Money Saving Mom®

Guest post from Angela

How to Go Vegan on a Budget

I’ve always said you could eat healthy on a budget, but in February, I decided to actually live out that belief. For an entire month, I decided I would shop, cook, and eat as a vegan. Our monthly budget of $350 for a family of four would stay the same, and my kids would continue to eat some dairy and meat.

Not only did we meet our budget for the month, we actually came $23 under budget! Today I wanted to share with you some of what I learned about saving money on a whole-foods, plant-based diet. Especially since much of what I learned could be useful for any diet.

1. Start with a Meal Plan.

I began by collecting vegan cookbooks from my library, building a Pinterest board, and finding vegan blogs to follow. At the start of each week, I would come up with 4 or 5 recipes for dinners. I would then turn the meal plan into a shopping list, and add in breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.

2. Learn to Cook from Scratch. 

For the most part, I avoided pre-packaged and convenience foods. Instead, I learned how to make my own foods including almond milk and vegetable broth. Not only did this save money, it was more nutritious.

3. Discover Bulk Foods!

If you’ve never paid attention to the bulk foods section of your grocery or health food store, give it a chance! It’s a great way to save when you just need small amounts of a particular ingredient (or large amounts). For example, we spent about $1.60 for a decent sized bag of steel cut oats, $0.08 for the fennel seed I needed to make vegan sausages, and about $0.50 for a few dried apricots for a couscous recipe.

4. Shop with Cash.

My husband and I recently started applying Dave Ramsey’s cash envelope method for budgeting our groceries. Can I tell you what a difference this has made? When you realize that all you have to buy your food is the cash in your wallet, you make better decisions. I found myself filling up my cart with produce and whole grains first. I also found that shopping with cash made me want to choose the foods that were most nutritionally dense and that could stretch our dollar further.

5. Shop once per Week.

When I limit my shopping to just one day per week, it becomes clearer to me which deals will really benefit my family most, and which I can pass by. Shopping once a week also helps me stick to my meal plan! See how all these things begin to work in concert?

Here’s an added bonus: for the month of February, we spent well under half of what we usually do eating out! Whether or not you are a vegan, I challenge you to implement some of what I learned above into your own routine.

Angela lives with her firefighter husband and two children, Keefe, and Piper, in Tacoma, Washington. She hasn’t gone back to eating meat or dairy yet…

Guest Post By Jackie from Mom on a Mission for Christ.

In case you didn’t know, a No. 10 can is typically used by chain restaurants, hotels, and larger families. It holds more than 100 ounces or six to seven pounds. Most shoppers bypass this large size, assuming it’s too much for a small family. However, utilizing a different mind-set (and your freezer) a No. 10 can will work for small families, too.

For example, this No. 10 can of diced tomatoes is priced $2.99 in NC at Sams wholesale. This is equivalent to six regular size cans. A brand-name standard size can typically costs .99. Six cans at .99 is $5.94. By purchasing a No. 10 size, you’re saving at least $2.95.

Most grocery chains stock No. 10 cans on the lower shelves with vegetables. Wholesale stores stock a wider variety of No. 10 cans, as well as overstocked and discount stores, like Go Grocery, Big Lots, Dickies, and Amazing Savings in our area. Look for further reduced prices in these chains.

How we use a No.10 can.

1. Open it up

2. Add the item to a freezer inventory

3. Freeze the contents in quart size bags as 2-cup portions (standard can size) for future recipes

4. Thaw bags on a plate or in a bowl in the refrigerator to catch condensation; or cut the zipper top off, slice straight down the middle, and drop into soups, stews or crock pot recipes.

I like to drop frozen bags of black bean, corn, diced tomatoes and cooked seasoned taco meat to make easy Southwest chili on a cold day.

Jackie Brown, is a freelance writer and non-profit founder feeding her family of six through freezer cooking while extending her hands to the poor and needy. You can visit her freezer cooking education blog at Mom on a Mission for Christ.

Guest post from Anne of Modern Mrs Darcy

One year ago I made an unusual decision in the name of frugality: I added $75 to our monthly grocery budget.

When I made that decision, I had whittled our grocery bill down to the lowest point it had been in five years, thanks to discovering MoneySavingMom.com in 2009! I had attacked our grocery bill: getting that dollar figure to drop had become a game — and I was winning.

But then I took our fourth baby to the pediatrician for his 12-month check-up, and found out he was half a pound shy of staying on his growth curve. My kids have all been shaped like little beanpoles — it’s in their genes — and I’m familiar with the drill for slow-to-gain kids like mine: offer lots of quality high-fat foods, early and often. But my baby’s favorite foods (like avocados and Sunbutter) were expensive, and I hadn’t been tossing them in my grocery cart as often as I should have.

Other than being a little on the light side, he checked out great. For most babies, the low weight would have been a wait-and-see issue, but our family’s medical history made it prudent to err on the side of caution. So off we went to the children’s hospital for some routine tests to make sure everything was okay.

$900 later we found out it was. I regretted every avocado I hadn’t bought, thinking how many I could have purchased for that sum.

Even with the good report, our doctor encouraged us to make weight gain a priority. So we re-grouped. My pediatrician and I made a plan, and the linchpin was a diet heavy in healthy foods that were high-quality and high-fat.

I realized that the most frugal thing I could do was increase my grocery budget. I gave myself permission to opt out of the grocery game, and allotted an extra $75/month to stock up on healthy, high-calorie foods.

I still tried to get the most out of our grocery dollars:

• I carefully planned our meals.
• I practiced the buy-ahead principle. I watched for deals on my baby’s favorite high-calorie items like Sunbutter, Larabars, and coconut oil.
• I asked companies to send me coupons.

But I didn’t sweat the extra expense, because his health was the top priority, and we’d budgeted the funds.

I continue to spend more on groceries than I used to, but that’s okay. My baby just turned two, and when we visited the pediatrician for his well-check he passed with flying colors. Our baby is healthy, and our medical bills have been minimal.

I don’t get the same thrill in the Kroger checkout lane as I did back when our grocery bill was smaller. But by stepping back to focus on the big picture — and not just a single line item of our household budget — I’m being a better steward of our family’s resources.

Anne blogs about redefining the accomplished woman at Modern Mrs Darcy. She’s a voracious reader, writer, and nutrition junkie, and a mom to four healthy and happy kids, who eat lots of almonds and avocados.