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We challenge you to save the rest of this year and twice that every year with making some simple, practical and financially sounds alternatives to your food budget!
These are seven simple things you can do to help save in your household – and we want all of our readers to do this to save big and be that much closer to their financial goals…. are you ready??
Make coffee at home (or latte or specialty coffee drink)
Here’s an example of the math that can save you big bucks! A nice bag of coffee costs around $8 a bag. That is on the high end too, but even with the high end see the savings you can reap:
Now every home will be different depending on how strong you like you coffee. But for example the bags are typically 1lb. if we fill our 12 cup coffee maker up to capacity, we can do this 6 times with one bag. 6 x12 = 72 cups of coffee for $8 or .11 per cup. A cup is literally 8 oz., most of us drink 16 – 24oz. so you are looking at .22 per 16 oz. or .33 per 24 oz. These cups of coffee will cost you $1-$3 depending on where you get coffee – so it is typically only 10% off the cost!
Now if you buy a 16 oz. cup of coffee every work day of the year at $2 each cup for the year (261 x2) this is $522 in coffee. At home, this will cost $52!
Even with specialty coffees, the savings are about equivalent!
Invest in the machine and the coffee and still save a bundle!
Savings per person per year = $470 savings per person!
Only Get Water at Restaurants
According to many reports, most people eat out 3.1 times per week. Well, for the sake of this post, we are going to say that most of our readers here on our site only eat out once per week.
If you and your family eat out once per week and the typical size of family that reads our site is 4, we are talking about 4 drinks out per week. Since most restaurants charge around $2 a drink, this adds up to be $8 per week per household (this is very conservative!). Well, skip the drink all together and enjoy a cheaper version at home (or seriously stick with water all of the time) and save that money. Having the same amount of soda or whatever at home will save you a significant amount of money.
Savings per household per year $8×52 = $416 per year
Take a lunch to work
First opt for leftovers as this is the most sensible way to save! I try to make a little extra during my dinner prep so that Alex can have some for work the next day. BUT…. oftentimes we won’t have leftovers (with 2 growing boys, I am surprised how much they eat!!) and so I will make a quick lunch in the morning for him to take. Finally, as a back-up, we have frozen options in our freezer from Costco. Costco has some good healthy lunch options that come out to be about $2 per serving (we like PJ’s organic burritos and similar options). Even at $2 for the pre-made meals, we are saving TONS!!
For example, the typical lunch out is $5-$7. If you were to eat lunch out each weekday, this would cost you $1,305 (216 x$5), which is another conservative estimate. Taking your own lunches whether leftovers, something made from home or pre-made frozen healthy lunch options from a place like Costco at $2 each, you are saving at least 80%!
Savings per working member of your household = $1,044
Have one dinner a week be a meatless dinner
This is quite simple to do; hardly anyone will notice and hardly anyone will care, except your budget. Meats in meals for a family of 4 typically cost around $2.50. Make your spaghetti or whatever a meatless meal!
Savings per household of 4 per year = $130
Expand your proteins with fillers
No..I am not talking about pink slime… 🙂 I am talking about things like rice and beans. For example, our family of 7 uses 1 lb. of ground beef when our meal requires it no matter what! We have taco night usually once a week and use 1lb. of hamburger; I then add a cup or two of brown rice and or a can of beans and “expand” the meat and NO ONE HAS CARED EVER!
This saves me another $2.50 – $5 when I do use ground beef! You can do this method with any ground meats and many other cuts too! I will take a 1 lb. package of beef stew pieces and make a pot of stew, chili, or soup by using more of the other ingredients. Besides, it is healthier too! If you do this 2-3 times per week, you are saving $5-$7.50. Even small families can do this and just use half a pound!
See more details on our Daily Dose of Thrifty tip HERE on using rice as a filler!
Savings per household per year = $260 ($5 x 52)
Find a way to use EVERYTHING you buy
UPDATE: To help you with this part of the challenge, we encourage you to use our Free No Waste Food Menu Planner HERE! Download and use it for free to help you use up all of your food!
This may sound simple, but seriously think about your family’s eating habits. You may or may not realize it, but you are most likely throwing away tons of food. According to a report last August by the National Resources Defense Council, the “average American tosses about 25 percent of food and beverages purchased.”
Let’s figure out how much this is approximately. So sticking with the numbers we are assuming is the average size of our readers – a family of four, the average grocery budget is about $400 for this size. That means that $100 of food is thrown out each month! For 12 months, this is $1,200!
You may be shocked by that number, but the truth is that this is a reality. We are wasteful people – especially in the United States! And one of the biggest things thrown out in households…. produce and fresh foods! Many times, we don’t use them before they go bad!
Find a way to use everything you have.
Do this by:
- Taking inventory
- menu planning
- dinner by 10
- only shopping on occasion (as this naturally causes you to be more creative with what you have on hand).
Finally, 2 more tips to help with this…. write down items you need to use now, find what meats/proteins you have, and what grains/starches/carbs you have and do a google search for a recipe using those ingredients. You will be amazed and surprised what you will come up with! And my last tip… if you can’t use it now, preserve it quickly by freezing it! I cannot tell you how often I do this! You can freeze almost everything!
Savings per household per year = $1,200
(Now this number could be a little high for our smarter than smart savvy saving readers, you may not be throwing this much out… but this is the reality for many American homes and a real eye-opener!)
Buy bulk grains, rices, dried potatoes, oats, pastas and more
This one sounds a little off the wall… maybe…. but it is a hard fast rule in our house. Our #1 go to bulk food is Brown Rice! This is the BIGGEST lifesaver to our family, health wise and especially our budget. Brown rice is pretty cheap as most grains are…. but they are significantly cheaper when you buy in bulk! I am even talking about 50 lb. bags. I buy 50 lb. bags for $20-$30. This is about $.50 per lb. which is a lot of brown rice cooked up and fills our family full! (the prices are about comparable for other grains, starches and carbohydrates). This $.50 replacement can save a bundle over the equivalent in meat and produce. We will eat produce every meal, but we don’t need as much!
Every meal, we include one of these healthy grains or what I call “tummy fillers.” Especially if you chose a healthy option, you and your family can be eating less money in the protein and fruits and veggies, but get full and get the nutrients that you need! These foods are literally pennies to the dollar when purchased in large quantities and used over a long period of time. They are even cheaper than buying them in boxes or small bags with coupons and sales. It is a no-brainer and it will satisfy your family and cost you much less to do so!
Following the previous rule #6 when attempting to use everything, this one is a super handy tip!
UPDATE: We’ve had a few comments or questions about 50 lb. bags of food spoiling if not stored properly. That is the truth, which is why we have shared a few times how to store it and so I thought I would include a link to our previous post showing pictures and ideas on how to keep it from spoiling but very easy to access and use 🙂 Here’s how we store and easily use bulk foods!
Savings per household of 4 per year estimated to be around $1.50 per dinner meal saved in using more of this than more expensive options = $548
NOW… even better is our total for the year for a family of 4….. drumroll please…… $4,068!! This is $339 savings per month!!
Now granted, not many of you are reading this and can make a change in all 7 categories (most of us are probably already figuring and doing 2-4 of these!), but if you can do all 7 from where you are at now, you will save that much more!
So….. with all of this….. I do have some exciting news….
We have shared a bit of insight into how we menu plan. Well, we are in the process of developing a menu planning download that incorporates many of these tips and steps to help you ease into saving loads more in your food budget!
Watch for that soon!
Photo Credits: etc.usf.edu, SparkPeople.com, Directive21.com, moralmonkeys.org, learnthat.com
Donni
Lucky me I already do all of this except buy my rice in bulk. And the only reason I don’t is because I don’t have a car anymore and it’s too hard to get this stuff home but it’s something I do plan on doing. I do have a question, tho; do you save bones for bone soup? I just started saving bones and I was wondering if I should cook them together (chicken, beef and pork) or separate. Would it make is taste different? Altogether I have enough to make a batch of bone soup for whatever base and I’m thinking it couldn’t hurt because it is all already cooked, but I’m wondering what you do
Cynthia
In many recipes that call for ground meat, I use 1/2 ground meat (turkey in my case) and 1/2 cooked lentils. Very cheap alternative to all meat!!!!
Cheryl
Eggplant – that’s my night in shining food staple – my husband is basically a meat and potatoes person and won’t eat vegetables unless they swimming in cheese – makes it frustrating, so I’m always experimenting and eggplant tastes close to meat if you do it right.
rebecca
Cheyrl, could you share how you use eggplant in meat dishes? I would love to incorporate it into our meals. Cynthia, do the lentils show? If my kids saw them looking like lentils, they would not eat it. Do you buy them dry, cook them and then use them or do they come in another form?
sherry
no help for me already do all this
Sandy
I’m looking forward to replies to rebecca’s comment. How do you make eggplant seem like meat for a meat & potatoes man?
He doesn’t like lentils either. Neither do the kids. Not sure how to disguise them.
sarah magboo
I do all this already. I do more meatless meals & less processed food. I am very fortunate to live in Los Angeles to have variety of produce & local farmers available.
Joan J
My biggest money saver is something I call “garbage soup”. I have 3 ziploc bags in my freezer. First is for all those little bits of leftover veggies – brocolli stems, carrot peels, a veg leftover from dinner that’s too small to use the next night, onion peels, etc. (never add potato peels). 2nd is a bag with leftover chicken, bones and broth. and 3rd is leftover beef or pork, meat, bones, broth. As soon as the veggie bag gets full, I pull out one of the meat bags, dump it all in a big pot, add some water and herbs, and let it simmer away. Strain it, pick out the good bits of veggies and meat, add back to the broth you’ve made and poof. Garbage soup. Wonderful flavor and literally no cost because it’s all stuff I’d normally throw away.
Keri e
So to make your “garbage” soup do you take undated items off your plate and put them in.the bag??
Julie
We throw away SO much food, and most of it ends up being vegetables we thought we’d eat but didn’t and they went bad. Milk too. SO, I’ve been doing much better at putting a menu together and making sure the “fresh stuff” is used the first few days, and then the “frozen” stuff makes it on the menu towards the end of the week. We live in the country so we only go to town once a week. This last grocery round we ate ALL of the fresh vegetables and nothing went to waste. Seems like a no-brainer but it was a big deal for us! 🙂
Cassie
Awesome Julie! That is a problem for many households actually! We would suggest using our “no-food waste menu planner” to help you use all of the food in your house.
Here’s the link to that:
https://thethriftycouple.com/2013/09/23/free-weekly-menu-planner-download-no-food-waste-planner/
Tiffany
I follow a Paleo lifestyle so I do not eat grains, potatos, legumes, or sugar of any kind so some of this is of no use to me. I think the other ideas are fantastic and already use them.
Dione W.
These ideas take more effort, but we’ve done it for years, so now everyone in the family knows the routine & can run it themselves!
When traveling on vacation, we take our 5 gallon thermal jugs filled with our own well water and as much of our own food (plus a crock pot, utensils, paper plates, etc.) to save $$ on food/beverage expenses. We freeze our water in clean yogurt containers in a deep freeze before we put them in the 5-gallon jugs. This keeps the water cold & fresh for several days. You can also make your own ice-cubes for this ahead of time, storing them in zip-loc bags, if you don’t have a deep freezer.
We pack a box of non-perishable ingredients for crock pot meals when we stay at motels, such as during a family conference. There are recipes to dump the ingredients in the crock pot and come back a couple hours later. There are plenty of grocery stores/Walmarts along the way, if we forget something. Huge savings for us compared to eating out with a big family!
Our health is better and our immune systems stay stronger when we eat & drink our own food & water, which is also a savings, because illness can cost $$. Even if we have to eat 2 or 3 meals out, this method still makes a difference in our health.
At home … while we want to save money …
Placing a container of (home baked goods with seasonal fruit on sale) on the kitchen counter for those who are frequently hungry, helps stave off their hunger til the next meal. Tall strong sons need more nutrition throughout the day, even if you are trying to spend less on food. We don’t like to see our children go to bed hungry. There are many nutritious foods one can make if you take time to bargain shop & bulk buy.
Sandy S
I buy whole hams when they are on sale for 99 cents per pound at our local Piggly Wiggly store. I have bought 4 hams at one time, in a case and freeze 3 of them. On the 4th ham, I cut all the good slices of ham off the bones for sandwiches, salads, etc. I cook the bone and all the scraps in a big pot of water for a few hours and chill over night. Next day I skim off the fat, sort out the scraps and fat from the good meat. Add the good meat pieces back into the broth. I then separate this soup stock with meat into containers and freeze for quick soups later on. I usually get about 5 containers (2-1/2 cups) from one ham. I make one pot of soup right away and freeze 4 for later. It makes a tasty low fat and low meat meal. It’s great for bean, pea, potato and veggie soups. Around Easter is the best chance to get the hams at this price. Aldi stores have good prices too.
Cassie
Awesome tip – Thank you so much Sandy for sharing this with us all!