The Provident PhD
is a personal financial blog for graduate student families, particularly for
families with one spouse raising the children and the other attending school
full time. The experience of financing school through savings, student loans,
and summer jobs has a refining effect on a family’s financial skills. We hope The Provident PhD will be a forum for
sharing practical money saving ideas, including some specific to the unique
college family audience. For example, upcoming posts will offer suggestions on
couponing, cheap dates, food storage, simple car maintenance, and how to take
advantage of the perks of student status. Of course discovering ways to save
money should be a universal pursuit and we hope The Provident PhD will be a
useful tool to readers outside the graduate student family audience.
Grocery Shopping with a plan....
ReplyDeleteHave you ever gone grocery shopping and you arrive at the check out counter and by accident you find yourself spending $50-100 more then you anticipated? Ever find yourself thinking that the Digiorno pizza with breadsticks and cookies that costs $7-8 for two people is a necessity? This was all too common in our household. One thing that really helped us with the pandemic of impluse buying and purchasing itmes that are not necessarily needed is to plan.
We have found that when we get together as a family and plan out our meals for the next two weeks or so our grocery bill was cut significantly. Not only did we cut our grocery bill but we also found ourselves making better food selections and eating healthier. The success of the idea lies in the planning. We discuss the meals that we enjoy and make a list of the various items to be purchased. Then when we go shopping we keep that list of items and set a goal to just get only those items included.
The other money and time saving concept within this idea is for smaller families. When we make the meals that we have planned for we always make enough to feed 4-6 people. This way we have some leftovers that can be used for lunches for school or work. This is a great money saving idea because it prevents us from thinking there is nothing to eat for lunches and it prevents us from going out to eat.