Buy in Bulk

We haven’t touched much on food storage and its potential to not only help families be prepared for emergencies but to also save a lot of money. I’ll start off that topic here by pointing out the benefits of buying things in bulk, particularly when they’re on sale.

My dad would always take full advantage of “case lot” sales that grocery stores would have. He would come home with large boxes of canned goods (soups, fruits, veggies, etc.), cereals, hamburger helper, and many more goods that had a shelf life of at least a year or two. With a family of seven, there was no concern about the food going bad.

I’m not aware of any stores around here that do those same type of case lot sales, where they deeply discount a bunch of goods for a day or two, but the same principle applies. When you see a sale for an item your family uses frequently, consider buying a bunch of it. Of course this requires you to have a budget for items that come on sale but aren’t necessarily on your list, because it’s tough to predict when stuff will go on sale.

I’ll point out one exception to his and that is for items that you know your family will go through much faster simply because there’s more of it in the house. For example, if you see it a great deal on potato chips, it may not be a great idea to buy 20 bags if that means that you’ll go through the chips twice as fast as you would normally.

Save on Gas

We usually realize we’ve spent a bit on gas when we go for a long drive, but we tend to be less conscious of how all the little trips add up. For example, we were recently discussing the local YMCA. For a great price it has a gym and a pool, and they’ll even watch the kids in the day care while you exercise. However, the Y is 12 miles from our home. That means a round trip of 24 miles, which is roughly a gallon of gas for our cars. With the current price of gas, that means one trip to the gym is $3.50 in gas. If you go three times a week (okay, that’s optimistic for me but we’ll assume you’re better), that’s $10.50/week and nearly $50/month. When you add that to the cost of the gym membership, it doesn’t seem like nearly as good a deal. That doesn’t mean we will drop our membership, but knowing the true cost of the gym helps evaluate potential alternatives that might cost more in membership fees but less in mileage.

This is also another reason to follow Keegan’s advice about planning out trips to the grocery store. If you can go shopping just once a week (or even once every two weeks) and avoid all those little trips to pick up stuff you forgot, you’ll not only save shopping time and money, you’ll also save a lot in gas. It all adds up...

Shopping Lists

I guess I'm into "tricks," as my last suggestion was a paper budget, which I consider a sort of a budgeting trick. This time, the trick I have in mind is a pre-made grocery list. What I mean by this is that I have a document saved that has a list of groceries we frequently buy. This is also a time-saving tool (and sanity-saving since I often go shopping with my two boys). In order for it to be the most helpful, I have the grocery list organized by aisle at the grocery store we shop at. By this I mean that the dairy products are under "Dairy," the cereal and granola bars are listed under "Cereal," etc. I print out this document and put it up in our kitchen. Then, when my husband or I think of something we need or I plan my menu for the week, I highlight the items we need. If it's not on the list, I do it the old-fashioned way and write it where I would find it.

When Patrick talked about shopping around for apartments, he mentioned how recurring expenses can really add up if you're not careful. One way we've found this to be true is if we don't plan ahead so that we have to make several trips to the grocery story in a week. The more trips out to the grocery store, the more likely that we end up spending money on unplanned items, and anyway it's a waste of gas. Any sort of a grocery list can help with this, but my pre-made shopping list has been a great help at our house to help us to be organized, to be fast, and to save money.

One other way it helps with saving money is that for awhile, I found myself wandering back and forth to get things (because it would be farther down on my list so I'd have to double-back when I saw it) so that grocery shopping was taking forever! Since it was already taking so long and I was so stressed--because by an hour into it, my kids were DONE-- I stopped doing a very good job of price comparisons. Now that I'm more organized, it's easier for me to take the time to buy the cheapest item. This trick has been a great help to me and I foresee it being a normal part of our lives for the rest of our family life.

Make the Milk Last

I like milk. So does my wife. So do our kids. We drink a lot of milk in our house. Not as much as I would if it came out the tap, but still a lot. So we notice when the price of milk goes up, as it has in the past year or so. We’ve started a practice which may shock and disgust some of you, but it works. We buy powdered milk. Yep. I know it sounds gross, but it’s not bad. To mitigate the strange taste, we mix it with real milk 50/50. If you buy powdered milk in bulk from food storage suppliers, it’s much cheaper than the real stuff. You follow the directions to mix the powder with water, then mix the fake stuff with the real stuff and let it sit in the fridge overnight. This cuts probably 30-40% off our milk expenses.

Eating In

Going out to eat is a real luxury when living on a student budget. It mostly happens when we receive gift cards for birthdays or Christmas. I’ve had fun making special dinners for my wife that include a lot more food at a much lower cost than what we'd pay in a restaurant. I try to replicate the fine dining experience by emailing her a formal invitation and menu several days ahead of time with several choices for appetizers, entrees (a degree or two fancier than our normal dishes), desserts, and drinks. She’ll respond with her choices, I’ll buy the ingredients, cook the dinner, and we enjoy a great three-course meal at much less cost than in a restaurant.

Buy Per Ounce

Groceries are a huge monthly expense. There are a lot of ways to save here, but one is to simply identify the cheapest items when comparing several brands of the same product. Companies make this tough by selling their products in different quantities than the competitors’ equivalent products. This is especially true of cereals, but also with cheeses, bottled products, and others. For example, one brand of cheerios might be $3 per box. Another brand is only $2.50 but the box is smaller. You can take the time to look at the weight of each and do the math, but fortunately, a lot of stores do this for you. In small print on the price label is often the per ounce price.  This is super helpful for finding the cheapest product, especially with “commodity” type products where one brand isn’t any better than another.

Brown Bag Lunches

I have a lot of ideas I’m excited to share, but I’ll start with a simple one. Bringing your own lunch to work or school every day can save A LOT of money.  It has long amazed me how few people bring their lunch from home. I’m not sure if it’s a convenience issue or if it doesn’t occur to most people how much it can save.

A while back I calculated the cost of my routine (but delicious) lunch of a turkey and Swiss cheese sandwich, chips, apple, and sometimes a yogurt or some cookies. It was just over $1 and is more food than I would get for $6 at the school café. Bringing my lunch saves us well over $100 a month.

As a side note, my wife thinks it’s bizarre that I eat the same thing for lunch every day. She’s probably right, but fortunately you can bring just about any lunch from home and it will be way cheaper than buying it at the restaurant down the street from the office.