How Families Maintain Nutritious Meals While Staying Above Inflation

Splitting Up What is Left to Keep Them Fed 

“Five hundred pesos nowadays feels like pocket change.”  

Nanay Merites is one of many families in Lipa who have felt the brunt of rising food prices due to inflation.  A budget of P500 isn’t enough for a day’s worth of food for her family anymore. 

She currently works at a boutique selling clothes through livestreams, while her husband drives delivery trucks since before the pandemic. Before that, Nanay Merites used to have a food stall where she sold breakfast. However, the food stall got destroyed by a previous storm since their area is vulnerable and prone to flooding and winds. She stopped her business after that but she still wanted to rebuild her stall and sell food again once she’s saved up enough money. 

With their current jobs as their main sources of income, not having anything to do or carry will be a restraint on their budget. Her husband’s job depends of having cargo for a trip to earn at the expense of only coming home. Nanay Merites’s job, on the other hand, only asks her to work twice a week.  

 Parts of Lipa like Nanay Merites's area are prone to flooding. She lost her food stall years ago to a typhoon, and she wishes to rebuild her stall and earn money from selling food again.

Since they are living with her sister-in-law's family, they split the bills for water, electricity and the wi-fi plan they acquired for their children’s online classes. The utility bills alone halve their average income for the month. With students returning to face-to-face classes, Nanay Merites has to worry again about her children’s baon, and sometimes she’d even borrow money just so she could send her kids to school. 

“Food has really become a problem because expenses increased from inflation and from the return to school.” She would usually buy fish and eggs and other food products they can afford, and budget them to last the day. Near her area, egg prices rose from P5 to P10. Hence, P500 isn’t enough to cover a day’s worth of food anymore. 

Moreover, in the early days of the pandemic, they didn’t have to worry about their children’s baon because they stayed at home. Whatever money they saved from it is added for their meals for the day. But when students are required to go back to face-to-face classes, that money was used for her children’s allowance for food and transportation. 

They have to further plan and budget for their meals. Every time her children would ask if they can eat something else due to lack of variety and nutrition in their meals, Nanay Merites would tell them “We will when we have the money.” Even so, she tells her children to not skimp out on food because it pays more to be sick than it is to eat regularly. 

Mixing and Matching with What Little Is Earned 

Providing food to the table takes both hard work and a little bit of creativity. Nanay Regina finds ways to keep variety and nutrition in their meals with what little they earn nowadays. 

Nanay Regina and her husband worked as tailors before. But around the 2000s, they had to stop as the textile industry in Lipa declined due to the changing nature of the market. People preferred shopping online over going to the tailors and weavers for clothes. Thrift shops (ukay-ukay) and tailor shops have also dwindled as foreign imports competed with the local industry. 

 The textile industry has been on the low in Lipa, forcing many tailors and seamstresses to take up different jobs. 

Her husband has already been working as a tricycle driver for six years as of writing, mostly driving kids to school, though he also ferries passengers at night when he’s physically in better conditions with Nanay Regina sometimes accompanying him. He still does tailoring work at the side, though most of his earnings come from driving the tricycle. He would ride from 5PM to 10PM around Lipa when he’s not ferrying children to school. 

Unlike her husband, Nanay Regina stopped being a tailor and worked as a clothes vendor at the local market, particularly children’s clothes and school uniforms. Her job is an on-call one, in which she will only be called depending on how many people are at the market and buying clothes. Otherwise, she would work twice a week on weekends there. 

Sometimes, the rest of the family pitches in. Though there are not much expenses for sending their children to school due to having a hybrid setup, they still need to pay for utility. Two of Nanay Regina’s children are helping her alleviate the family’s financial burden through part-time work, though one of them is returning to school this coming school year. 

Like most people, their family faces difficulties in buying sufficient food for their table amidst their water and electricity bills, which have also risen along with food prices. Sometimes, prices remain the same but there is less to buy. For instance, okra’s prices remain the same but there is less okra in the bundle than before.  

To save money while still providing food, they turned to alternatives such as buying pre-cracked eggs in plastic bags instead of buying individual eggs. When she needs vegetables, she would ask her neighbors if she could pick some from their gardens. For meat, buying meat dishes from carinderias prove to be cheaper than buying raw meat from the market. She only gets to cook full-on dishes like adobo when prices go down a bit. Given the situation, Nanay Regina still makes sure that her family gets a somewhat nutritious meal with what they have. 

As beneficiaries of SOS’s Family Strengthening Program, both Nanay Merites and Nanay Regina receive financial and educational support for the family. In a time where prices are rising significantly, the support they received has helped them save money and pay for their daily expenses.