son was done inhaling his lunch, my son came back to the table expecting some of the french fries! Be afraid…be VERY afraid!
Posted in family |
January 18th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I’m scared! Very scared!
I have 8 years to prepare for this……plenty of time to kill the debt. I’m sure college savings will be taking a hit though!
January 18th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I have 0 years and he’s eating me out of the house. He eats anything…even our fish are hiding
January 19th, 2008 at 6:16 am
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January 19th, 2008 at 8:20 am
I feel your pain. I have 3 teens, 2 boys and 1 girl. My 13yo son is eating us out of house and home. And it’s not only the cost of feeding him that hurts. He’s been in a growth spurt and I have to buy him new jeans about every 3-4 months. I think he’s grown 4 inches since August. It’s scary!
January 19th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Momala: I didn’t even get into that part! There was that whole incident at the beginning of last school year where he outgrew three pairs of shoes in six weeks…! I keep threateneing to put a brick on his head, but he counters with the fact most growing occurs while sleeping.
Gibble: If you’ve got a teen as well as a tiny eating in that house, no wonder the fish are hiding!
Lynnae: At least you have time to prepare LOL
January 20th, 2008 at 1:28 am
This is too funny. We don’t have kids yet, but I can picture this perfectly in my head. You’ve got several more years of this to go!
January 20th, 2008 at 9:40 am
[…] The Economics of Feeding a Teenage Boy. […]
January 20th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Teen boys should get jobs at smorgasbord restaurants where part of the compensation is free eats. That would help out the family budget a lot. Tell him, eat at work!!!
January 20th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
liz, he has at least one more year before he can get a work permit to work at Shoney’s…then I will send him down the road! Off to work! LOL Then my food budget will ease. But ages 13-15 are difficult.
January 20th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Oh God, what strange mentality this western world has. Why shouldn’t send our kids to work even earlier, i.e. when get 4 years old perhaps?
There is more in this life than trying to optimize things (only because nothing is enough for this government and spends like crazy…on behalf of whom?…us, the taxpayers who always try to save a bit from what they try to steal from us more and more). And I can tell you, I optimize lots of things. But there should be a limit above which the human decency, integrity and believe in fundamental values will vanish.
January 20th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
[…] The Economics of Feeding a Teenage Boy at DebtFREE-Revolution […]
January 21st, 2008 at 7:03 am
Thanks for the reminder - I have THREE boys - ages 11, 8 and 8. I am doomed!!!!
January 21st, 2008 at 8:16 am
I would be laughing my head off at this really funny post if not for the fact that I have a teenager running wild now in my house. Our boy just turned 14.
Another is lined up. Should mature into a full blown “teenager” next year, I think. (She is 13 now)
Any one has one way tickets to Nicaragua for sale?
January 21st, 2008 at 9:44 am
[…] … I have only one daughter. But I suspect some of you can relate to this post: The economics of feeding a teen-age boy, presented by DebtFree […]
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
LOL!!! I love your post. I have two teenagers and they do have pretty big appetites.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:58 pm
[…] One day, George’s mother asked him to go and count the eggs in the larder. Mother and father were going to the pictures that evening, so they were going to have boiled eggs and soldiers for an early tea. […]
January 25th, 2008 at 9:20 am
I have a 14 yo, a 12 yo, a nearly-10 yo, a 7yo and a nearly-5 yo, all boys. The 14yo is eating tons, but he’s apparently not eating enough!! He nearly passed out in a class this week, literally. The problem is that he eats breakfast at 7 am, and lunch isn’t until 12:30. They get detention if they eat at any time other than lunch. You cannot expect a 14yo boy to go 5 1/2 hours without eating!
FYI, we go through 7 gallons of milk a week, and 4-5 loaves of bread. (I consume no milk and no bread myself!) I am frightened to learn what those numbers will be in a couple of years.
February 26th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I have a 19, 17, 15 and a 5 year old. prepare your self now young parents for you will have 2 mortgage payments when your kids become teens. One for the house and one for the food. we have to hide snacks for my five year old because the teens eat all snacks with in 48 hours after arrival from the store. Hide the mixing bowls because they become the new cereal bowls. Try 6-8 boxes and 6-8 gallons of milk a wk. We had to put a stop to all the teen friends from eating here. Let me tell you about teen friends in the neighbor hood, they can smell when your coming home from the store. It’s like they are right there when you pull into the driveway. which I am sure my kids do the samething. Who’s mom went shopping today? hide the food!!!!!!
April 21st, 2008 at 6:28 am
I have one son, 15, he eats me out of house and home right before a growing spurt. But what is really bad, is if WE don’t have anything he likes, he goes out to his grandma’s mini apartment we have in the house and raids her food stash! AND he is a very active kid, so he is always playing baseball, riding horses, or running somewhere - which of course makes him even MORE hungry.
June 8th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
The comparisons to baby’s are so true, and they are growing at nearly the same rate, as the constant purchases of pants and shoes attest! (my brother who did not grow tall had so many new pairs of pants the year the other brother outgrew a pair a week from open of school to holidays. Mom would buy them too long, by the next weekend they were too short. I was away at college, he came up to my nose when I left, was 3 inches taller than me when I returned for Thanksgiving!)
it sounds as if part of the problem is that your teen son’s vegetarian habits mean he’s eating far too many ‘empty’ carbs and not enought filling carbs. I’ve seen this problem when college students go veg: it takes a while to learn there is more to it than just not eating meat! Whole grains and legumes would fill him fuller. And are way cheap. If milk is a major food item, he could substitute powdered milk, or rev. up the calories by adding powdered milk to liquid milk. Baked potatoes and oatmeal should be some of his best friends! (My Scots mother in law got through her boys teen years by insisting on big bowls of porridge for their breakfast, and on porridge being the only food they could snack on after supper–they each usually ate at least 1 bug bowl bowls before bedtime. Years later, when we were in a really tight budget while hubby was in grad school, he renewed this habit himself. Eats like a horse, the saying goes. Yeah.)
If he’s going to be veg, he’s going to have to expand his cooking skills beyond mac&cheese, humongous bowls of cereal and store brand spagetti rings. Perhaps you could help by going veg yourself for a while, or making more of the one veg night a week, and learning recipes together. Splitting the costs, of course!
June 8th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
’scuse me, they ate 1 BIG bowl of porridge, not a bug bowl.
Also, potatoe side dishes were usual and large, practically unlimited amounts.