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Pantry Challenge – Week 3

January 24, 2016 BudgetEpicurean Leave a comment

So now we are in the home stretch of this challenge! Week 3 of January has come and gone, and I’m planning our final week of January and eating from the pantry. If you’re just tuning in and want the full scoop, check out these posts:

How it all started & Why
Week 1 Update
Week 2 Update

The only wrench in this week so far is the impending snow storm the East is getting this weekend. As I write this early Saturday, we already have a few inches of accumulated snow, with more on the way all weekend long. But I’m not worried. We have plenty of food still stocked in the freezer & pantry, including non-cook items like packaged salmon & tuna, granola bars, and pop-tarts (yeah, I still have a few boxes I bought on sale a while ago hanging out…)

To prepare for the snow storm, we also brought in three extra stacks of fire wood and piled it in a corner of the living room, found three flashlights and made sure there were new batteries, and have lots of water stored away, just in case. When it comes to Mother Nature, you just never know what she’s gonna throw at you.

This week, all I’ve bought at the grocery store includes:

Dairy		Fruit/Veg
Kefir (2)	5.28	Avocado	0.98
Half and half	3.98	Apples (3)	1.87
Ricotta cheese	3.47	Bananas (9)	0.86
Yogurt (8)	3.64	Oranges (2)	1
TOTAL	$21.08	Pears (2)	1.32

I’m just over my $20 limit, which is fine. All told, I’ve gone over each week, but by $3 or less each time. If this were an actual life-or-death financial situation, I would definitely not be buying as much fresh produce, or any at all. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice short-term nutrition until you are in a more stable financial place before you can add back in fresh produce and dairy. But I am lucky enough to have the resources to not worry if I go over my budget by a dollar or two, and am very thankful for that!

This past week’s menu included:

Jan 16 – Butternut squash macaroni & cheese for lunch, Olive Garden for date night dinner
Jan 17 – Black bean turkey burgers & fries, salad
Jan 18 – Chicken cacciatore
Jan 19 – Leftover burgers, asparagus, potatoes
Jan 20 – Burritos
Jan 21 – Stuffed shells, salad
Jan 22 – Leftover buffet

Breakfast was mostly oatmeal (steel cut oats, dried cranberries, cinnamon & water or nut milk) or toast & almond butter, and lunches were almost exclusively leftovers from dinner. One day I went and got lunch from a food truck at work, and one night we used a gift card from Christmas to go to Olive Garden for dinner. Both of those occasions ended up giving us enough leftovers for two more meals as well, so one time eating out = 3 meals total.

Overall, this challenge is not as challenging as I thought it might be, but that is likely because I’ve stocked up so thoroughly before now that I have too much excess. So I guess I’ve learned I need to either calm down on buying when there are deals (sad face) or have these challenges on a more regular basis, where I use up a good portion of pantry items before I buy more.

It is also teaching me to be more creative about leftovers. For example, I had a butternut squash that I had used for decoration for Halloween (yup, they last a looooong time) and also some cracker-sized cheddar cheese slices I’d bought on sale and we never used. Therefore, I naturally decided to make butternut squash mac & cheese. Even using only half the squash made a TON (there is still enough for another serving or two…) and I have half a cooked and mashed squash, to turn into soup, or butternut squash gnocchi this week!

Just looking in the fridge at what odds and ends are still hanging around can give you ideas about what to make that will cost you little to nothing extra for a whole new meal, so this is a big money-saver. And of course, if all else fails, make soup! Now with winter finally roaring to life, there’s nothing quite so warm and comforting as a hot bowl of soup. You can throw just about anything into a pot, add water and spices, and have a meal ready in 20 minutes flat.

Stay tuned for the final week!

Finances

How to: Save money on your grocery bill

February 16, 2014 BudgetEpicurean 2 Comments

Groceries are a fact of life. Unless you are one of a VERY small minority, you do not raise and/or grow all the food you eat. Also I’m sure there are people out there who never cook their own food, but rely on take-out and fast food for daily nutrition. That blows my mind of course, because I find such joy in cooking, creating, and enjoying homemade meals.

There aren’t many things more exciting to me than to bring home a big load of groceries for less than I intended to spend. Every time I go grocery shopping, I have a certain number in my head that I am allowing myself to spend. If I get everything I need for the week for less than that number, I am excited. If I go over that number, I just know I need to plan better, or have better impulse control, next time.

My plan of attack when it comes to grocery shopping is always the same. It comes down to:

1. Knowing what you use most often

2. Paying attention to sales & in-season produce

3. Price comparing between a few stores

4. Buying generic or store brands

5. Making a budget and sticking to it

Know what you use most often

To know what you use most often, simply pay attention to what you run out of the most. What types of foods do you and/or your family want to eat often? Do you make a lot of pasta? Maybe cereal disappears within a day. Is there a tradition in the family like Taco Tuesdays? Noticing what you use often will help you plan around sales and stock up on staples. What I use most hasn’t changed much over the past few years: rice, canned diced tomatoes, canned beans, frozen mixed vegetables. These things make up the bulk of my weekly diet. I don’t know that I’ve ever gone a week without eating each of those things somehow.

Pay attention to sales & in-season produce

Sprouts Farmers Market is a place I go often because of their amazingly cheap produce. I get weekly salad greens, fresh fruits and vegetables there. Most staple items like bread, tortillas, canned goods, etc, comes from King Sooper or somewhere else. Which reminds me, if there is something or certain kinds of food you need a specialty store for, keep them in your rotation of ads to watch.

All this produce was under $30! And most of that is just their everyday low prices, not bargain sales. However, most grocery stores will greatly discount whatever produce is in season, because they have a lot of it and it needs to sell before it goes bad. Pay attention to what is in season, and maybe try a new fruit or vegetable you’ve never had that’s on sale. You may have found a cheap new favorite!

Price compare between stores

Every week I get ads from at least seven different stores. I have a few favorites that I pick out, the others I discard because they are too far from me or for some other reason I don’t shop there. Typically Sprouts Farmers Market, King Soopers, and Albertson’s ads get saved and looked through.

I will sit down and look through each ad quickly, circling items which I know are a good deal, or which I use often and are on sale. Then I compare amongst the three which has more deals that week. Sometimes I will go to all three if the deals are worth it, usually I end up going to only one or two with the most things I want to buy.

When there is a really good sale, I mean one that you only see once or twice a year, I will stock up. For example Albertson’s sometimes has “buy one get two free” sales on meats, or King Soopers often has 10 for $10 sales. I know how quickly I go through my pantry items, so if kidney beans are 50 cents, I will be bringing at least a dozen home. Because they usually are 69 cents, which saves me 19 cents per can. That may not sound like much, but it’s little things like that, added up over years, that makes a big difference in bank account balances.

Buy generic or store brands

If you are a loyal brand-centric consumer and you don’t trust generics, start small. Try the store brand of flour, or salt, and cook with it. When you can’t tell the difference, try some granola bars or oatmeal. Pretty soon you will see what items you can’t tell the brand name from generic and which items are really different in quality. By this point, the things I refuse to buy generic I could probably count on one hand, because there just isn’t enough of a difference in quality for me to justify the price difference. And that saves me hundreds every year!

Make a budget & stick to it

As mentioned earlier, I look at a budget as a game. It is a number I set in my head, based on how much I think I’ll buy, that I try to beat. If I find some deal or coupon that brings down my total, I have a better chance of winning. If I plan and price compare, I have a better chance of winning. The lower the total at the register, the higher the total in my checking account!

You can read more in my earlier article on making a budget & sticking to it, which includes how to add in all the things you spend money on monthly, not just food.

I have read tons of articles that advocate for making a weekly or monthly meal plan, stressing those items on sale that week, and then buying only those things you need to complete the plan. I am not quite that organized to pull that off yet. Instead, I have a rotation of meals that I know I love and can make quickly, which all use the same basic ingredients. Then I add in a few meals I’ve found recently that I want to try making, or if there is an event coming up, I’ll add any items I need for those things to the list.

If I’m feeling extra over-achieving, I will even split the list into types, like “dairy”, “carbs”, “produce”, etc. to make navigating the store easier. But if I don’t get around to it, I don’t beat myself up. And almost every week for several months, I get more than enough groceries for under $100. I’m sure I could pare that down to half or less, but I also enjoy cooking new and more expensive foods now and then, and experimenting with things for this blog.

Anyhow, if you normally only grocery shop when there’s nothing left in the house but a can of spaghetti-os and some green sour cream, try these simple steps. Check around and price compare, make a list before you go, then pick up only those things on the list. Short, sweet, and you can be sure you’re saving yourself some cash. You can look over those grocery receipts and smile.

How often do you shop for food?

Finances

How to make & stick to a budget

January 26, 2014 BudgetEpicurean 5 Comments

How to make a budget

Part of any healthy financial plan, a budget is a critical tool to help you find out and control where your money is coming from and more importantly where it is going. Many people cringe as soon as they hear the word “budget” because they think that means never having fun ever again, which is simply untrue. The beauty of a budget is that YOU are in charge of it. You call all the shots, from what categories there are to the amounts allocated to each. And they can be amended as your life situation changes to allow for schooling, a raise, a job loss, a move, a marriage, a baby, a divorce, etc.

So how does one go about creating a budget?

Your first step should be sitting down with a pen and piece of paper, or a Word or Excel document, and writing down every single thing on which you spend money on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis. Include housing (rent/mortgage/taxes), transportation (bus pass/gas/parking), food (groceries/dining out/coffee shops), and entertainment (movies/books/games/hobbies/vacations), as well as any other special categories you might need (children’s activities/debt repayment/investments).

Your next step is to either: a. keep track for a month to see what level of spending is in each category, b. use an online tracker such as Mint.com to track spending, or c. estimate the amount spent each month. This is your total spending. Now estimate or calculate your income each month. This can include paychecks, investment dividends, interest on savings, gifts from relatives, inheritance, side jobs, etc. This is your total income.

Your goal: Make the difference between your income and your spending as large & positive as possible

This is the “spending gap”, as covered in several great articles (Minding The Gap & The Gap Matters More Than Anything) by Trent from The Simple Dollar. You can increase your gap by either spending less or earning more, or ideally doing both. The larger your gap, the more room you have to pay down debt, invest, and sock away savings, and the less stressed you will be.

Let’s look at an example:

In the scenario on the left, the person in question makes about $54,000 a year (take-home of $4,500 a month) plus some extra from interest (assuming there are investments). The smart thing to do would be to re-invest that interest each month, thus adding to the principal amount invested and increasing the amount of interest.

Anywho, that adds up to $4,750 coming in each month. This person also appears to have a rather nice home and car, as well as a lively social life, causing spending to total $2,450 per month. Even at this spending level, this person’s “gap” is a healthy $2,300 per month. They could use this to pay off debt like cards or loans, save for retirement, pad an emergency fund, or take a nice vacation.

On the other hand, the person on the right makes about $26,400 per year, and has no income other than their paycheck, which is $2,200 per month. While they have a lower housing payment, they have the same social and entertainment level as the person with a higher income, leading to a tiny “gap” of only $50 per month.

The best way to approach this, with the intention of increasing the gap, is to consciously choose a number smaller than the current spending level. If you then hold yourself to those smaller numbers, you will naturally see your spending gap widen in your favor.

If, for example, the person on the right were to move to a smaller housing situation or obtain a roommate, drive a smaller or older car, save money on groceries and eating out, decrease shopping and eliminate unnecessary spending like going out to the movies, the gap can widen to as much as $1,150 per month! That can become a nice savings account to eventually full-out buy a nicer car, a house of their own, make a job transition, or whatever dreams are yet to be fulfilled.

How to stick to a budget

Once you decide on the amount you want to spend per month on a certain category, now all you have to do is hold yourself to it. Easy right? Not so much when you’re new to budgeting. Or really at any point in your life. You see, we all have a tendency to get used to whatever lifestyle we currently lead. Our “wants” will always greatly outnumber our “needs”, and that leads to lifestyle inflation. That means when your income increases, you can fulfill more wants, so you expect a nicer lifestyle. Investopedia explains how this keeps us in the “rat race”, working just to pay the bills.

This more expensive lifestyle then becomes the new normal. Inexpensive or free activities aren’t as appealing because it seems “beneath” you since you have such a nice way of living. Unfortunately things happen which may decrease your income, but will not decrease your expectations. It is also more difficult to save and get ahead financially. The Simple Dollar also has a great article about Avoiding Lifestyle Inflation.

There are several ways you can avoid the temptation of lifestyle inflation.

If you get a raise, pretend you didn’t by putting that money straight into a savings or retirement account. If you don’t know it’s there, you can’t spend it.
Do NOT take on unnecessary debt. Just because you make enough doesn’t justify a huge loan for the newest car out there or a bigger house or more credit cards or whatever.
Forget about the Joneses. What other people have doesn’t matter, there will always be people with more money and things than you. Focus on your life, your relationships, and the things that bring you joy.
Continue finding free and inexpensive activities that fulfill you. Teach, tutor, volunteer, read, or go for walks. Enjoy the simple things in life.

For more ideas see YahooFinance, GetRichSlowly, or FabandFru.

The single best tip I can give you on sticking to a budget is to automate as much as possible. If 10% of your paycheck goes straight to a savings account minutes after it is deposited, you don’t have a chance to spend it at the mall. If you have accounts set up for grocery spending or entertainment and put only the amount you want to spend, then you can only spend as much as is in the account. This takes a lot of the work out of budgeting, and makes you accountable. Just be sure to keep an eye on amounts and balances every month.

How to save money

Another problem people have with budgeting is not being able to “find” any extra money to cover the bills, savings, investments, as well as social fun. A lot of people view being frugal as the same thing as being cheap or miserly. This is not necessarily the case. You can still have a vibrant social life and enjoy leisure activities without spending large amounts of money every month. And many easy tips that save you money over the long haul don’t even make a noticeable impact on your daily life.

You don’t have to go to the extremes of making your own laundry soap, living with a 55 degree home in the winter and 85 in the summer, or eating wild flowers to supplement your diet if you don’t want to. There are boatloads of frugal money-saving tips, and of course each one will not work for every person. You need to evaluate each tip according to your needs and lifestyle, try a few out, and keep only the ones that work for you.

My favorite way to save money is on food of course. I combine many different techniques to keep my grocery bill as low as possible. For starters, I very rarely eat out. Nearly every breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack is made by me in my home. This saves me a TON of money yearly. Say I got lunch at work each day, for an average of $8 per day. $8 x 5 days per week x 48 weeks per year = $1,920! Nearly $2,000. That’s 2 1/2 months of rent for me, or 7 1/2 months of car payment, or 10 months of groceries. By making my own meals, I save that amount and put it towards savings, retirement, and other goals.

I shop what’s on sale at the store, I stock on up frequently used items if there’s a good deal, I buy in bulk when I can, I pay attention to “per unit” prices, etc. I also take the bus to work in warmer months (I’m a student and we get a free bus pass, saving me $50/month in parking fees and gas), I insulated my apartment windows so the heating bill is lower, I buy clothes at Goodwill and consignment stores, and so on.

For more great tips on daily money saving strategies:

America Saves – 54 Ways to Save Money
Daily Finance – 5 Tips for Frugal Living That Won’t Leave You Feeling Miserable
How Stuff Works – 5 No-Brainer Money-Saving Tips Everyone Forgets
Learnvest – 9 Frugal-Living Tips from the Great Depression
Little House Living – Frugal Tips
Living Frugal Tips website and Savings category
The Simple Dollar – Little Steps: 100 Great Tips for Saving Money for Those Just Getting Started
US News – 8 Painless Ways to Save Money
zenhabits – The Cheapskate Guide: 50 Tips for Frugal Living

What’s your favorite frugal tip?

Budget Epicurean