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Have you filled up at the gas pump lately? Wow! What used to cost me $36 dollars at the gas pump not too long ago, now costs me $75. Ouch! That’s a huge chunk out of our budget for just one vehicle. I think that gas has become one of the largest budget categories rivaling groceries, utilities, and mortgage payments. It has everyone stretched thin. So what are you doing to cope? Leave me a comment with some of the ways you are coping with higher gas prices. One of the ways we are cutting back is at the grocery store. Groceries are another one of those big budget categories. What people don’t know is that there is a surprising amount of flexibility within this category. Since I’m the manager of our home, I have been doing quite a bit of studying on how to revamp our budget to counteract the soaring gas prices. While my kids do their schoolwork, I’ve been studying how to save at the grocery store. Since I don’t have a lot of time to teach myself all of this on my own, I have found quite a few inexpensive, (and some free) resources to help speed up my learning curve. On most of these, I not only recouped what I paid for the resource but saved even more money on top of that (usually 3 times the amount). Here are some of my favorites: The first fantastic resource that comes to mind is Teri Gaults’ website, The Grocery Game http://www.thegrocerygame.com . This website is a huge timesaver. I spend about 30 minutes a week clipping coupons from the Sunday paper and filing them in my coupon organizer. (Now, I don’t actually have a Sunday Paper subscription but I save my change up and buy one after church or have family and friends save me the coupons out of theirs.) Then, I go online to The Grocery Game and look up the 2 grocery stores in my area that I’m tracking. Since I live in a very rural area, I use the zip code of the area where I shop. The Grocery Game lists all the sales this store is having AND it also calculates which coupons to use in combination with the sale price to get the best rockbottom price possible. I make my weekly meal plan around this list. I am also trying to stock up a 12 week supply of basic pantry items and dry goods (like toothpaste and paper towels). Grocery store sales tend to run on 12 week cycles. If you watch for these cycles (The Grocery Game does it for you) then you stock up enough of an item when its at a rockbottom price (sale + coupons) to last 12 weeks. This way you NEVER pay full price. I’m starting small by just concentrating on building a stockpile of one or two grocery categories (cooking staples and dry goods) but I think in 6 months that I will have a good supply of just about everything on my list. This will free me up from having to buy an item NOW so I can watch and wait for the best possible price to stock up. The first week I used The GroceryGame, I saved $45. The gentleman behind me in line about fell over when he saw what I saved. My average savings each week so far has been about $30 and I haven’t even implemented everything yet. My grocery budget went from $500 to $350 for a family of 5. Average cost for tracking 2 grocery stores is about $7.50/month. I not only recouped my expenses the first week but saved almost $40 on top of that. Pretty cool! Right now you can sign up for a 4 week trial for $1. Please use my email address in the referral box when you sign up (PS139.13@gmail.com). The second fantastic resource that I have used is Leanne Ely’s Saving Dinner (see link in the sidebar on the right). Leanne’s goal is to bring families back to the dinner table. She does all the menu planning and making out a grocery list for you. She has many many types of menu plans from weekly to monthly, freezer to crockpot and heart healthy to vegetarian. Many of her recipes are easily converted to Kosher. You simply print out the menu and recipes and post it on your fridge. Print out the grocery list, add whatever else you need from the grocery store to it and you’re all set. Because she uses recipes with basic ingredients and in season produce, you can easily slash your grocery bill by 1/3 (I did). My favorite menus are the Five-For-The-Freezer ones. You assemble all the ingredients possible beforehand (I usually did it the afternoon after grocery shopping). Put them in freezer bags and freeze them. Then each evening I would pull out the next day’s meal and stick in the refrigerator to defrost. The next evening, it would take me all of about 15 minutes (30 at the most) to have dinner ready and most of that was cooking time. These differ from most freezer cooking recipes in that you don’t cook, freeze and then eat but rather freeze, cook, and eat. I think it tastes and looks better cooked just before eating but I like the time-saving features of freezing ahead. Leannes recipes get rave reviews from average moms like you and me too (and their families). I’m not the greatest cook but I feel like a gourmet chef with her recipes because they use basic ingredients but have delicious variety and flavor. Definately not Hamburger Helper and its wonderful to eat something that looks and tastes like it came from your favorite restaurant that YOU cooked and your family raves about. So see the link on the sidebar to the right and try it out. Another favorite resource is an e-course on Crystal Paines’ Biblical Womanhood website www.tinyurl.com/3zpqh7 or see the sidebar to the right). It’s called Supermarket Savings 101. This is a downloadable collection of e-books and audios that show you how to save BIG at the grocery store. Some of the topics covered are: Designing A Menu Plan that Really Works, Menu Planning on a Budget, Simple No Fuss Frugal Menu Ideas and Recipes, Creating a Workable Grocery Budget and How to Stick with it, Learning How to Find Good Deals, Time Management and Efficiency in Frugal Shopping, The Basics of Using Coupons, How to Make the Most of the Deals at CVS and Walgreens. Right now, it also includes 6 more free ebooks on saving money on groceries, menu planning, and recipes. Crystal actually spends about $30-40 per week on groceries and household items for a family of 5. Best of all, its downloaded to your computer and you can study it at your own pace when its convenient for you. There is such a wealth of information contained in this course that you can use to slash your grocery budget. This course normally is priced at $17.97 but if you use the link to the right, its only $8.97. Click on the grocery bag full of groceries and it will take you to the Supermarket Savings 101 e-course page. This was another resource that I not only recouped the cost of the course on my first trip to the grocery store but saved more money on top of that. My next favorite grocery frugal website is Leslie Valeska’s website Simply Journey Ministeries http://leslievaleska.com/bookstore/. She has written several ebooks on grocery shopping and menu planning that are fantastic. Her book "Menu Planning: Simple and Delicious" puts an end to boring, tedious menu planning and brings in fun and flexiblity to fit your family’s needs. She has another book called "Trim the Fat: The Ultimate Book in Cutting Food Costs" which shows you the tricks of the Grocery trade (you wouldn’t believe the lengths grocers go to get you to buy, buy, buy.), how to buy meat and produce for less, and how to shop for convenience foods and pay less. Leslie also has several books from her "Simply Frugal..." series as well as an 8 week class on Digging out of Debt God’s Way. I highly recommend all of them and have learned a lot (and saved a lot). I’m eagerly awaiting her upcoming book on the art of pricebooking (keeping track of what you pay for certain items in a notebook so that you’ll know a good deal when you see one). Another series of books that I’m studying thru are at Living on a Dime http://www.tinyurl.com/4duwna. The Living on a Dime ebook series is chockful of ways to save in Money Management, Grocery Savings, Menus and Leftovers, Cleaning, for the Holidays, and even how to get your kids to start saving (the way things are going they’re going to need a good headstart!). I’ve listened to Tawra Kellum, the author of the Living on a Dime ebooks and she has such practical advice on how to slash expenses in just about every area. Go check it out for yourself! Another website that I've found very helpful, especially in cutting grocery costs is The Hillbilly Housewife http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com . Yup, I said Hillbilly. She even has tips and tricks for cooking without electricity! Every month when I get my electric bill, I think about her website and ponder the fact that it IS still possible....She has a menu plan for feeding your family on $35 a week (and one for $70/week). She has many great recipes and tips that I have used over and over. For instance, I will NEVER buy a frozen pizza again and the Pizza restaurants don’t look all that great anymore either now that I found her page on making Pizza. Since several of us in our family are allergic to dairy, its been torture giving up Pizza or eating something else while the boys enjoy pizza. Now, I make pizza and just leave off the cheese. Believe it or not, my husband raves about this recipe and he is a cheese lover to the max. I make the dough earlier in the day in the bread machine, get my toppings and sauce ready, flatten the dough out into 2 baking sheets, add my toppings (pepperoni, sausage, canadian bacon, onions, and jalepenos) and bake away in the oven for 20 minutes. It’s actually very easy and its one of our favorite meals. Best of all, we can ALL enjoy it. She has many other fabulous recipes, tips, and tricks on her website so be sure to check it out. My last juicy resource tidbit is Marilyn Moll’s website Urban Homemaker http://www.urbanhomemaker.com. She has written many articles specifically for homemakers of all ages interested in the timeless arts of cooking, baking, canning, and homekeeping in the spirit of Titus 2. I have been surprised at how much I can save by getting back to the recipes that use basic ingredients (which you already usually buy in small bulk amounts, like flour and sugar). The price per person per meal drops dramatically and yet no one feels like we’re skimping. If anything, they feel like we’ve splurged because there will be rolls and other things on the table (I don’t normally splurge on frozen rolls at the grocery store) and yet it wasn’t a whole lot more effort on my part.
I hope that you will check out these fantastic money-saving resources that I heartily recommend and leave me a comment and tell me what you think. I have used all these resources and found many many ways to stretch a dollar wisely. I hope to turn this into a series of articles, a newsletter, and eventually a series of ebooks on saving money, getting out of debt, and stretching resources wisely so please bookmark my blog and check back often! In the spirit of Proverbs 31 and Titus 2, Suzette May |
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Posted by Genn
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