frugal — 3/19 — Beating Broke

Save Money on the Grocery Budget by Reducing Food Waste

March 25, 2019 By MelissaB 1 Comment

Behind a mortgage, groceries are often the second most expensive line item in the budget. If you’re looking to save more money this year, a good place to look is to reduce the grocery budget. But don’t stop there. Make sure to also look at the other side of the grocery budget—reducing food waste.

Whenever you waste food, you’re essentially dropping money into the garbage. Instead, learn to reduce your food waste to stretch your grocery budget even further. Here are some of my favorite strategies:

Look at your calendar before you shop. Do you have a busy week coming up? If so, don’t plan labor intensive meals; you just won’t have time to make them and you’ll likely have food go bad before you have time to cook it. Instead, make some meals on the weekend to eat during the week when you’re busy or plan simple recipes and buy simple ingredients. Rachael Ray’s Week in a Day is a great springboard for finding recipes you can make on the weekend to enjoy all week long.

Alternatively, you can choose simple meals to make on busy weeknights. Fresh spinach can be sautéed in minutes. Paired with a microwaved baked potato and a simple meat like a polish sausage that can be cooked quickly, and you have a fairly healthy, inexpensive meal. Another option is to keep frozen vegetables on hand to cook quickly and pair with an easy meat and minute rice.

Buy foods your family likes. Too often, people buy a bargain that turns out to be a waste of money because their family won’t eat it. Buy the foods that your family will eat, not the foods that are a bargain.

Use leftovers! Do you eat leftovers? Some people don’t like them, but I love leftovers because they offer me one meal I don’t have to cook! Eating leftovers can be a great way to stretch your food dollars. If your family refuses leftovers, try to cook only as much as your family will eat in a meal so you don’t waste extras.

Create new meals with the leftovers. Another idea is to creatively repurpose leftovers. For instance, if you cook a whole chicken or buy a rotisserie chicken, keep the leftovers to turn into other meals like chicken enchiladas or chicken noodle soup. Thanks to the Internet, you can find plenty of recipes for reusing leftovers. Some chefs, like Robin Miller of the Food Network, specifically look to make meals out of leftovers to help you better utilize your time and food.

Utilize the freezer. One of my favorite ways to reduce food waste is to use the freezer. We recently bought a large box of individual serve guacamole. I still had 8 left close to the expiration date, so I put them in the freezer, and now we just pull them out as we need them. Many meals that you make and don’t want to eat all at once can be frozen for later use.

What are your favorite strategies for avoiding food waste? Do you waste a lot of food or a minimal amount?

When Your Frugal Life Can Cost You More Money

September 20, 2017 By MelissaB 3 Comments

One of the tenets of a frugal life is learning impulse control.

Are you running errands and want to drink a soda? Just wait until you get home. Instead of paying $1.00 for a can, you can have one that you bought in bulk for .10 a can.

Are you excited to see the latest movie by your favorite actor? Don’t pay $10 or more per ticket; just wait until it comes to DVD and check it out from the library. Or watch it on Netflix or Amazon.

Often, when it comes to frugal living, simply waiting can save you money—a lot of money.

Your frugal life can cost you money — Your Frugal Life can Cost You Money

However, the same impulse that prompts frugal people to wait can also end up costing them a lot of money, if they’re not careful. The key is knowing when it’s good to wait vs. when you need to take action.

Car Repairs

When it comes to mechanical car repairs, waiting will almost always cost you money. For instance, a few years ago, I heard a squeak when I pushed on the brakes. However, we didn’t have the money for a costly repair, so we put off the repair while we tried to generate more money. While we waited, the brakes continued to deteriorate, so a repair that would have only cost a few hundred dollars had we taken care of it quickly, turned into a repair that cost several hundred more. Ouch. Lesson learned.

However, for non-mechanical repairs, waiting or just not fixing them can save you money. Our electronic sliding door on our minivan has been broken for a few years now. (The cable is frayed.) Repairing it would have cost $1,000+. Since the van has nearly 200,000 miles on it and is 13 years old, we opted not to make that repair.

Home Repairs

Some home repairs can be put off, but most of them, like car repairs, need to be attended to in a prompt manner. If they are, they will cost much less money. Case in point? We hated our kitchen faucet. It was very low, and it was hard to use when washing pots and pans. We wanted to replace it, but didn’t have the money. Well, this summer, we learned that the faucet had been leaking. There were actually three leaks dripping under the sink because the previous owner had duct taped (!) one of the pipes under the sink. The plumber replaced the faucet and changed the pipes under the sink. We would have had that expense regardless of when we replaced the faucet, but had we taken care of the faucet earlier, we would have saved ourselves the water damage repair underneath the sink.

Living a frugal life and waiting for most things in life can save you thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of dollars over your lifetime, in some cases, waiting will just cost you more.

Do you tend to put off home and car repairs because of your frugal life, or do you attend to them promptly, knowing they will likely cost more money if you don’t?

3 Strategies to Keep Track of Your Purchases To Save Money

February 20, 2017 By MelissaB 3 Comments

I’m a big fan of buying in advance for items that I know that I’ll need. For years when my kids were little, I’d go out shopping a day or two after Halloween to buy my kids discounted Halloween costumes for the next year. I never paid full price for a Halloween costume, and after Halloween was over and the kids were done with the costume, I sold the costumes on eBay for close to the price I paid.

That’s the way I like to shop, and I know it’s how many others shop, too. After all, shopping this way is a smart strategy to stretch your dollars.

The problem is that as life gets busier as the kids grow older, I’ve found that sometimes I forget what I bought in advance. Then, I desperately go out shopping for the item I need, not realizing I had already bought it in advance.

Case in point: Last year, right after Christmas, I bought my daughter a green ruffled dress on clearance at a steal for this year’s Christmas. But, I forgot I bought that dress, and come November, I spent a lot of my time searching children’s resale stores for a dress that wasn’t unreasonably priced. I had no luck. A few weeks ago, I was digging through some storage tubs in my closet, and I found the dress.

So this year, one of my New Year’s resolutions is to implement a strategy to keep track of all of my deals. Here are some techniques I plan to use:

Keep all of the deals in one location. I have a corner of my walk in closet where I keep a large storage tub filled with discounted items I buy whenever I see a good sale on things I’ll need later. I use these items for my kids’ birthday and Christmas presents. I have added another tub to this one. I’ll store other items like seasonal dresses in these tubs so I know everything I’ve bought in advance is in one location.

Keep a spreadsheet of gifts. Even if you keep all of your items in one location, you don’t want to constantly have to rut through everything to find what you’re looking for. Keeping a spreadsheet of the items you’ve bought in advance as well as who they are for will make it easy to see at a glance what items you have. This can also prevent you from overspending and buying more than you need.

Use the libib app to track books. I frequently give books as gifts. We also homeschool, so when I see a good sale, I’ll buy books in advance for the next year or two of school. The free app libib is a great way to keep track of your books. Simply scan the barcode with your smartphone, and you can create an inventory, even categorizing by person you’ll be giving the book to or genre. You choose.

Buying things you’ll need in advance is a great way to save money. . .as long as you don’t forget about what you’ve already bought!

Do you buy items in advance? If so, how do you keep track of them?