Post your monthly frugals here!
Post your monthly frugals here!
The brain is wider than the sky. -- Emily Dickinson
April was not what I would call an overly frugal month.
May will be better.
I'm continuing on my eat-one-pound-of-pasta-every-week quest until the pasta is gone. Today's concoction is...edible...but that might be all I can say about it. It's sort of a mac-and-cheese bastardization using spaghetti noodles (because that's all I have left!), lots of cheese, and the last of 2 microwavable packets of frozen mixed veggies that I bought quite some time ago. I think it's the veggies. They just don't help this dish. Of course, pasta + cheese is essentially perfection so why I added veggies, I do not know. Oh yes I do. I was trying to pretend I was making something healthy. And because they need to be consumed.
Aside from my eat all the random foods quest, I'm doing many loads of laundry and taking advantage of the sunshine to dry things on the line. Woo-hoo!
The brain is wider than the sky. -- Emily Dickinson
My goal this month is to get our food spending below $300 for the two of us, which I know for many is not a very ambitious goal. But, we've been spending about $350/month, and my goal is to reduce our food budget by $10/month until we hit $250. I intend to do this by:
1. Eating a lot of legumes.
2. Cooking from scratch all the time.
3. Growing vegetables in the garden.
4. Analyzing where exactly all our food budget is currently going, so we can see more clearly where we're spending too much. I think a lot of the excess is wrapped up in the 2 trips we took in the past three months, so hopefully this won't be too hard.
DW spent the day garage-saleing with a friend of hers for grandbaby things we'll want to have around (high chair, etc.). Good stuff from a rich neighborhood, so I'm sure that beat buying new-from-who-knows-where.
This one probably should be part of last month's frugals, but we still have them, so ... DW also tried a recipe for making our own dog treats. These came out like crumbly cookies, so she'll bake them longer next time. But our dog and the one we were sitting last week loved them, so she's encouraged to make more. Way cheaper than buying at the pet store. I plan to prep some cut-up sweet potatoes in our dehydrator, too. Also way cheaper than buying them ready-to-eat.
Lots of stock-up food sales, so we've been buying what we know we'll eat and freezing/pantrying (what? it's not a word?) it. We split some of it with my mom across the street (and vice-versa).
Next week, we till the garden and plant!
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome. - Booker T. Washington
Ileanto-Originally Posted by ileanto
Welcome to the forum. I hope you find information you can use to help with your food budget. As a comparison (and I realize mine is pretty extreme), for two adults I've spent $383.03 to date for the YEAR, and I have a refrigerator/freezer full, and enough food in our food storage room for at least a year (following the LDS food storage method). Here are some common tips. See if any of them help shave the dollars a little.
1. Snack food. Make your own from ingredients you have in your pantry.
2. Individual servings. Avoid buying these and make your own individual servings from less-expensive bulk amounts.
3. Beverages, including bottled water. How much of your food budget is going to beverages?
4. Not having a meal plan.
5. Check what goes into the garbage - wasted food is the most expensive we purchase. This is usually because there isn't a plan to use the food.
6. Purchase "ingredients" not convenience and ready made, and make your own "convenience" and "ready made" with ingredients. Example: If you normally purchase pancake mix, make your own with ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder, etc.). The same ingredients it takes to make pancake mix can also be used to make any number or other things (cakes, cookies, quick breads, etc.) and make them cheaper (in nearly all cases) than ready made.
7. Purchase food in-season.
8. Purchase in bulk when it fits the budget, and at rock-bottom prices.
9. Overeating anything is wasting food & money.
10. Eat less meat and add a few meatless meals throughout the week. Breakfast for dinner can be a great money saver.
I teach foods classes, including budgeting and low-cost cooking, so I have a "million" of these ideas.
Welcome ileanto!
I don't post in this thread very often but I always enjoy reading it and get a lot of encouragement and good ideas to keep trying harder to spend less.
For me it's buying less at the grocery store. I may make 3 trips a week instead of 1 but I have less food waste than I once did.
Float On: My "Happy Place" is on my little kayak in the coves of Table Rock Lake.
Thanks for the welcome!Ileanto-
Welcome to the forum. I hope you find information you can use to help with your food budget. As a comparison (and I realize mine is pretty extreme), for two adults I've spent $383.03 to date for the YEAR, and I have a refrigerator/freezer full, and enough food in our food storage room for at least a year (following the LDS food storage method). Here are some common tips. See if any of them help shave the dollars a little.
1. Snack food. Make your own from ingredients you have in your pantry.
2. Individual servings. Avoid buying these and make your own individual servings from less-expensive bulk amounts.
3. Beverages, including bottled water. How much of your food budget is going to beverages?
4. Not having a meal plan.
5. Check what goes into the garbage - wasted food is the most expensive we purchase. This is usually because there isn't a plan to use the food.
6. Purchase "ingredients" not convenience and ready made, and make your own "convenience" and "ready made" with ingredients. Example: If you normally purchase pancake mix, make your own with ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder, etc.). The same ingredients it takes to make pancake mix can also be used to make any number or other things (cakes, cookies, quick breads, etc.) and make them cheaper (in nearly all cases) than ready made.
7. Purchase food in-season.
8. Purchase in bulk when it fits the budget, and at rock-bottom prices.
9. Overeating anything is wasting food & money.
10. Eat less meat and add a few meatless meals throughout the week. Breakfast for dinner can be a great money saver.
I teach foods classes, including budgeting and low-cost cooking, so I have a "million" of these ideas.
I really want to get our food bill lower, but I don't think it will be as low as yours for a while! We are unfortunately still living in an apartment, so have we don't have a stand alone freezer, and my garden is two 4 x 8 plots in a near by community garden. Thanks for the tips, they are a great reminder. I guess I should say a bit more about what we do now (or try to do), and where the mess ups are.
We already do the basics of buying food in bulk and buying more of food when it's on sale and it's something we eat a lot of. We currently buy grains and legumes from the bulk bins, and oils, vinegar, and stuff like soy sauce out of the bulk dispenser. We do meal plans for the week, and buy for them. We have also cut down significantly on meat, eggs, and dairy, and live mainly on legumes.
What we try to do:
1. Cook everything from scratch. And I mean everything! I make sourdough, and pancakes, and all of our meals are at home. Where I've been slipping up: Buying protein bars because I'm finishing up grad school and felt like a dollar a bar wasn't so bad- until I realized that I could get 80% of the protein with out any of the sugar from 2 Tbs of peanut butter and come celery!
2. I actually nerded out and used excel to find the cheapest sources of protein, g/$. Turns out to be lentils, black eyed peas, and other legumes, so we eat many of our meals based on those. We cook all of our meals at home from scratch, and never buy single servings of anything- we're big fans of the bulk section. Where I've been slipping up: Eating out- we had a death in the family that required traveling to the opposite end of the country, and ended up eating out a lot and buying single meals, which we never otherwise do. And then spring break came, and we traveled to a big city and ate out waaaaay more than we should have. Goal for this month is to not eat out at all. Also, I've noticed I've started buying some things in packaged again, particularly olive oil and flour, which is an easy way to add extra cost each month!
3. We are both in our late 20's, and a tad overweight, but we're both pretty active. We are both cutting back on what we eat right now to lose the last little chub, but I don't think it's going to make a big different on our expenditures.
4. The only beverages we buy are dry teas, and occasional bubbly water when we're out of town. I'm going to keep drinking tea, but I'm going to try watering it down. As for the bubbly water- making sure we bring tea with us in the car will be a great first step.
I think the frustrating bit is that I know all of the things I should be doing, but then because of one thing or another, I end up not doing them! This month, I think the real focus is to not travel anywhere, not eat out anywhere, return to all-bulk purchases, and water down my tea!
Welcome, Illeanto! It's great to have you with us. I will probably learn more from you than you will from me on minimizing grocery costs, and I already shared your advice about the protein bars with my DH.
March and April were quite bad for us in several ways, and I've fallen into even worse spending habits. More groceries purchased, less planning, more eating out (expensive meals OR crappy junk - either way, it's bad...) and an increase on support spending for family. That, at least, should be done with this month. AND now that the health/life/death issues of DH's side of the family are settling down, my mother's dementia is getting worse. It never stops, does it? Ah well. I mowed her lawn today, for which she will make a donation to our coffee fund (to buy us a coffee-house treat. I won't mow for money, but I'll mow for coffee, lol...). I have clothes on the line, and they should get almost dry. My one lone hen has been contributing 5-6 eggs a week, which helps, as her food costs are very minor. The outside cats have been switched to a lower cost dry food for the summer. Its quality may not be top, but it's merely a supplement to their regular diet of small furry and feathered things, so they'll be fine. Rosa, I agree about food prep, I try to pack my lunch when I clear up after dinner, and I try to make sure I have left-overs for that purpose. Mornings are too tough to add lunch prep. I do have some trash food on hand for those days where there are no leftovers - faux Spam or frozen bratwurst, tinned fruit, potatoes (microwaved and mashed down with cheese and/or butter).
AND because the last few months have been uber stressful, I've found it easier to succumb to the lure of buying things for our house, instead of for the antique booth we have. On the plus side, I only like things that we could sell anyway, so money will not be lost, just sidetracked, lol.
Early: Sorry about the stressful times you are going through. I hope May is a better month for you.
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