kimberlym322
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2011
- Messages
- 139
With that much milk I would look around and see who in your area has milk deals...what one is the cheapest and who has something like when you buy 5 gallons you get one free.
I wish I had 275.00 to spend like that. But I don't so here are some tips that I have someone else the other day. This is based on planning out your meals for the month...but left with some really don't want to cook what I have planed tonight kind of thing.
1. Tack an invatory of everything you have on hand right now...like what is in the cupboard, frezzer and what spices you have.
2. there are sites to get a list for weekly meal planing. Print some off and start planing your meals for the month. On the weekly planer just put things like roast, potatos, green beans, then on another sheet of paper you will write down what you need for each day to cook. Like the day that you do roast, if you are doing it in a crockpot (i will tell you how I do mine so that it makes scents) you will need the roast, beef onion soup mix, beef base and water, you will need say 10 small-med red potatos, and a can of green beans. Do this for the whole month then you will have your shopping list for each week.
3. Now that you have #1 and #2 done, take the shopping list and the invatory list and see what you don't need at the store. Like say you put that you need beef onion soup mix for the roast and you have 10 boxies in the cupboard then you do not need to buy it.
4. One of the biggest ways that will help you is start buying on coupons. Even if you only get .55 off something that is still .55 you save. If you don't have a coupon then don't buy it.
5. Go's with number 4. Look for sales. If you have #1 and #2 then you will always know what you need and what you have. If say this week they have onion soup mix on sale and this month you have that you will need it for 4 diffrent things, but it is on sale say for 1.00 and BOUNS you have a coupon for 1.00 off 2 and your store will let you use 5 coupons that are the same. So really you would be getting 2 for 1.00--2 X 1.00=2.00-1.00 (coupon)=1.00 for 2 of them. So if you used 5 coupons you would be getting 10 boxies of the soup mix for 5.00. So because you bought them on sale you paid 5.00, BUT you needed 4 any way, AND you got 6 boxies to have on hand if you need them the next month.
6. Go's with #1. There is a site (forget what one) that you can put that you have say chicken and it will give you recipes that include chicken.
7. Look at the libary for recipe books and on line for recipes. There is also a swaping web site that you can go to that do diffrent recipe swaps all the time. That would get you some new ones. You can also do a google search for things like chicken recipes. Also look in mags. there are good ones in there. I found a few that I have tried out of mags and by just doing a google search, some were good and others not so good. But I did try them and it they were good I used them again.
8. I would say sometimes you would just have to sit down and come up with your own recipes. I mean every recipe out there someone had to sit down and say okay lets try chicken stuffed with ham and cheese. And now look people all over the world eats it. You could also stuff it with stove top stuffing also.
9. See if you can buy something in balk that you know you use a lot of. I mean take flour for an example. You use a cup of that a day, so every week you are buying a 5 lb bag or maybe even 2 5 lb bags. Why not look into seeing what it would cost at Sam's, BJ or Coscos for a 25 or 50 lb bag? Say each week you use 5 lbs of flour and that 5 lb bag costs 3.99 at the end of the month you used 20 lbs of flour at a cost of 15.96, but at Sam's you can get a 25 lb bag for say 18.00. Because you got 25 lbs at one shot you paid .72 a pound and not .80, that is .08 in savings on each pound. Look into doing that for things like sugar, flour, spices, even noodles. Also if you use a lot of potatos and onions, look into getting them in a 50 lb bag. I know the place where my father gets them for me the potatos are like 17.00 for 50 lbs. That is awhole lot better then paying 4 or 5.00 for 5 lbs.
10. You also want to factor in a sweet treat to the budget. And don't forget about lunch on the weekends for everyone, and breakfast for everyone each day.
11. Don't be scared to buy the store brand of things. Try the store brand and if you don't like it then you know not to buy it. Most of the time you can't tell them apart. A fast story, my cousin is a name brand snob...when he was 10 they had some off brand of cheerios and he would not eat them because they did not say cheerios they said toasted o's. Well his mom put them in a tuperware container and put the tab off a cheerios box in the container so that you knew they were regular cheerios (in this case toasted o's) and he ate them. So from then on his mom would buy the toasted o's and would not let him see the box and what she was doing. He ate them with her doing that well into his 20's.
IF you watch for sales and use coupons you can pay nothing to less then $1.00 for things like landry soap, soap, cleaning products, shampoo, deordarent, dish soap/diswasher soap. From Jan 1 to now I have spent out of pocket about $2,000.00 for grocrey bill, but with sales and coupons I have saved over $10,000.00! I stock up on Landry soap when they have it on sale and have a coupon, right now I have about 70 bottles (did have 90, but used some gave some away) that all together for the 90 bottles I think we paid like $90.00, they were on sale and had coupons. Shampoo I have 40 bottles of that that I only paid .25 for each--they are BIG bottles of pantine. Cleaning products I don't pay more then .75 for that kind of things. Deordarent I pay free to .25 for! Dish soap and dishwasher soap is free to 1.00! Toothpase never pay for it. TP and paper towels free-.25. Tissues is free-.25 also. Most of the things that I buy is name brand things for the above prices. I only buy things if they are on sale with a coupon or they are on clearence. I also buy in balk on things like sugar, flour, onions, potatos, and some spices. You could also buy things like chips and such that way also. Like someone else has said check out the Dollar store for things also. I would also print off the copy of Walmarts coupon policy and their price match policy and use them to your advantage. If you have a coupon for something you are going to buy anyway and walmart has it cheaper (even without the coupon) use the coupon and get the overage...will help with the milk. What I mean by that is say you have to buy dog food. You have a coupon for 5.00 off a 5 lb bag, but at walmart it is 3.99...use the 5.00 coupon and you would get 1.00 overage to use on the purchace of the other stuff you are buying. I did this when I bought my Ipod...it was 45.00, but because I bought other stuff I needed with coupons I ended up only paying 38.00 for the Ipod with tax...I bought like 15 items including the Ipod and only paid 38.00 that is good, if you avraged that out I only paid 2.58 per item--can't beat that!!!
To get a stock of coupons ask family and friends to save them for you, join a coupon train, print them off the internet. Also google coupon message boards and you will find a few good ones. It will tell ya what the deals are you can get at the diffrent stores and coupon match ups.
. I enjoy his independence, and since our grocery budget isn't tight, it isn't behavior I'm too worried about - but if other houses are like mine - you can add a lot to your grocery bill.
