Top Money-Saving Tips of 2009
Check out Good Morning America Food Editor Sarah Moulton’s Best Cookbooks of 2009 (video!) Notice a certain orange-covered book on that list? To celebrate, I’m giving away 5 copies of Family Feasts for $75 a Week. To enter, comment and share a money saving tip of your own.
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You know the drill. You walk into the grocery store with a long list and a finite budget. The last thing you want to do is spend two weeks’ worth of grocery money on one week of food. But prices these days make it ever more challenging to stay within a budget. What’s a smart shopper to do?
1. Make a list and check it twice
Lists are tremendous money savers. Begin by thinking in terms of meals. Before I head to the store, I scribble out ideas for two weeks of dinners. Half the meals are family favorites: cheesy chicken enchiladas, creamy potato soup, and pasta carbonera are regulars. I then thumb through cookbooks and fill the rest of the two weeks with new and interesting-sounding recipes.
Once I’ve decided what we’ll be eating for the next couple weeks, next I write down the ingredients that I lack for those recipes. I skim recipes, check the pantry, dig through the freezer, and check my cupboards, making sure that everything I’ll need is either in my kitchen or on my grocery list. Once I have all the dinner ingredients written down, I add the items we typically use for breakfast and lunch, as well as goodies to make baking possible.
2. Go to the store less often
When you run out of something, write it on your grocery list. But don’t race to the store the instant your list gets an item or two on it. Every trip to the store is a temptation to impulse-buy. So I challenge myself to go just a day or two longer between shopping trips. We live 20 minutes from the store. The other day when I didn’t want to run to the store just for hamburger buns, I made my own fresh homemade rolls.
3. Expand the list of things you can make yourself
Did you know that you can easily make your own granola? Homemade white sauce takes 5 minutes to make and costs a fraction of a can of cream soup. Homemade salad dressing is equally fast and will save you a cool $2. Not bad for a 5 minute time investment. Even better if it saves you a trip to the store where you would potentially spend much more on impulse buys. Learning to make just one item per week will consistently give you more money in your pocket. Remember, it’s not only this week’s new recipe that will save you money. Gradually learning to make a variety of things for yourself will make your savings snowball.
4. Stock up when prices hit rock bottom
And I mean REALLY stock up. In October I bought enough ground beef on sale to last til February, which effectively extended that October sale for months, for me anyway. This month I put lots of $1.50/lb butter in the freezer, enough to make baking more affordable all winter for us.
5. Don’t be afraid to try new recipes
To earn a repeat appearance in my kitchen, a recipe needs to be tasty, easy to cook, and have ingredients that are affordable and easy to find. Don’t overlook ethnic food. I’ve found Chinese, Mexican and Ethiopian food to be both affordable and delicious. This West African Peanut Chicken is a good example. And here’s another bonus: ethnic grocery stores often have great prices on things like spices, sesame oil, coconut milk, and specialty pasta.
6. Remember WHY you want to save money
I developed my money-saving strategies so that I could stay home with my kids. You may be dreaming of finding enough extra cash to pay off a car or take a cruise or have another baby. Keeping your goals clearly in mind will make it easier to do the little daily things that will move you towards that goal!
My biggest money saving tip would be to shop at Aldi’s for all the items I can. I really save a lot of money when I shop there and the selection of items seems to get better all the time.
I too agree with this! Shopping Aldi is KEY! Many HEALTHY choices too! That surprised me. The produce isn’t refrigerated/watered, but I just buy the items that do well without too much of it….I’ve done some comparing and what I spend $100 on in a regular grocery store, I get at Aldi for about $60-$70…a HUGE SAVINGS!
Shopping Aldi!
I make a store-specific list for the items that are best to buy there. For example, there are items that I can get the best buy from amazon.com, Sams club, and Trader Joes, so I can refer to those lists when I can shop them. Also, I stretch my shopping trips to the grocery store out by sometimes going to the local convenience store for milk and bread in between trips. Costs for these items are comparable to the grocery store at our local store, and I’m not tempted to buy more than I need there.
My grocery store puts their weekly ad online now, so I can shop thru it to find specials when I’m making the list of what to get for meals. If I’ve come across coupons for things I would normally buy anyway, then I save them to see if the item happens to go on sale before the expiration period. If not, then I use the coupons alone, but at least half the time, I can pair it with a sale. I’m not a huge coupon user, because they are frequently for over-priced and over-processed items anyway, but sometimes I see good ones.
Plan some for leftovers – we love them around here – and freeze some for later when I don’t feel like cooking, am too tired, am running late, or whatever. This works better for those of us with smaller families.
I also find that many recipes, and our culture in general, seems to eat much larger meat portions than we need. Simply increasing the quantity of vegetables served lets me easily cut back the meat portion without even being that noticeable.
In that same vein, meals that use chunks of meat versus a meat “patty” (whether beef, chicken breast, pork chop, etc) make the meat stretch so much further. Depending on the meal, I can use about 1/3 of the amount of chicken by simply cubing it rather than serving chicken breasts. A whole chicken breast is usually too much, but a half of one looks so pathetic on a plate served to an adult. That same amount of meat cubed or shredded, however, means that each bite of food probably contains enough meat to taste it and so it seems like more when in fact it is less.
This isn’t something everyone can do, but we raise our own chickens and turkeys. This year I was organized enough to save feed receipts and weigh the chickens on the way to the freezer. It’s not rock-bottom in pricing, but we put a high value on eating critters who aren’t on antibiotics and have fresh air and sunshine. $1.25/lb isn’t too bad for that.
I haven’t been able to do this yet but a friend has a book that lists all the items they normally purchase then she tracks when the item goes on sale and for how much. By doing this she sees a pattern so she can anticipate a sale or figure out if the sale price is really the best price between the different stores. I think this would really be handy and hope to get the time to do it soon!
I try to only buy things that I have a coupon for and stock up if possible. I also watch the circular ads closely and make a list of what items are at that particular store, and combine them with coupons (both Sunday paper ones and printable).
I stock up on loss leaders
I cut our cable subscription
I dropped Netflix
I always plan a menu
I have rules – I do my best not to pay more than $1/# for produce – and onions and potatoes have to be substantially less – I love 4# of potatoes for $1 or 3# of onions for $1, for example. I will not pay $1.60 for oranges, they have to become less expensive before I will buy them. Often when they are $1.39/# at our grocer, they are 4#/$3 at Trader Joe’s, for example.
I try not to pay more than $1/# for chicken, or more than $2/# for meat. This means we seldom have roasts and the like, but we enjoy pulled pork, and we can really stretch out a roast chicken to three or four meals – roast chicken meal 1, cut up chicken mixed with salsa & peanut butter for african peanut chicken meal 2, bits of chicken into fried rice meal 3 and sometimes 4, depending on how large the chicken is and how hungry my husband has been that week (there are two of us, so that works). We got a black forest ham and a (Norbest!!) turkey for the price of the ham, recently at our grocer, which beat even Costco prices for the two.
I make my own yogurt and granola, and when I have time, my own bread. The new no-knead recipes make this much easier.
I make a fancy oatmeal – 1/2 c. stone cut oats, 2 scoops TVP, 2 scoops flax meal, raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger, salt, and 3 c water. Micro for 20 min at .8 power. This is better than the fanciest $5/bowl restaurant oatmeal you will ever taste. My husband, who used to complain bitterly about oatmeal, looks forward to it. On weekends, I make a baked Amish oatmeal – yum, and inexpensive.
Bulk spices, especially if purchased at warehouse stores, such as Winco or Cub Foods, are an incredible savings. Asian stores have fabulous savings on more esoteric items and some more commonplace items, as well – szechuan peppercorns, cloves, sesame seeds, star anise, pepper, and coriander seed are all significantly less than even in the bulk bins. The asian spices make frugal foods far more interesting, and you are more likely to try them again.
There is a book by Doris Jantzen Longacre called “More With Less”, with a focus on ethnic specialties from around the world. Some of my favorite recipes are from this book. She has an absolutely amazing lentil soup, for example, and so exotic tasting, it is as good as any pricey deli soup you are likely to encounter, and an entire batch will cost you less to make than the cup you purchase at the pricey deli! I would love to have that soup on tap every week,I like it that much. Well, gotta go, those tips may help someone – I hope!
So many people have already offered my tips, but here’s two.
We grow a lot of our own veggies and then can and freeze for the rest of the year. We also have several fruit trees, two raspberry patches, and several grape vines for fruit for jams and the freezer. Next year, my sister and I have plans to grow certain vegetables together, like potatoes and squash, at the back of her large yard. I don’t have the room for these in my yard, and they don’t need much attention during the growing season.
When I plan my meals, I try to focus on the produce first. We’re working towards a more produce-dominated diet, rather than thinking about the meat. With this strategy, our family of seven has been able to stretch our meat deals for much longer than I anticipated.
Many good ideas here, clearly to succeed you must learn to plan as well as find ways to stay creative…
We are lucky to have a big coldroom/pantry, and 2 freezers, which let us stock up and store garden veg as well as great seasonal buys (just stocked up on pork, turkey, and butter, for example).
My kids drink water if they are thirsty during the day but milk goes fast here, just with meals and the occasional hot chocolate etc. Because I live 45 min. from the nearest grocery store, during the cold months I can keep an extra 6 gallons of milk in a cooler in the coldest part of the unheated section of the cellar. I could never make it two weeks between trips to the store without that extra milk, since milk at a local convenience store isn’t an option for me.
My tip has to do with avoiding impulse buys and generally keeping everyone happy while keeping to a tight budget. For our family it is crucial that we PLAN TREATS and special meal events. We try to celebrate often, not through buying something but by taking a little bit of effort to make a shared moment special. Sometimes this is as simple as making french toast in funny shapes or sharing a story over a meal about who in the family first made a recipe, or baking gingerbread cookies (our go-to inexpensive treat for winter), having a meal from another culture while we listen to music from that region or on a night while we plan to play a game that originated there, etc.
I keep an eye on sales for items that are a special treat for one or more members of the family. For example, my husband LOVES dark chocolate and certain kinds of nuts, I was able to pick up deeply discounted top quality ones yesterday (after-holiday markdown) while on my way to run an errand , I’ll keep a few in the kitchen pantry but will store most in a tin in the cold room for occasional treats all winter long.
One more tip – if you can, grow fresh herbs or edible greens in a sunny window or under lights if you live in a cold-winter region…having a little bit of green to snip and stir into a recipe makes all the difference in the world.
Make it from scratch-it’s not that hard. This year I’ve learned to make my own vanilla, carmel sauce, bread (5 minute a day recipe) and tortillas. I can’t wait to see what next year will be like!
I shop with a list and when possible bring ads…some stores match prices and I can save money on gas that way too
I have lately been following store sales and combining loss leaders with coupons, it has saved us a LOT of money! Its almost like a part time job. Don’t go crazy though, ONLY buy what is free/almost free and what you really need. If you have double coupons locally at stores you can really strike gold but even if you don’t, like me, you can make out nicely!!
I too am an adoptive Mom of 8 children. They are not all home at the same time so there are days that I have lots of leftovers and days that I am scrambling to add to the meal for the last minute stragglers who come over. Having a well stocked pantry is essential. Our pantry is in the basement, in the front hall, coat closet, in the kitchen and even under the bed. By asking friends and family to save their coupon circulars, and matching the coupons to the loss leaders in my store, which doubles coupons under 99 cents, I can do some pretty good stockpiling. I rarely buy anything that is not at least a 50% savings over the reg. price.
Last week the store had ground beef on sale for $1.79 lb. That’s the lowest I have seen it in years. The day I went they were out so I got a rain check and will buy about 30 lbs. Most of that I will brown and bag for the freezer, making it easy to grab a pound at a time when I want to make a casserole or meatsauce. I don’t even thaw it out.
After Thanksgiving turkeys were on sale for $.39 a lb. I bought six of them and spent that Sunday cooking all of them, boning them, bagging them in 1-2 pound portions and freezing the bags. I have enough turkey to last us quite a while for fajitas, tacos, hot turkey sandwiches, whatever.
We really had to cut costs this year, so I cook 90% from scratch
and try to make my menu around loss leaders and deals at the
grocery store, I like to use coupons when I can.
I watch the sales in the store flyers & use coupons to match the sales so I can get the cheapest price. I shop in one store most of the time & try to ad match with so I am not running all over the place picking up items & wasting time.