Tightening Your Belt: Shopping and Cooking

It's easy to save yourself a ton of money at the checkout stand, if you plan your meals and shop wisely. We in America, especially, have become programmed in our shopping and eating habits since the invention of mass media marketing. We have become spoiled by the fast and easy style of feeding our families, and have hardly noticed how it affects our bank accounts.

Some things you can do to get more for your money are:

Make a list, or two. I have a list for things we need on a regular basis: Milk, Bread, Eggs, Cheese, etc., and I'm sure you do too. Type up a list of the regular staples and print it out. Make another list for things you buy regularly, but not on every trip: Toilet paper, paper towels, laundry soap, dish soap, aluminum foil, spices, etc.

Plan a menu. Figure out what meals you plan on cooking for the upcoming week. Make a list of the ingredients you need for those meals. Check the freezer, fridge, and pantry to see what you already have plenty of. No sense in buying more hamburger if you already have a couple pounds in the freezer. By actually cooking a meal from scratch, you can really stretch your dollar. Buying microwave ready dinners and letting the family self-serve on whatever they can find can be really expensive. If you add up the cost of a family of four doing this, you may find you are spending $10.00 to $20.00 a meal to feed everyone! On the other hand, a nice steak dinner with baked potato and a veggie can cost as little as $4.00 a plate. If you start figuring out the cost per plate per meal, you can smile at the money you save when you present a great meal.

Use coupons! Don't just clip coupons for the sake of getting things for cheaper... use them for things you were planning on buying anyway. Otherwise, you are falling into the marketing funnel that the coupons were designed for. Using coupons wisely can save you a ton of money at checkout time, unless you pick up a bunch of extra items that weren't on your list, just because they were on sale. Then you may find you went over your original shopping budget. Oops!

Buy in bulk, buy store brand!

Bulk items and store brand items can be as much as 300% cheaper than the name brand item of the same thing... and believe it or not, many times they are produced by the same company - they are just packaged cheaper. A lot of the time I will find out that the store brand cheapie is actually better quality as well. Bulk items are usually cheaper just for the fact that they have no packaging to begin with. This is a good place to stock up on pantry staples such as rice, beans, flour, sugar, cereal, etc. If the store you are shopping at doesn't have a bulk section, you are probably shopping in the wrong store to begin with. Try to locate a werehouse grocery store in your area. Name brand stores usually mean name brand prices.

When you buy meat, buy in quantity. A 10 lb. "chub" of hamburger translates to several dollars in savings over a single lb. package of burger. If you take it home and split the hamburger up into ziplock freezer bags, and freeze it, you are good to go. The same thing goes for chicken, pork chops, and steak. Go for the big family packs and split it up to freeze. You will save a bundle, and will end up making less trips grocery shopping, saving you in fuel costs as well.

Shop "In-Season". You will find certain produce and meats go up in cost, and others go down, depending on the time of year. Alter your diet to match the prices. Keep your eye out for deals on fresh fish, as there is almost always a "catch of the day".

The last tip I have for you today is, when you are shopping, make sure you scan the prices before you reach and grab for whatever. Say you usually buy one brand of butter, because it is usually the cheapest... guess what, they tricked you this week! I've had this happen. The brand right next to it was .30 cents cheaper.

When trying to budget your shopping, the pennies really do add up. If you find a good deal on something you use regularly, stock up on it! Do you really need 10 lbs. of rice in the pantry? Well, if you cook with a lot of rice (Which you should), yes, you do.