Help! I'm a $25 spender.
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Help! I'm a $25 spender.
| Thu, 01-06-2005 - 12:06am |
It is driving me crazy. I never grocery shop...I always buy things a couple days (or one day) at a time. So this is what happens: we eat good the first day, maybe the second. By the third day, someone always wants to go to McDonald's (which we don't do too often), but we all get fed up. I do not mind if food is one of our bigger expenses. I grew up in a house where there was never anything in the fridge (and it wasn't because there was no money), so ever I've been an adult, if anything seemed bad (like dh lost a job or whatever) the first thing I would do is go out and stock the house with food. Lately, I haven't been able to fill the cart. This is what it reminds me of: Up until we moved, my days off at work were always split Tuesday/Thursday. Since I work late and get up early, I never felt rested, and weeks just blended together. Well, I feel the same way about shopping. I work at a Wal-Mart Supercenter five days a week...is there really any reason I have to go out on my days off? I think I am doing myself a favor by picking stuff up after work (too tired to grocery shop), but am I really? Can anyone relate? I need a good plan!!! Heather

Hi Heather,
I can fully understand why you don't want to go out on your day off and shop at work. I wouldn't either. So here are my thoughts.
Pick one day when you'll do your shopping after work. Take a list with you and get everything you need then.
Also, do you have a grocery budget? What about getting one of the refillable Walmart cards and filling it up to your weekly budgeted amount, for example $100. That is what you use for shopping. If you use it 5 days a week, fine. But when it's gone it's gone until the next week. If there is any left at the end of the week only fill it back up to the original $100. Never go over that amount on the card. This way you'd be curbing your spending and maybe saving a little money to boot.
Don't know if those are practical or not. But hope they help.
Laura
I know exactly how you feel, I do the same thing and I don't work at walmart; ask my DH and he would tell you I practically live there.
I know if I would make a menu, then a list and stick to it, that would help, but I find myself in Walmart almost every two days and it costs me about $25-$30 a trip, usually just for a couple of dinners and maybe milk.
One of my resolutions is to make a menu and shopping list. I've done ok for 3 days,thought I bought more but guess I didn't make such a good list. I'm going to keep trying, I know it would save us alot of money.
Just wanted you to know you aren't alone.
Dana
We used to do this, not because we worked where there were groceries, but we were a short distance from an overpriced grocery store (Harris Teeter) where we would stop in every few days. It was always, "Oh, well, it's food, and we have to have food. Besides, it's only $20." Of course, as you know, $20 every two days is $300 a month, PLUS regular grocery shopping.
For perspective, we are now a family of four (granted, oru children are very small, but they can eat a prodigious amount), and we eat quite well on $200 a month, total. Please note that we currently use only a few of the techniques I am about to recommend, because we happen to have access to a restaurant surplus store (also known as a salvage store), which drastically changes the equation. We now not only eat well on our $45 a week, we can have guests every night and eat out once in a while on the same budget. It is worth checking around to see if your area has one. But, before the surplus store, we still ate on $200 a month, and we did quite well, using the techniques I will describe.
I completely sympathize with the emotional aspect of having a stocked fridge and lots of yummies around to eat, and getting frustrated when they begin to run low. The good news is, with the kind of grocery shopping I recommend, you will always have a stocked fridge and you can create lots of easy yummies to keep your family happy. The bad news is there is an upfront time investment (and to jump-start the program, there may be a money investment as well, but probably less than you're already spending on groceries), and you'll have to learn a few recipes and new shopping skills.
Are you up for it?
I'm going to post a couple quick, easy, yummy meal/snack ideas here, and then I'm going to start a new discussion thread with my shopping method outlined, because I know a lot of people are looking for ways to cut back their spending without cutting back on necessities.
For breakfast, we may have muffins (search the web for a "universal muffin recipe" to learn how to make these cheaply using ingredients you already have on hand. Substitute soy flour (available at WalMart now, I was surprised to discover) for eggs (1 Tbsp per egg, plus 1 Tbsp water per egg for the liquid content), and be creative in using up what you already have lying around or can get for cheap. Soy flour is cheaper than eggs, lasts forever, and tastes the same once baked.
We also sometimes have oatmeal (NOT the convenience packs) or leftovers from dinner the night before. Rice is excellent, especially (for a treat) mixed with a dab of butter and brown sugar.
For lunch, I try to use up leftovers in new ways. Or I may make sandwiches or bake potatoes.
Dinner is the same things we used to eat, but we waste nothing. Leftovers are saved and recycled into breakfasts and lunches. Once a week we have a smorgasbord night (aka "leftovers night" but smorgasbord sounds more appetizing), and about as often we have "leftover soup." Leftover soup is a wondrous thing--you put a large watertight container in the freezer and when you have a little bit of something left over--a dab of peas, one leg of chicken, a courtesy spoonful of mashed potatoes, whatever--you dump it in the "leftover soup" container. When it gets full, add enough water or broth (don't buy broth, though--your kitchen creates tons of this nutritious stuff and you are probably pouring it down the drain every day--juice of veggie cans, water off boiled foods, etc.) to make a soupy consistency, heat, add salt, pepper, spices to taste, and serve. You will be amazed at how delicious this can be; we have yet to have a batch that wasn't at least palatable.
On the topic of broth, if you don't have plenty of broth from your normal activities, you can make it for almost free. Any time you cut up a vegetable, put the peels and end bits that you aren't going to use into a container in your freezer. This includes onion skins and ends, garlic peels, broccoli stalks, bean shells, etc. Don't put potatoes in, although I've heard it's okay to put in potato peels. Also throw in bones of meat. When the container is full, simmer all this mess with some herbs and salt and pepper over low heat for several hours (a slow cooker is excellent for this). Taste the broth. When it reaches a flavor you like, pour it through a collander and throw the solid bits into your compost bag (you *do* compost, don't you? LOL Well, if not, you can just throw them away, I suppose). You can pour the broth into ice cube trays, freeze, and then dump the cubes into freezer bags. This is a very convenient way to store them, as you can then take out exactly as much as you need for a recipe, and it thaws very quickly.
For snacks, leftovers, once again, can be dressed up considerably. A dab of chili on a cracker with shredded cheese is an hors d'oevre lol. Chicken wrapped in a tortilla with salsa, cheese, and rice, is a snack burrito. Homemade bread can be a delicious, nutritious, CHEAP snack, and it's not so daunting that you have to have a bread maker. It's really not that hard. Apples, bananas, and carrots are relatively cheap on the produce side.
Okay, I'm going to quit--I could go on forever, and I think there are boards for this kind of thing. I am going to post my shopping method here in a minute, though, in a new thread.
I know this is a lot at once and it sounds overwhelming, but if you'll just start to do one simple thing from a list of tips, you'll start to see results, and you'll feel encouraged to do more. Once you've been doing each thing for a while, it becomes routine and doesn't seem like extra work.
Blessinxgs,
Heather
Those were some good ideas. I already do quite a few of tem, the rut I get into is that our day is sometimes so busy I completely run out of time right around dinnertime. (I work in the evenings, so if I don't have dinner going by 4:30, then dinner is going to end up being soup, pizza, or grilled cheese.) My favorite favorite food is potato pancakes. I like to make a huge batch of mashed potatoes early in the week, and make potato pancakes for lunch. My youngest daughter has lots of food allergies, so that tends to run up the tab a little bit. I love making homemade honey wheat bread. I have a felling that if I would devote one day per week to cooking, and one day to shopping (I would have to shop at Wal-Mart and the grocery store, because I like to buy my meat and produce from the grocery store), I might be ok. I think I just might try it. Just need to plan better. Thanks for the good ideas