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5 Strategies to Make Food at Home If You Hate Cooking

August 23, 2019 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

For some, cooking is a joy and a way to relax after a long, hard day. For others, cooking is a daily task that must be done to save money and fuel their bodies. And then for others, cooking is one of the worst tasks they have to do and one they avoid as much as possible by eating out, picking up food, or getting an invite to someone else’s house who is doing the cooking.

If you’re in the latter group of people, you’re not alone. However, if you utilize these five strategies to make food at home when you hate cooking, you’ll find that you’ll save a considerable amount of money on your food budget, and you’ll likely be eating better.

Pick “Dump” Meals

Sure, the name is unappetizing, but “dump” refers to meals where you just put the food in the InstaPot or slow cooker and walk away. One example might be a few chicken breasts, black beans, corn, and salsa. Cook in the slow cooker for a few hours, shred the chicken, and serve over rice.

Pinterest and YouTube have plenty of dump meals; you could make several and put some in your freezer, making dinner prep even easier.

Use Premade Food

Most stores have some type of pre-made food you can use. Down the freezer aisle, you’ll find pre-made meals for a family that you just have to put in your slow cooker or cook on the stove; all of the ingredients that you need are in the bag.

Likewise, you can buy already chopped vegetables from the salad bar and rotisserie chicken that’s already been pulled from the bone to make meal time prep faster.

Premade salad bar ingredients for people who hate to cook.

Order a Meal Kit Delivery Service

There are many meal kit delivery services available such as Blue Apron, Green Chef, and HelloFresh, to name a few, each with their own specialty. In your kit, you’ll receive all of the ingredients you need for the meals as well as a card that tells you how to make the meal. With a meal kit delivery service, you avoid the headache of grocery shopping and get to try a new meal.

Make a Few Meals in Advance on Sunday

Another option for those who hate cooking is to make a few meals on Sunday. Then, when you come home on Monday, you don’t have to cook at all. Simply pull out the meal you already made and reheat it. While you do still have to cook with this option, you only have to cook one day, and then you get several days off when you eat the meals you cooked on Sunday.

Pick Easy Meals

No one says you have to have fancy dinners. Scrambled eggs, toast, and fruit can do just fine and require minimal cooking and clean up.

Easy meals for people who don't like to cook.

If you hate cooking, don’t feel the need to resort to eating out every night. Instead, try one of these five strategies to make food at home when you hate cooking.

If you hate cooking, what strategies do you use to still eat at home but limit the amount of time you have to cook?

Filed Under: Home Tagged With: home cooking, meals

Living Costs to Calculate Before You Sign a Lease

August 9, 2018 By Holly Welles 1 Comment

You’ve found the perfect apartment or house to rent, and you’re ready to sign on the dotted line and move into your dream home. Not so fast! Before you sign the lease, make sure you’ve calculated all your living costs, including unexpected expenses, so that you aren’t blindsided with bills you didn’t plan for.

The only thing worse than not moving into that dream space would be losing it because you can’t afford to live there anymore. Here are the expenses you need to consider.

  1. Add-Ons

In addition to your rent, you’ll have a variety of add-on expenses, depending on the lease agreement. This section might include water, sewer, trash removal and heating and cooling costs. Many landlords cover items such as water and sewer because if these bills aren’t paid in some localities, a lien may be placed on the property.

Ask before you sign whether or not trash pickup is included. It typically is in apartments, but not as often in homes and smaller units. It’s rare for a rental to include your heating and cooling. If any of these items aren’t included, ask for a typical range per month so that you know what to expect.

  1. Parking

Not all rentals, especially if in the city, come with free parking. You’ll need to either make a decision to park on the street — which is challenging when events are going on and may make your car less safe — or pay for parking, which adds to your monthly expenses.

Ask your potential landlord what the deal is when you’re touring, and look up street parking rules (if applicable) to learn more about permits, street cleaning, and winter snow removal. You may even try to use this information to negotiate the overall cost of your rent or parking fees.

That one-bedroom that was $700 per month becomes $775 per month when you factor in the cost to pay for a nearby parking lot space. Trust me, I know the pain — it’s a sacrifice I ended up making to live in a downtown center.

  1. Insurance

Keep in mind that you’ll need renter’s insurance to cover your personal belongings. While most rentals do have insurance to cover the structure itself, it won’t cover the items you own. You must secure a separate policy. Rates will vary depending on the area where you live and how much coverage you need.

The average cost of renter’s insurance varies by state, but nationwide is about $187 per year. While that isn’t a huge amount of money, if you’re on an extremely tight budget, it could make or break you.

  1. Unplanned Expenses

Don’t forget to budget in a miscellaneous or emergency fund. Things will happen that you didn’t plan for. Perhaps you got a parking ticket because you didn’t realize you couldn’t park in that spot (I made this mistake too many times when I first moved). Maybe your car needed a repair unexpectedly.

A good rule of thumb for those getting their first apartment is to first save up a $1,000 to $2,000 emergency fund. This amount should cover most minor repair bills or the little things that happen that you didn’t plan for. Of course, you’ll also need all the typical deposits and first and last month’s rent on hand as well as money to pay deposits for utilities.

  1. Pets

If you have a pet or plan to get one, you should know that most apartments charge a pet deposit and small monthly fee to cover any damage potentially caused by that pet. Occasionally, you’ll find a rental that doesn’t charge this fee, but it’s rare.

You should also budget for damages your pet might cause. For example, if your cat claws up the carpet, you’ll want to get it repaired so that you don’t have to live with frayed carpeting the entire time you rent. Plus, it will be cheaper for you to make the repair than trust the landlord to fix the problem for a reasonable fee.

  1. Flakey Roommates

Perhaps you’re ready to move out, but you need a roommate in order to afford living on your own. The problem is that some roommates are flaky and don’t pay their share of the bills in a timely manner or sometimes ever.

If your name is on the lease, you should protect your living situation by having the other person sign an agreement. If they don’t pay their share, you may have to ask them to leave so that you can get a roommate who will share the bills. Prepare for this scenario by setting aside extra funds to cover your roommate’s portion for a couple of months if needed.

Before You Sign the Lease

These issues are all factors to consider before you sign the lease and take the leap into paying for that place you’ve always dreamed of. Renting can be a positive experience or a horrendous one, and planning ahead helps smooth the edges to make it as good as possible.

Filed Under: General Finance, Home Tagged With: budget, expenses, Home, lease, rent

5 Bad Habits to Break at the Grocery Store

July 14, 2018 By Douglas Keller Leave a Comment

For individuals, families, and lovers of food alike, the grocery store is a wondrous place full of delicious treats and everyday essentials. As we become accustomed to our shopping routine, many people will form habits for once they are inside of the super market, like walking the same path or picking up the same goods with little variation. And while these habits seem innocent enough they may have deeper implications, namely upon our spending. As we become set in our ways, bad grocery habits can form that can feel difficult or even impossible to break. What’s worse is when we fail to realize that what we are doing is costing us. As a result, the key to undoing these habits is to first identify what they are and then figure out strategies to avoid falling into them. To that end, below are five common grocery store habits and a few suggestions to break them.

Shopping without a list

Break Habits
Break these Habits

One of the most common mistakes people make when heading off to the grocery store is failing to prepare a shopping list to help them navigate the store. A shopping list serves a number of purposes as not only does it provide you direction during your visit to the supermarket, reducing your likelihood of veering off track and buying something unnecessary, it also helps to give you a better sense of the things you need. Many times it is not until people return home that they realize they have made a mistake in their shopping, after they’ve grabbed the wrong item or accidentally purchased something they already had back in their home. A list helps to remove the uncertainty of what you may have need for and is an easy way to begin saving money.

Buying pre-prepared meals

Often in supermarkets there are prepared meal sections where assortments of sushi, rotisserie chickens, and large selections of dessert choices lie in wait for shoppers to purchase them. For the people within the grocery store, the appeal of bypassing food that requires effort and instead settling on something already prepared can be a no-brainer, but that is just what supermarkets are counting on. Stores anticipate people prioritizing convenience over price and will markup their prepared meals. At the end of the day, you will typically get more bang for your buck from buying the ingredients and making a homecooked meal on your own, as cooking it for yourself can also provide a larger quantity of food.

Buying The Same Brands

Brand loyalty has a surprisingly strong effect on shoppers, as many people will seek the same products from the same companies they have come to know and love. While it is true that quality varies across brands, loyalty to one variety may be costing you more than its worth. Almost every product has a competitor and with great deals being offered every day, it is important to be open to trying something new. Not only is there a chance it will taste better, but you will be saving money. And something else that is important to note is that not all generic store brands are cheaper than their name brand competitors. Be sure to check prices when at the store instead of just grabbing goods with the assumption they are less costly.

Not Checking Expiration Dates

Although grocery stores are responsible for identifying and removing expired or close to expired goods, it is not always an easy job and there are times when things manage to slip through the cracks. In the event of that, it is possible for consumers to unsuspectingly buy the goods and fall victim to foods going bad on them. At that point in time, you may find yourself out a few dollars that could have been easily saved by simply checking the expiration date of the product before adding it to your cart. Checking the expiration date also allows you to pick the freshest product, giving it a longer life and increasing your likelihood of finishing it without having to throw some away. This is particularly useful for dairy products like milk and cream.

Hungry Shopping

Sometimes it is hunger that reminds us to do our shopping and though our first instinct may be to head off to the store, you may want to hold off as shopping on an empty stomach can cost you more money than you’d think. Frequently when we are hungry we change our basic decision-making processes to take into account our condition. It is the thing that causes us to speed just a little as we head home from the drive-thru or causes us to push off a mountain of time-sensitive work for just a little while to put something in our stomachs. In the grocery store, hunger is known to fuel consumers to not only buy more food than they have need for, but it also increases the likelihood that they buy unhealthy food as they may pick up some snacks they are craving. By filling up a little before heading out, you are likely to curb this bad habit.

Filed Under: budget, Frugality, Home, Saving Tagged With: frugaler, grocery, habits, shopping

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