This $200 also includes all toiletries, cosmetics, cleaning supplies, diapers/wipes, paper supplies and any sort of item like that.
1. Choose to do Without
While choosing to do without is not really popular or even always a fun, it honestly is probably one of the biggest ways we save.
Some of the ways we do without are:
- Vince takes sandwiches in his lunch almost every day to work. But he has insisted that he doesn’t need both meat and cheese so most days he just has a meat and lettuce sandwich. At first I felt bad but he really doesn’t mind and the savings of not buying all that cheese does make a difference.
- Speaking of cheese, we hardly ever eat cheese just by itself. I use it in cooking but we rarely have it just to eat as a side or snack. Do we not like cheese? No, actually we all love cheese! But it is something we’ve decided to consider a luxury around here to help keep our spending low.
- Orange juice is a splurge item that I get only when I can buy it for $0.99 or less. Again, we all love orange juice but it’s not something we need to have and we can easily eat fruit and get our recommended serving that way much cheaper.
- We don’t buy lots of snack foods. Talk about a fast way to jack your grocery spending up- this is one of them! We actually don’t eat many snacks and if we do they tend to be more things like raisins, nuts, fruit or homemade cookies and granola bars. I still buy chips and crackers sometimes if I can get them for a great price but they are not things that we always have on hand.
- We do several different things to save money on meat. But one of the big ways that we save is simply by not buying expensive cuts. In fact I have a maximum buy price of $2.00/lb. for meats (and actually for cheese too) which means that we don’t often eat things like bacon or steaks. But so far we haven’t suffered and I think we still have a great variety!
2. Don’t be Brand Snobs
When I began using coupons I started realizing that I could save a lot if I chose to be open minded about trying brands than I didn’t typically use. You don’t have to be very smart to figure out that if your usual brand of spaghetti sauce typically costs $0.99 on sale but you can get another brand for just $0.50 using a coupon that you are going to save a bundle! I’ll be honest, there are still a couple of products that I am a brand snob about but overall I purchase whatever I can get for the least amount of money.
3. Cook from Scratch
I grew up in a home where my mom cooked mostly from scratch so I was used to this. And fortunately I enjoy cooking and baking. But it was still convenient to buy pre-packaged things to save time. It didn’t take me long to realize that it also was often a quick way to blow money.
Yes, cooking from scratch might take a bit more time but with a bit of planning ahead I’ve learned that it can be relatively fast too. One of the things I do that helps save time is to cook up large quantities of ground beef and chicken and then put it in the freezer in smaller portions. That way whenever I need a pound of ground beef or 2 cups of chicken for a recipe, I’m saved the time of having to cook it up. I also often make double recipes of a dish and then freeze half of it. Making twice as much of something doesn’t take much longer at all and when I have an usually busy day it’s so handy to be able to just pull dinner out of my freezer. I also apply this same principle to baked things like bread, rolls, cookies and biscuits.
4. Have a Price List
This might seem a bit silly but it does really help. By keeping track of which stores have the lowest prices on certain items I have been able to save a lot. And it also helps me know when something is a good stock up price too. It’s something that takes a minimal amount of time and effort but does pay off.
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