Having said that, it's really opened my eyes to the importance (and possibility) of budgeting and made me think a lot more about priorities, waste, and planning.
Here are the nitty-gritties:
1. We have generous family and friends: I can't discount the fact that we usually eat at the house of family or friends at least once a week (and one of my friends has even taken me out to a restaurant during this period just so that I could come).
2. We carpool or walk when possible and consolidate trips: the carpooling in this case is the kind of deal where my friend and coworker picks me up on his way to work every day and I do nothing ride-related for him in return. See number 1.
3. I plan our meals for the week based on the ingredients we have already: I have a list of everything in our cupboards, fridge, and freezer. I try to find recipes that incorporate as many of these ingredients as possible. I like the "ingredients" search on allrecipes.com. As our existing supply of food dwindles, our weekly grocery bill might go up, but in any case planning meals in this way means that we waste a lot less food.
4. We use cash: we realized that though we've always been good about paying off our credit card (and liked using it because it helped us earn skymiles), with such little money to go on it's psychologically easier to stop spending it when you run out of cash. Change even starts to count more.
5. We shop at Buy Low: This could be the entire post! Get this--three pounds of roma tomatoes for ONE DOLLAR. Their produce is so super cheap. Granted, it's sometimes on the unripe or old side, but as long as you know what you're dealing with and can set out to ripen or refrigerate to keep, it does the job. (The one thing we still get at Smith's is the 83 cent tall black Kroger garbage bags.)
6. I prioritize our shopping list and bring a calculator to the grocery store: I mark which things on my list are essential to a meal and which ones would just be nice (an extra topping, a minor ingredient, etc.) I get all the essential stuff first, keeping track of the grand total as I go, and then buy the more optional ingredients if there is money left.
7. We eat all of our leftovers: we don't throw any food away. That means sometimes I eat the same leftovers several days in a row for lunch. Luckily, I don't mind repetition.
8. We very rarely eat meat. Luckily, our preference for little to no meat in our diet is also cheaper (however, Buy Low also has really cheap meat).
9. I make our bread.
10. We buy generic everything.
Well, that's all I can think of. Like I said, it's tight and it wouldn't be comfortable to live on this amount forever, but it's great to know we can! It makes it a lot easier to envision saving significant amounts of money in the future even on an average income.
Do you have money-saving tips? Share away!
3 comments:
So is this an experiment you're doing, or a transition phase? Hope everything is going well...well do I recall the days when we were first married and our budget was $40 a week. Oh boy.
Money-saving tips? We're really into washable things. Diapers, handkerchiefs, washcloths, you name it. And bartering. We have yet to ever pay a babysitter in five years of parent-hood.
Food is a big money-sucker for us though...produce is SO expensive here and that's 80% of what we eat.
just realized I hyphenated parenthood. I'm tired.
I'm curious to see the comments. We're trying to cut our food budget right now just because I realize we spend tons at the grocery store - and sometimes let things go bad. I think Utah may also have great coupons you could access. Unfortunately this area isn't so great at that. Meal planning is helping us, though. Still, we're at about $100/wk. We do eat a lot of meat and dairy right now since Evan is doing a high-protein thing.
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