Saving Families Money Since 2007
I have a daughter with dairy allergies and am looking for blogs with dairy-free advice and recipes. Do you know of any? -Tiffany
We’re not dairy-free at our house, so I don’t follow dairy-free blogs. Anyone have one or have great recommendations for blogs, websites, or resources for someone who is dairy-free? Let us know in the comments.
Missed the first posts this series? Read them here.
Up until this point, the posts in this series have been pretty non-controversial. But today, that’s all changing, because I’m going to make a bold statement:
I know all of you “But-I’m-So-Responsible-With-My-Credit-Card” people probably aren’t going to be happy with me for saying this, but I really believe that.
You see, when you shop with a credit card (or even a debit card, for that matter!) you can have your budget in your head and you can do the best to stick with it when you check out, but it’s so much easier to go just a little bit over here and there when you’re swiping. You can justify that $2 you went over your budget to buy something which was a “great deal” when paying with your card.
$2 might not seem like much, but if you spend $2 to $3 more on groceries every week, that’s adds up to around $130 in extra spending over a year’s time!
When I know that all I have to use at checkout is the cash in my grocery budget envelope, you better believe I carefully evaluate every impulse purchase or great deal I come across: “Do I really need this?” “Is this in the budget?”
Sometimes, it truly is a great deal and I have the money in my cash envelope to pay for it so it goes in the cart. Other times, I decide it’s a good enough deal that I skip buying something else on my list that we can do without in order to afford it. Or, many times, I put it back on the shelf.
Maybe you’re one of those extremely responsible–and very rare!–people who can stick to your budget while swiping a card. If you are, kuddos to you!
However, if you find yourself struggling financially and wishing you could figure out why your grocery budget is so high, can I challenge you to take a Cash-Only Challenge for 3 months and see if it impacts your grocery spending over the course of a three-month period?
Here’s how the Cash-Only Challenge works:
1) Commit to only spend what is in your grocery envelope for the next 3 months.
2) Go to the bank and withdraw cash in the amount of your pre-determined Grocery Budget. Put this cash in an envelope and keep it in a safe place. For more on cash-only shopping, read The Envelope System Experiment.
3) Leave your credit/debit cards/checkbook at home and only bring your cash envelope and a calculator with you to the grocery store.
4) Calculate your purchases on the calculator as you add them to your cart. This will motivate you to carefully evaluate all purchases, will make you aware of how much items actually cost, encourage you to look for the best deal, and force you to get creative if your list is longer than you have room for in the budget.
5) Pay with cash when you checkout and see significant grocery savings–hopefully!
6) Decide you’ll never go back to paying with your credit/debit card. Well, okay so you might not get quite that drastic, but I can almost guarantee you that going cash-only for a short-time will have taught you something worthwhile!
Have you tried a cash-only system? If so, what benefits have you found from doing so? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.
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I have fallen in love… with Mini Apple Pies.
I saw them on Heavenly Homemaker’s blog last week and knew I had to try the recipe. I printed out the recipe and left it lying out on the countertop when I left my sister to babysit last week. She took the hint and when I came back home the delicious smell of fresh-baked apple pie was wafting through our home.
Please tell me the serving size is three, because you can’t just eat one of these. Er, at least I certainly can’t!
Try ’em. You’ll like ’em.
My favorite part? You can make them and then bake half and stick the rest of the unbaked ones in the freezer. We did that and the ones out of the freezer are just as wonderful as fresh-baked.
Missed the first posts this series? Read them here.
You’ve “shopped” your cupboards, consulted the sales fliers and surveyed your coupons, now it’s time to get down to business with menu-planning. But first off, let me re-iterate a very important point:
Everyone is going to plan their menu a little bit differently. As I said yesterday, there’s no right or wrong way to menu plan. What matters is that you do it, and that it works for your family. For the record, I do it a little differently each time I plan–depending upon how much time and inspiration I have and what our plans for the week look like.
Sometimes, I have lots of extra ingredients to work with, there are lots of sales, and I have numerous coupons. When that happens, it’s pretty easy to pull together a week’s worth of meals without a lot of extra thought.
I’ve found that once-a-month Freezer Cooking makes menu planning a breeze. In fact, many weeks, I can just write out breakfast, lunch, and dinner ideas on this form here, and we’re good to go for the week. I use the sheet for ideas, but I don’t necessarily follow it to a tee. In our home, flexibility and creativity is okay–provided it doesn’t mean any extra trips to the store!
However, at times, my cupboards and freezers are pretty bare, the sales are sparse, and my coupon box is relatively empty. If that’s the case, I see how much grocery money I have to work with, and I usually pull out some cookbooks to get the wheels in my head going. Or I’ll go to one of my favorite food blogs (like Tammy’s Recipes) for ideas. You can also check out Menu Plan Monday for a plethora of menu ideas from around the blogosphere.
You might find it helpful to take 30 minutes and make a list of 30 meals your family loves to serve as inspiration if you’re ever feeling a lack of creativity while menu-planning.
Or, you could have pre-established themes for dinners each week. Tsh, over at SimpleMom, does this and here’s an example of what her Themed Menu Plan has looked like:
Mondays – pasta
Tuesdays – soup, salad, and/or sandwiches
Wednesdays – stir fry
Thursdays – crock pot
Fridays – pizza
Saturdays – something new
Sundays – something easy
Jenna from the Newlyweds blog left a comment sharing how she plans her menus:
I try to plan 2 meals around items I already have at home in the pantry or freezer, and then plan some meals based on what’s on sale, and some based on what we would like to eat. I keep my plan flexible and allow for anything that will pop up. I also like to keep items on hand all the time for a few quick meals like taco soup and spaghetti. This way, if some comes up, I can whip these up in a jiffy. –Jenna @ Newlyweds
It might seem like a daunting task at first–especially if this is all new to you!–but don’t be overwhelmed. Do the best you can do and remember that it’s never going to be absolutely perfect. Over time, though, you’ll likely begin to realize significant savings just by taking a few extra steps and putting the effort forth to make a plan.
To aid you in your menu-planning and grocery-list-making, Joy from FiveJ’s and I put together some free downloads for you. (By the way, Joy put together a snazzy free downloads page here so you can access all the free downloads we currently have available. Enjoy!)
Meal Planning Worksheet :: This brainstorming form contains spaces to write down store deals, coupons, items on hand, and recipes that can be made from those items.
Shopping List :: Contains space for the items to purchase, the cost of the item, whether there is a coupon for it, and how much the coupon is for. Also includes a space for notes where you can record extra information about your shopping trip.
Two-Store Shopping List :: Two separate shopping lists on one page, each of which includes space for the items to purchase, the cost of the item, and whether there is a coupon for it. Also includes a space for notes where you can record extra information about your shopping trip.
How do you normally plan your menus? I’d love to hear what works for you!
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I didn’t go to the store this week except to stock up on a few items we needed for Freezer Cooking Day:
We spent $64.61 out of pocket, and here’s what we filled our freezer with:
The list of recipes and food we made we made can be found here.
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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.
Missed the first posts this series? Read them here.
So now that you know some of the benefits of menu-planning, I thought it’d be helpful to share some suggestions for planning a budget-friendly menu. However, please remember that there is no right or wrong way to plan a menu. These are just suggestions–take what works for your family, and leave the rest!
I always start menu-planning by looking in my freezer, refrigerator, and cupboards. This simple exercise often yields a great deal of inspiration.
For instance, last week I discovered that I had cream cheese, canned tomatoes, and noodles on hand. So I made this lasagna as part of Freezer Cooking Day.
Maybe you open up your freezer and find chicken and frozen broccoli and you open up your cupboard and see a bag of rice. Well, you have the beginnings of Chicken Broccoli Rice Casserole. Just add cheese and cream of chicken soup to your grocery list (or make your own Homemade Cream Soup) and you have everything you need for one dinner that week.
One great resource for coming up with recipes based upon what you already have on hand is by using the Ingredient Search feature from AllRecipes. Type in the ingredients you have and those you don’t have, and it will pull up a list of recipes you can make.
Two other websites you can consult for recipes based upon ingredients you have on hand are SuperCook and Recipe Matcher.
Once you feel like you’re getting the hang of planning your menu based upon what you have on hand, you’re ready to move onto the next level of menu-planning–planning your menu based upon what’s on sale at your local store(s). This is where you really start to see the savings happening!
Most grocery store chains have their weekly sale fliers available online. If not, you will often receive a copy in the mail. Or, you could even pick one up at the store if you’re going to be driving right by it.
When you’re in the middle of planning your menu and grocery list, quickly browse through these sale fliers and see if there are any exceptional deals on things you need or things you will use in the next few months. Most of the time, the hottest deals of the week are listed predominantly in the front page of the flier. Oftentimes, these front-page deals are “loss-leaders”. (“Loss-leaders” are deals which the store is actually breaking even– or losing money on! They are designed to be good enough to “bait” you into shopping at that store.)
Don’t neglect to look through the full flier, though. Sometimes there are great deals which are hidden on the middle pages. However, remember that just because something is listed in the sales flier it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a great deal. Over time, you’ll start learning what are the “rock-bottom” prices for items you buy and how often they go on sale in your area.
Once I’ve gotten a good idea of what I have on hand and what’s on sale at my nearby stores, I pull out my coupon box to match up coupons with the sales and see if I have any other coupons I want to be sure and use (such as high-value coupons or coupons for free items). I put these coupons in a stack and then it’s time to make my menu plan–which we’ll talk about in more detail in the next post in this series.
What are your best tips for menu-planning on a budget? Comment and tell us!
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Guest Post by Amber from The Hormonal Housewife
My husband and I were looking for a larger home for our growing family. We crunched the numbers and knew exactly how much our mortgage could be without piling on more debt. We spent time looking at homes in our area and were even considering building if we could do so on our budget.
This quest is how we ended up at a regional builder’s model home display. After explaining the building process to us, the agent told us that the overall price of the home wasn’t important; the only thing that mattered is the monthly payment. That’s when we knew we were in the wrong place.
You see, my husband and I have $35,000 in debt. How did we accumulate so much? The answer is simple: one payment at a time.
The scary truth is that the last time we financed a car, we weren’t even sure afterward how much the car itself cost us; we only knew how much we were paying for it each month. Scarier still—we don’t even own that car anymore.
We have three children now and the car couldn’t hold three car seats. We sold the car and used that money to buy a semi-dependable van. Unfortunately, we’re still making payments on a car we no longer have and we don’t even know how much it really cost in the first place.
All of our debt happened in a similar way: we financed something because even though we couldn’t afford to purchase the item, we could afford the monthly payments. My family could never file for bankruptcy even if we wanted to because we can still make every payment.
We struggle to buy clothing and pay for haircuts but we can still make all those payments for so many things we no longer have or are unable to use. Isn’t that sad?
As a couple, my husband and I are determined from now on that we will only buy things we can completely afford instead of making payments we think we can afford. Admitting to the world that we have so much debt because we made poor decisions is embarrassing. The reason we do tell others is because we are passionate about spreading the truth that monthly payments led us deep into debt.
We are working hard to become good stewards of the money with which we’ve been blessed by doing things like using cash and searching for deals on sites like Money Saving Mom. We hope to help others do the same.
Amber Clark is a former English teacher who is now the proud mother of three beautiful children. She is the author of The Hormonal Housewife and hopes to use her blog to encourage women to be better wives, mothers, and home managers.
photo credit: LemonJenny
Missed the first posts this series? Read them here.
Not only do I believe having a set amount to spend at the grocery store is imperative for lowering your grocery budget, but I also believe menu-planning is a must.
Do you dread 5 p.m. because it’s when you have to try to pull something together for dinner or feel guilty about ordering takeout yet again? Do you often find yourself running to the store at the last-minute in a frazzled state rushing through the aisles and throwing random things into your cart in hopes it will magically create a five-course dinner?
The truth is, you could throw away the 5 p.m. dread and almost completely eradicate the frazzled last-minute grocery store trips if you sat down at the beginning of the week and made a menu plan.
I can’t even begin to calculate how much we’ve saved over the years through the simple act of menu planning.
By planning ahead and buying all the groceries we’ll need for the week in one shopping trip, we save numerous trips to the store throughout the week. In addition, when you have a plan in place for what you’re supposed to be eating each meal and you’ve already purchased the ingredients for those recipes, it’s a lot harder to justify chucking the plan for takeout.
Menu planning is not rocket science and it only has to take a few minutes each week, but it can really make a difference in your life.
If you’re new to menu planning and wondering where to start or how to plan a menu on a budget, stay tuned for tomorrow’s post where I’ll share what works for our family when it comes to menu-planning.
Be sure to check out our brand-new Printable Menu Forms Pack which you can download here for free!
How does menu-planning benefit your family and life? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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as low as $1 per week with Discounted Newspapers!
I don’t know about you, but menu-planning is a whole lot more enjoyable when you have a pretty and organized page to write on. So I asked Joy from FiveJs if she could whip up a few downloadable pages I could offer on my blog.
Well, after it was all said and done, she ended up doing 11 different menu-planning forms! There’s a one-week, two-week, and four-week form and different variations of each.
Download the free Menu Planning Forms Pack here and choose which form works best for you–or try them all!
“A budget??”
I can hear the groans right now. You were all pumped about these great new money-saving ideas you were going to learn and implement from this series; the last thing you wanted to hear about was a boring topic like budgets.
Remember how you promised me yesterday that you were going to stop making excuses and commit to change? Well, setting up a budget is your first opportunity!
Without a budget in place, all the money you save is pretty superficial. I’d go so far as to say that without a budget in place, bargain-shopping, coupon-clipping and deal-hunting are likely not going to save you any money. In fact, you might be spending more money in an effort to save money–which totally negates the savings, right?
A budget gives you the ability to track your spending and saving–and hopefully to see an increase in savings and a decrease in spending. Without a budget in place, your money will just be running through your fingers with no set objectives. A budget gives you parameters and purpose, it gives you boundaries and it gives you freedom to live creatively within those boundaries.
How much have you spent at the grocery store over the last 4-8 weeks? Average that amount out and use it as a basis for your initial grocery budget. Ultimately, you’re likely going to want to whittle it down quite a bit–since saving money is one of the big purposes of having a grocery budget!–but now is not the time to worry about that. It’s a huge step just to start with a concrete budget in place.
Don’t put undo pressure on yourself to come up with some crazily-low and impossible-to-stick-with figure for your grocery budget. This is not a contest or a competition and if you want to persevere and see long-lasting benefits, you’ll want to give yourself some breathing room.
Over time and with practice, you’ll likely be able to reduce your original grocery budget figure fairly significantly. But just remember: it takes time. You’re not going to cut your grocery bill in half this month. However, if you slowly shave off 5% here and 5% there, within 6-10 months, it’s very possible you can have it lowered by 30-50% or even more.
Always give yourself grace, though. If you’re ever feeling frustrated or stressed about it, step back and remind yourself that it’s just a grocery budget. The world’s not going to come to an end if it’s $5 or $10–or even $30 or $50!–more than you’d like it to be.
What benefits have you found from sticking with a grocery budget? What advice would you have for someone who is brand-new to the idea of budgeting? Tell us in the comments!
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After about four hours of work, here’s what my sister and I had to show for our efforts:
Chicken and Red Bean Burritos (recipe from The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook
)
Lemon Chicken x 3 (recipe from The $5 Dinner Mom Cookbook
White Bean and Chicken Chili (recipe from Eat Well, Save Big Cookbook)
2 bags of cooked brown rice
1 bag of cooked Great Northern beans
All totaled, the above should make enough for about 25 dinners for our family–plus some breakfasts and lots of Butterhorns! I sent 8 of the meals home with my sister as a thank you for all her help.
The rest of the meals should last us almost an entire month since we eat an average of 16-20 home-cooked dinners per month. (We go out to eat once a week and usually have dinner at our parents’ homes 1-2 times per week, plus we also eat leftovers or a really simple dinner of sandwiches or cereal a few times a month, too!)
It feels so nice to have the freezer all stocked up again!
Did you have a chance to do any baking or cooking this week? If so, post about it on your blog and leave your link below to your direct blo g post. I’d love it especially if you could share pictures and recipes so we can get ideas for our next Freezer Cooking Day! And I’m guessing many others would be inspired as well.
While the thought of making up casseroles and freezing them might not be appealing to your family, there are many ways that you can use your freezer to speed up cooking preparations. Here’s one example:
I really do not enjoy chopping up onions (does anyone?), but I do love how they taste in recipes, so I’ve found that my best options are to buy bags of frozen already-chopped onions at the store (which I have done when I’ve found a good sale on them!) or to chop them in bulk and freeze them. I usually opt for the latter since it just seems fresher to me, for some reason.
I did a big batch of onions on Freezer Cooking Day and thought I’d share what works for me:
1) Cut off the ends, peel, and cut in fourths.
2) Stick in the food processor and chop. If you don’t have a food processor, you can also use a blender, though it will chop the onion pretty fine.
3) Measure 1/2 cup of chopped onions into small sandwich baggies and then stick these into a freezer bag (as shown above). Freeze.
You can then just pull out a bag of chopped onions and use them in recipes whenever they call for chopped onion. Doing them in bulk like this saves a lot of time and effort–and tears! However, if I had followed the advice from Meal Planning Mommies here, I wouldn’t have had to worry about the tears!
“You can’t change anything when your ‘want-to’ is broken.” -Kevin Catalyst
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received emails which say something like, “I really wish we could lower our grocery budget, but…”
You know what? If you start with that attitude, you’ll likely never succeed at having a better grocery budget. Sure, you might not be able to get your grocery budget down as low as someone else–maybe your family eats gluten-free, or maybe you eat all organic, or maybe you live in a rural area with only one over-priced store–but the truth is: you can lower your grocery budget.
But it will never happen until you stop making excuses and commit to change.
So I’m starting out this series by challenging you to set aside the negativity and commit to wholehearted willingness to change your mindset, your shopping habits, and quite possibly even your life.
Your grocery budget is likely never going to change until you are also willing to.
Has changing the way you think or shop changed your grocery bill? Tell us about it!
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Gretchen added spices and onions to the already-browned ground beef for Taco Meat and then she took on that task of making all the Butterhorn rolls (a rather tedious task that I was completely happy having her volunteer for!).
While she was busy with that, I put together four pans of FishMama’s Lasagna, the marinade for the lemon chicken (I took this recipe times three and divided frozen chicken breasts into three bags and poured a third of the marinade into each), and the White Bean and Chicken Chili.
Whew! What a great feeling to be done–and it was only 1:15 p.m.! I’m so very, very glad my sister said she’d help. Without her, I would still be back on the second recipe, I’m pretty sure. But instead, in four hours, we whipped out 25 dinners plus 64 Butterhorns and a batch of Blueberry Pancakes! Plus, we had leftover cooked brown rice and beans to freeze and chopped onions, too.
Our little kitchen “helper” (ahem, he enjoyed pulling out all the contents from under the kitchen sink!)
And the girls–with make-up on! (Auntie Gretchen had fun playing “beauty shop” with them while she was here!)
Stay tuned tomorrow for the final picture of everything we made ready to go in the freezer. I’ll post a link-up post at 12 p.m. CST for you to come and share your Freezer Cooking Day accomplishments, too. I can’t wait to see what you made!
Someone had left a tip on a recent Freezer Cooking Day suggesting that I try baking the chicken instead of boiling it. I’m not sure who left that tip, but it’s a good one. I just stuck the frozen chicken breasts straight onto a baking sheet and cooked them at 350 degrees for around 45 minutes, turning them once while they were cooking (not exactly sure on how long I ended up cooking them because I just checked them every 10 minutes or so to see if they were done).
Wow! The chicken breasts came out so much more tender and juicy than they do when I boil them. Plus, it freed up some stove-top space, too! So a big thanks to whomever suggested that (I couldn’t seem to find the original comment to specifically thank the individual!).
After the Cheeseburger Meatloaf was in the oven and the Blueberry Pancakes were cooking, we moved on to the burritos. Gretchen made the Brown Bag Burritos and I made the Chicken and Red Bean Burrito recipe. We love Brown Bag Burritos–especially the guys in our family. I’m so thankful to Amy for sharing this winner recipe. We doubled it and should have enough burritos to keep our husbands happy for the next few weeks!
I wasn’t thrilled with how the Chicken and Red Bean Burritos turned out and ended up adding some salt to the recipe as I thought the filling seemed a little bland. That seemed to do the trick.
Next up: Taco Meat, Lasagna, Lemon Chicken, & White Bean Chili