Money Saving Thread

Lounge
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With rising costs it’s very hard to save money. A lot of the old tips and tricks just don’t work now. @LilyoftheValley asked how I make ends meet… This is part of how.

I feed 7 people on a small budget. I don’t coupon on food often because I do most of my shopping at Walmart. Walmart has a lot of cheaper items. I always purchase the Great Value brand unless the name brand is on sale cheaper. GV brand tastes just as good, if not better than name brand.

I buy the same meats almost every trip. A large tube of ground beef, several packs of chicken thighs or breasts(whichever is cheaper), a large pack of italian sausage, several packs of stew beef, and if they are on sale- one or two packs of cubed steaks.

We have a large list of foods we made that we pick meals from for those trips. The best way to save mo ey is to choose meals that use similar ingredients. For example:

Spaghetti
Baked pasta
Mock chicken parmigiana
Tacos
Italian sausage and roasted potatoes
Beef and broccoli (stew beef for this)

All of those use similar ingredients, so you just need to buy more of each ingredient. 3 of those meals can have salad as a side, no other sides needed. Again, just triple ingredients. Tacos use lettuce, tomatoes, and black olives, which I also use in my salads.

My simple salad recipe is a base of lettuce, then a can of black olives, 1 chopped cucumber, 1 chopped tomato, 1 can chick peas. When other produce is on sale I will dress up the salad more. This salad is perfect with all Italian meals, steak, cube steak, or topped with cubed chicken or steak.

Buy in bulk when you can. It may seem more expensive, but it almost always saves when compared to buying individuals.

Learn to make everything you possibly can from scratch. There’s many recipes online for making your own mixes for many things. Try them out!

Another way to save is by basing your meals around sales. Check your local store’s sale papers pr download the app “flipp”. That app grabs all sales from your area.

Always hit meat sales when you have the money and stock up as much as you can afford. Meat can last a long time in the freezer.

If you shop multiple stores, learn which has the best prices on what. In most cases, Walmart will have the lowest prices on everything if you have a super walmart on your area. Other good stores for deals are Aldi and SavALot. SavALot has great meat sales. Also, start at the one thats farther and work your way back toward home to save gas.

Two more tips before I close. Beware of coupons. Most are on name brand items and don’t bring the price down to generic’s price. There’s sites that teach peoplero do extreme couponing, but its a LOT of hard work and doesn’t always work.

Always sign up for store loyalty cards. You can get decent coupons from the store sites downloaded to your card and also they have a lotof sales just for cardholders. You can accumulate points and use for gas at some stores.

Hope this all made sense!

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Thanks for the tips @anon4362788 . I am pretty good at saving money. I am probably going to losing some in coming months because of vet and dental bills but most months I do well.

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My tips:

sign up for things like ibotta. It’s mostly brand name stuff, but sometimes it’s any brand. It works with EBT, too. Also, it’s often on things you need anyways and sometimes brings prices down enough to be lower than generics.

Make a meal plan. It’s annoying af to get started with, but once you have a two week plan, you can just recycle it every two weeks and if you want to eat something new, you can just swap things out. But having a plan and sticking to it will keep a lot of food from going to waste. You will know how much of everything you need and won’t accidentally buy too much of this or that that just rots in your fridge. If you need help with this, there are a ton of examples on google, but also, feel free to message me and I’ll help any of you put one together.

I’ve mostly cut out ground beef and replaced it with ground pork or ground chicken except for the rare burger. My partner is super picky with food, but the ground pork is mostly unnoticeable in things like tacos, spaghetti sauce, etc. And if you’ve got a half decent spice cabinet you can make your own breakfast sausage pretty easily.

If you like bread and get bored enough to attempt making your own, it’s super cheap and pretty easy if you know how to read a recipe. But otherwise, Walmart bakery always has a clearance rack with good stuff that usually will last several days.

If you like to buy yogurt, buy the big one and not a bunch of little cups (also, those little cups aren’t recyclable in a lot of places). If you go through a lot of something, definitely compare prices. Buying the bigger size is not always more cost effective.

Buy produce in reasonable amounts. If you really want an apple, so you buy a whole bag, but you know you’re likely to only actually eat 2, just buy 2.

Also, if you go through a lot of onions, a lot of times you can replace an onion for green onions and it’s good enough. If you buy one bunch of green onions, you can cut them down to the white part and then put them in a bit of water and they will regrow. Go outside and get scoop of soil and plant them in some old food containers. Mine are in a milk jug I cut the top off of. But there are a bunch of things you can regrow from food scraps in your windowsill.

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Thanks for the tips.

I try to save by only buying what I really need.

Buying store brands where possible.

It all makes a difference.

Also by stopping bad addictions that drain my money exponentially.

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Good advice!

Speaking from personal experience, I recommend unsubscribing from ALL promotional emails. For example, Starbucks emailing about how you can “save” by buying one latte and getting the second one for free, or American Eagle emailing about a great sale on shirts, etc…

The “Huge Sale!!” type of emails might just make you feel like shopping, when you weren’t even thinking of it before. You might feel pressured to get a good deal on something, even though you didn’t really need that thing in the first place.

I’ve been saving money just by not being bombarded with sale/“good deal” emails. If it’s not being thrown in my face, I don’t even think about it.

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All great tips!

The way I’ve been saving money recently is not eating out. Chronic fatigue from my physical illness makes cooking from scratch almost impossible, still though I survive on a lot of canned soup, canned veggies, bananas, I do love to make my Italian baked tomatoes when I feel like I can stand long enough in the kitchen. I spend about $40-55 on groceries per week for a single person just me.

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Stop all those push notifications, too! Target and Amazon used to get me with those so I had to turn them off. I almost never even open them anymore unless I’m looking for something specific.

Also, subscription services. You truly do not need multiple streaming services. Cycle them out one at a time. One month you pay for Netflix, the next you pay for Hulu, the next you pay for HBO, etc. Just put all of them on hold and pick one per month to watch all the things.

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Do you have a rollator? Mine has been a true godsend for my fatigue. I use it in the kitchen all the time.

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My apartment is too small for a rollator (350 sq ft studio) but I do use a cane to get around and that helps. I’m also going to get a stool for the kitchen

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A good thread. I spend a lot on groceries. I’m well aware I do . My cooking skills are limited and due to my difficulties organising and planning i don’t have a weekly meal plan. For me it has to be simple i.e not lots of ingredients ,instructions and timings. I know that beans and pules are cheaper and can bulk out a meal, but I don’t like them very much. What I need is an ‘idiots guide to meal planning and eating cheaply and well’. Basic instructions that are very easy to follow. What I would call ‘cook it all in one saucepan/wok/frying pan/casserole dish/slo cooker type meals’.

I do ask my (s)daughter to make meals for me every now and then. It does work out a bit cheaper.

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I plan on shopping at aldi.

It’s a lot cheaper.

Only go to the local more expensive shop as little as possible.

Potato and onion soup is cheap as is minestrone soup and chick pea salad.

Eat less processed foods if I can.

In Sweden they had netto n I loved netto.

Lidl is cheap too as is Willy’s cash.

Also going to the library to lend books even though I feel uncomfortable going there and don’t know how to scan.
I bought second hand books before but it’s too expensive.

So from here on library for me.

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Very worthwhile thread for our community! We are just two now and it’s hard because dad is a fussy eater. We pay premium for our goods but we eat well. Still. If it’s just me I’d be doing spag bol and freezing it for sure. So many good meals you can do that are healthy and with household things like cleaning we buy in bulk for sure…Just makes sense.

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Best thing i ever did was invest in 2 large chest freezers. One i use daily - and the other one is full of meat. Ive got a good 4 months worth of food stocked up. I wrap the meat individually in freezer bags with the date i froze it on them - that way you get more in.

Im lucky that my brother works part time for bookers (a wholesale shop) - so ill get like a box of 56 burgers for half the price using his discount.

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Even in a small country like Denmark there are several apps to find food on discount. Try to find the relevant moneysaving apps in you country.

We also have one app for food that is a day too old, which you can get for a third of the original price. And we have supermarkets for foods that else should be thrown away.

Make a huge veggielasagne. Freeze it down in size of a portion, or to your household. Everytime you feel like buying expensive fastfood take a portion of lasagne out of the freezer and top it with fresh tomatoes and cheese.

Veggielasagne:

Bechamelsauce (milk, floor, butter)
Fried eggplant.
Frozen spinach (leaves)
Pasta sheets
Cheese
Canned tomatoes with garlic, oregano.

Make stewed spinach of the frozen leaves and the bechamelsauce. Make a simple tomatosauce heating canned tomatoes, perhaps with onions, carrots, garlic. Fry slices of eggplant (salt the slices them before frying to extract the water). Make the lasagne combining layes of stewed spinach, tomatosauce, eggplant, pastasheets. Put cheese on the top (i use parmesan, the only expensive ingredient in this dish).

I guess you could make this lasagne for two or three dollars a portion.

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They don’t do that here, yet. There is a movement for that type of thing. Too much food is wasted here.

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How frequently do you all shop for groceries? My (s) daughter does mine every week or so. When she’s on holiday I do an online shop. One of the big problems doing a weekly, online grocery shop,here in the UK, is the short use by dates. Another one being the fruit and veg they pick for you is sometimes not as good as it should be.

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I go about every two weeks.

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i know i’m in UK and the veggies always go off so quick. Hubby goes twice a week shopping

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my money saving tip

keep receipts
if your kettle breaks within a year you can have a free replacement under the UK manufactures warranty

if your food has a foreign object in it you can get a refund and maybe even free coupons.

keep receipts thats what hubby has taught me

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