Simply Saving

Family of 5 humans and 2 non-humans + 1 paycheck = creative thinking. We’re lucky that I’m able to stay home and homeschool our kids. We’re not wealthy, but we’re doing okay. One of the ways I save money is how I food shop. Actually, I save money just by going food shopping as opposed to the five of us eating out. When the do eat out, even to just the Chinese buffet, it’s at least $60 for us. We do eat out from time to time, we just don’t make it a regular thing.

I try to shop the flyer, especially the loss leaders (these are the items the stores puts on sale to entice you into the store. They’re usually on the front page of the flyer). This week one of the loss leaders for the store I shop in, is chicken breasts; buy one, get one free. My husband and kids love chicken (I’m a vegetarian for over 20 years) so I’ll buy several packages and freeze them.

If an item we use often is on sale (such as peanut butter or cheese) and I also have coupons for it, I’ll buy as many as I can and store it or freeze it. I’ve found that if I do that each week with just a couple of items, I can build up a stockpile of things we use often…and because we use them often, they don’t just sit around and end up being tossed. We have a large upright freezer, in addition to our refrigerator/freezer, and room to store extras in our laundry room/pantry.

I don’t have a lot of extra time to cut a lot of coupons anymore, so I’ve started buying them on eBay. I just bought 20 coupons for $1.00 off 2 Morning Star Farms vegetarian foods for $1.59, including postage. This is something I buy all the time, regardless of the price or if I have any coupons. Usually they sell for $3.49 each at the store I shop in. The coupon states I need to buy two and I have 20 coupons, so that’s 40 I’ll end up buying. 40 at $3.49 each is $139.60. 20 coupons for $1 off is a savings of $20, minus the $1.59, I’ll save $18.41, bringing the total for 40 to $121.19. Rather than give that $18.41 to my local grocery store, I can think of at least five things I can do with that instead.

1. The five of us can go to Dairy Queen for Blizzards
2. I can take my kids to play miniature golf.
3. I can buy some books at the local used book store
4. Rent some videos from Blockbuster
5. Put it in the tank of my car.

These easy ways don’t take a lot of time and I’ve been able to save quite a bit of money. I’ll share more about my food shopping methods in future posts.