Saving Money On Food: The Easy Way
Saving money on food is easy to do with just a little determination. There is always a way to eat cheap at home whether it be eating some ramen or making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Those are the basic ways friends of mine stayed afloat while in college. Pastas are also always a great option as it is inexpensive and easy for anyone to make.
All you need is a bag of pasta and either some butter or some pre-made pasta sauce from the grocery store. You can make one big batch of it and keep it for a few days so that you can make more than one meal out of it. You can easily add other ingredients that you have laying around in the fridge like mushrooms or different processed meats to help spruce the meal up. You can do searches online for cheap and easy dinners in order to find something that you will like. Also keep an eye out in the frozen section at grocery stores. They often have some great sales on frozen meals. You can eat for less than $2 per meal, which is really quite amazing. Leftovers really are a blessing for those who are trying to budget. Don’t let any food go to waste. Whatever you don’t finish save it for later. If you are at a restaurant, ask for a to go box and fill it with your leftovers plus bread that might be on the table as well. They are just going to throw it away, why waste it?!
Try to make one night a week be leftover night and have a plethora of different types of foods that you made and didn’t finish the days before. Or if you have leftover chicken or something, turn it into a soup for the next time. Just add some broth and a couple veggies and you are good to go on another meal with little cost involved. There are also ways to get free food such as going in stores like Costco on days when they have taste testers. You can also go to temples or churches because they often have one day a week that they serve free lunch to the community so that they can draw people in.
Look into your local community activities. There might be random pot lucks or events where people join together with a small dish and get to have a large meal due to everyone bringing something to share. Let family and friends know you are trying to budget what you spend on food so that they know to not try to tempt you with things like going to sushi dinners or other expensive outings. They may even say “hey come over for dinner at our place” which is not only great for your budget, but also a wonderful way to spend time with friends and family.
17 Brutally Honest Tips for Saving Money
There are many great ways to save money and live frugally and still enjoy your self in the process. Your first step should be to work up some sort of budget. To achieve this you need to come up with an accurate number for your income. Once you know how much money you have to work with you need to asses your fixed expenses, (Mortgage, Rent, Utilities, Car payment, Insurance, Phone bill ext). I would suggest running your numbers in monthly totals, (most bills are due monthly).
Now that you know how much money you have after your fixed expenses now it is time to learn how to live within your means by being “smart” with your money. If you ran your numbers for income and fixed expenses and found you can’t afford your fixed expenses you need to make drastic changes to your current obligations. Your first step should be to cut out any fixed expense that you can live without, for example do you need your cell phone? Can you reduce your rent by down sizing your home? Can you sell your vehicle to get out from under your payments and buy a less expensive vehicle with better fuel economy?
Can you turn your thermostat down in the winter and up in the summer to save on electricity? These are all great ideas on how to ensure you can cover your monthly fixed expenses. If you ran your numbers and found you have no problem covering fixed expenses but are lacking funds when it comes to ordinary expenses you should take a few money saving steps to ensure you have some money left over at the end of each month for unforeseen circumstances.
You may have to cut expenses in one or more areas or even maybe across the board. Every body’s situation is unique in one way or the other and the most important thing when it comes to saving money is to know how much money you have. When people understand there money situation and have a budget you are generally more conscious about your spending habits and tend to put more thought into your purchases which result in better decision making. Now that we know how important it is to have knowledge of your finances let me get to the nuts and bolts of how to save money and live frugal.
1) Cut out all spending that is not necessary to survive.
2) Look through sale ads on all grocery stores in your area.
3) Shop once a week, get everything you need. Extra trip to store costs gas money.
4) Shop around for your Insurance Quotes. Don’t settle on your first quote. 5) Pack your lunch. Try to eliminate eating out.
6) Eliminate needless driving around.
7) When shopping look at the price per unit. Sometimes you can actually buy more of the same product for less money, example half gallon of soy sauce on sale for $5.89 sitting on the same shelf right next to one gallon of soy sauce not on sale for $4.99. This is an example of one way I saved money the last time I went shopping.
Buy off-brands they are manufactured with the same quality and ingredients as the name brand for a fraction of the cost.
9) Recycle, you already pay for the container why not get your money back?
10) Turn down your thermostat it does not need to be set at 75 in the winter turn it to 68. 11) Your A/C in your home does not need to be set at 68 in the summer set it at 75.
12) You can hang dry your clothes to save energy.
13) If you keep your pants clean throughout the day why not ware those again before you wash them. Pants don’t ware out from warring them they ware out from washing them. So save money on energy and save money on clothes because you get more use out of them.
14) Transfer existing debt to a lower interest credit offer.
15) Start living within your budget to eliminate the need for credit and save finance charges.
16) Pay your bills on time; do not allow them to charge you up the ying yang because you were un responsible about getting your payment in on time.
17) Monitor credit limits do not allow yourself to go over your limit.
18) Buy in bulk and package or freeze un-used portions for later.
I cannot express this enough set your spending limits this is the single most important thing you can do. Most people don’t know or don’t care about there limits that is why “America” has such a credit problem. If you know your money situation and whether you want to cut expenses so you can start saving money or you need to cut expenses just so you can survive I am confident that your common sense will lead you in the right direction as to were to start cutting expenses first.
Do not let your ego get in your way. Accept the fact that you are in difficult financial times. Don’t let an average car cramp your style; you do not have to have the best of everything. If your girlfriend dumps you because you traded in the escalate for a Ford pinto it is probably a good thing because you don’t want a girlfriend like that anyway. I hope this information will put money into a new prospective for someone out there. I will say it again “work out a budget and stick to it” the rest is common sense (should I buy name brand cereal for $5.00 or should I buy the store brand for $2.50) common sense tells me store brand for $2.50.
Many Ways of Living Frugally
There are many ways to save money and live frugally, and some of them may actually be rewarding in ways beyond just seeing a little bit more in one’s bank account every month. If one is serious about saving money and a frugal lifestyle, the first step has to be becoming budget conscious: a good idea toward understanding one’s finances is to write down each expenditure, without fail, and to compare those notes to detailed records of every penny earned. With a good ledger of one’s earnings and expenditures in hand, developing a budget – paring back on little luxuries to ensure one’s necessary expenses are covered – becomes much easier.
But living within a budget doesn’t have to mean giving up everything enjoyable. Instead of bemoaning that a ten-dollar movie at the local multi-screen theater complex is out of reach or that premium cable television channels are too expensive, consider visiting a local library and exploring their collections of videos or DVDs – or even consider borrowing a book and spending a few hours reacquainting oneself with the joys of reading. Or, if visiting the local pub for a good meal and a beer competes with putting food on the table later in the month, consider cheaper alternatives like learning to cook a favorite dish or even learning to brew delicious craft beer at home in the kitchen or backyard (both are easy to do, very rewarding, and fiscally responsible when living on a budget).
One can even bank improvements to one’s health while saving money at every turn: take a walk to the grocery store for fresh ingredients every day instead of driving to the gym twice a week and there will certainly be more money in the bank saved from hard-earned cash otherwise spent on gas and membership fees while one’s own physical fitness will continue to improve. Clearly, with a little creativity and attention to detail (don’t stop writing down each expenditure and each penny earned!), anyone serious about living frugally and saving money can do so, enjoyably, one step at a time.
Wondering How To Save Money?
People are wondering how they can save money and still be able to live off what the make each week, month. One way to start that i use is clip out coupons and also if you have a printer, print out coupons from websites. Grocery bills have gone sky high but lately been going down some, same as gas.
Buy your meats in bulk is the next thing. Freeze what you will not be using for a while. Cook what you do have and precook your meals a head of time. When you know you are going to want to have a certain item for dinner that night. Take it out and re-heat it. Takes away time and energy. This way you have time to do other things as well.
By precooking your meals will save you time when you are to busy to cook a healthy meal for your family. Having children myself i know what that is like. Our schedules sometimes are not always the same. Sometimes we are all hungry at different times. So this way if one wants to eat at say 5 they can take what they want and heat it and eat. Frugal is my households first name these days. Actually i have always shopped pretty frugally. Even when buying paper goods, bathroom supplies, soap and things in that nature. I buy what is not only cheaper but buy the one that has more than the more expensive brand.
Gives me more for less and more for my money. Paper goods and such I usually go to a discount store most the time. Those are the best places to go when you need toothpaste, tissue, etc.. Living frugally is not has hard as some may think. It is easy and if you set your mind to it you will do just fine. When thinking you want to buy the name brand item at the grocery store or store in general. Compare the ingredients and you will find not much of difference from the store brand to the name brand just the name. With name brand you pay for the name not the product. Save money, live frugally and be budget conscious with the tips you find and get from others.
Keep A Ledger To Save Money
The number one thing that I have found that helps me personally save money is keeping a ledger of absolutely every single penny I spend. It helps you realize, over time, exactly how much you spend on any given thing throughout the years. I used to buy a lot of coffee from coffee shops, thinking, “Oh, it’s only 4 dollars.” Then I realize that 4 dollars adds up to 1460 dollars a year. Caffeine is definitely not worth that much to me. I could have invested all of that money in something worthwhile, and I’d probably have a fair amount of additional money to spend on whatever I actually NEEDED. It seems obvious, but I really didn’t even realize it was THAT much until I saw the number in front of me. Having a list of expenditures allows a person to see what isn’t necessary, and “cross it off” the list. The visual representation really helps significantly. Sure, it does take a little bit of time to do this, and perhaps a bit of effort to get into the habit of doing it, but the amount of money a person can save by just knowing how much they spend on any given thing is worth every second.
Saving Tips – Use Coupons
A great way to save money on groceries is to really utilize coupons. You can clip them yourself from the newspaper or buy them for a small fee from somebody who has already done the work. Online auction sites are a good source for large lots of coupons at very low prices.
When you buy them you are actually paying for the time it takes to clip them, but the price is usually well worth it: for instance, you could get 100 or more coupons for a buck.
Several online sites have printable coupons you can print out and use yourself. If you do that, make sure to set your printer on a low quality setting that uses less ink, since ink is so expensive! Some experts say the best time to grocery shop is early morning, midweek, when there aren’t too many shoppers and the morning markdowns have not sold out. In combination with coupons, this could be quite a money-saver. Try it out and see if it works for you.
Don’t forget to buy store brands whenever possible, especially items like soda. The savings can be quite significant. Also, grab a sales flyer at the entrance to the store, if there are any, and make a mental note of any great deals you find. Lastly, don’t forget to check out the clearance rack, usually in the back, which might have items in damaged boxes for huge markdowns. Good luck and happy shopping!
Extreme Saving and Money Advice from WiseBread
This isn’t exactly a freebie but talks about getting free stuff from hotels and other places to save money. This is a great article about being frugal and currently I follow a lot of this advice on this site to save large amounts of money. They say focus on cash back sites like MSN’s new cash back program that pays you to shop. Check out this extreme saving article here.
