Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

3 Big Steps to Fight Off Rising Produce Costs this Summer

By 10 Comments

My family has been increasingly consuming organic produce because we are trying to eliminate all food additives, preservatives and pesticides from our diet.  If you are trying to feed your family the recommended five servings of fruit and vegetables a day, you may be spending more than you would like on produce, regardless if you buy organic or not.  Just for my family of 5, meeting the USDA dietary recommendations means feeding us 25 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, or 175 servings a week!  Here are steps you can take now to save money this summer on fresh produce:

Grow a garden.  If you have the space, consider growing your own garden.  You will have an abundance of fresh, organic produce growing in your back yard, and food doesn’t get any fresher than that.  Eliminate the chemicals and the long transportation time that your produce often endures to get to the grocery store shelves.

VegetablesIf you live in the city or don’t have room to grow a garden, consider getting a plot at a community garden.  Community gardens are designated locations that usually have 15 to 40 plots available for members of the community to garden.  You use a plot and plant what you would like.  You just have to agree to maintain your plot and water it at least once a week.  There is often a small fee.  The community garden I plan to use this summer charges $20, but that money is refunded at the end of the season if you have tended your garden throughout the season.

Subscribe to a CSA.  CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture.  Many CSAs offer organic produce and deliver it to a location near you every week.  Programs often let you choose between a 1/2 bushel and a bushel of produce weekly or every other week and typically run for 18 to 22 weeks.

In return, you must pay for your share upfront, usually before May.  In larger cities CSAs fill up quickly, so you may want to begin looking for a CSA in your area this month or next month.  You also usually are not given much say in the produce you receive, so being open to trying new vegetables is necessary.

Freeze Your Excess.  If you have grown your own garden or have a share of a CSA, you may find yourself with an abundance of fresh produce during the summer months.  Rather than letting it go to waste, consider preserving some of it.  True, you could can some of it, but I have done that before, and it was a miserable time.  (This is just my experience; you may enjoy canning.)  Instead, take advantage of your freezer.  Shred the excess zucchini and put it in the freezer in small bags.  Puree excess squash to sneak into baked goods during the winter.  Make Jamie Oliver’s pasta sauce and freeze it for future spaghetti or pasta meals.

With careful planning during the rest of the winter months, you will be able to not only enjoy fresh produce during the summer and slash your grocery bill, but you will be able to save some of that produce for the fall and winter months, effectively lowering your grocery bill for produce all year long.

photo credit: Martin Cathrae

Evaluate the True Price of Dining Out to Save Money

By 14 Comments

Our culture seems to be one that is centered around dining out.  When you are younger, you meet friends at a restaurant for a night out and to chat.  As you get older and have a family, you may go out to eat because time is short between working, raising a family, helping with homework, and doing housework, among other things.  Some people are extreme and eat out for every meal because they do not like to cook or have not learned to cook.  This is so commonplace in the American culture, that we don’t often question these expenses.  Instead of just assuming that going out to eat or grabbing take out is a necessity, evaluate the cost of your restaurant purchase.

It has been a stressful day, and you would like nothing more than a night off from the kitchen.  You decide to buy take out for your family of 4 and spend $25.  True, you did buy yourself a night out of the kitchen by avoiding cooking and washing the dishes that you would use.  Yet, ask yourself, would you have paid $25 to hire someone to come to your kitchen for an hour that night, make a meal and do the few dishes that you used?  No?  Well, that is essentially what you did by picking up take out.

Riced out.

I use this way of thinking frequently now to save myself from spending money eating out.  My family ate out by habit until I started evaluating the true cost.  I recently quit my job and have been doing freelance work from home.  Several of my smaller jobs each pay $20 a month.  Recently, I wanted to go out for sushi, which is a weakness not only of mine, but of my husband and kids.  When our family of 5 goes out for sushi, it typically runs us $55 to $60.  I asked myself if one meal of sushi was worth doing 3 additional small jobs to recoup the $60?  Although the jobs do not take much time weekly, I would have to do the three jobs for a month to recoup the money spent on sushi.  Was it worth it?  No.  We did not go out that night.

The idea of evaluating life energy for consumption is not new.  It was the subject of the book, Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robins.  The overall principal is to look at the amount of time and money it would take to recoup an expense.  I try to use this in my life normally, but I find it especially effective when considering the often inflated price of dining out.  Take the sushi dinner for $60—my family’s weekly grocery budget is $100.  Is that one meal worth half a week’s groceries?  Definitely not.

I am not saying we shouldn’t go out.  My family still enjoys going out, but I am suggesting we should stop thinking of dining out as something routine and to be done daily or several times a week.  Instead, think of dining out as a treat and something to be planned and enjoyed.

photo credit: dslrninja

How to Implement a Weekly Menu Plan

By 5 Comments

We talked last time about why you should create a menu plan.  Today, we will tackle how to menu plan.  Honestly, there is no correct way to menu plan, but here are some of the most common methods:

Assign a Meal to a Day of the Week

Some people make it very easy on themselves and create a designated meal for each day of the week.  For instance,

  • Monday—Mexican
  • P1640073Tuesday—salad
  • Wednesday—pasta
  • Thursday—pizza
  • Friday—casserole
  • Saturday—leftovers
  • Sundays—soup and sandwich

Then, they just plug in a meal for each day.  Maybe one Monday they will have fajitas, the next Monday they will have tacos, the next quesadillas.  Whatever they eat on Monday is some type of Mexican food.

Make a Menu Plan Once a Month

With this method, you look at your upcoming monthly calendar and plan meals accordingly.  For instance, in my case, my son has tap dance class every Wednesday night.  I know on these nights not to plan anything time intensive.  On Wednesdays, I either choose crock pot meals that allow me to do the prep work in the morning and then require no additional work from me, or I schedule that day as a day to eat leftovers.

Similarly, if you look at the calendar and see that you are taking Uncle Joe out to eat on the 20th and you know he will want to go to a steak house, you probably won’t schedule another beef meal on the 19th or 21st.

This method works great for people who generally dislike menu planning and prefer to get a month’s worth of planning done in one setting.

Choose Your Menu Plan Based on What Is on Sale

Probably the most common method of menu planning is to center your meals around what is on sale at the grocery store.  So, you get your supermarket ads on Sunday and see that ground beef is on sale as well as whole wheat pasta.  Salmon is also on sale.  Maybe you choose to make spaghetti (spaghetti sauce recipe) on Tuesday night, lasagna on Wednesday night and a salmon salad for Friday night, for example.

If you don’t regularly stock up on groceries when they hit rock bottom prices, this is the method of menu planning that will net you the largest savings.

Choose Your Menu Plan Based on What You Have in the Pantry

This is the method that I prefer because I regularly stock up on groceries when they are at rock bottom prices.  Before I make my menu plan for the week, I look at what ingredients I have at home and make a menu centered around those items.  Recently I bought Tilapia on sale, so we will be having a fish meal this week.  I also bought imitation crab meat on sale two weeks ago (prepackaged), so I will be making crab cakes.  However, I don’t want all of my meals for the week to be seafood based.  I see that chicken is on sale for $1.49 a pound, so I plan two chicken meals and also buy some extra chicken to stock up in the freezer.  I also have tomatoes and avocado that need to be used up, so I plan on having taco salad another day.

Final Thoughts on Menu Planning

The most important part of menu planning is choosing the method that works best for you and your family because then you will be most likely to stick with it.  In addition, remember to be flexible with yourself.  If you have a meal planned on Monday that you don’t feel like cooking Monday night, it is okay to jump to Wednesday night’s meal.  It really doesn’t matter which day you prepare which meal as long as you prepare all of the meals within a week’s time so you don’t waste ingredients.

Finally, if you are ready to take the leap to menu planning, one of my favorite free online resources is food.com.  You can easily search for the type of meal that you would like to make and find hundreds of recipes, many of which have been ranked by other users.  I tend to only use recipes that earn 4.5 to 5 stars out of 5.

You may feel as if you don’t have time to meal plan, but often menu planning saves an enormous amount of time.  If you don’t  do it already, I hope you will try it.

photo credit: Emily Barney