In this article, a follow up to our shopping articles on coupon shopping, and creating shopping lists, we’ll explore some creative ways to save some good money on our food purchases by looking at some alternative ideas.
(Please click the article title to see and read this entire article)
Here we focus on couple of every day food purchaseswe tend never to think about. In these examples, the more of each example you use, the greater the savings.
We all love convenience. However, convenience usually costs more then doing it yourself. A few minutes of time now equals big savings immediately.
Breakfast
For the cost of a breakfast or two, you can make your own for the entire week.
For example, a two egg sandwich with cheese will cost roughly $4.00 each day. On the other hand, you can buy a dozen eggs ($2.00), the cheese ($2.50) and the bread ($2.00) and have the fixings to make the same breakfast for a week.
A Savings of about $22.00 per week
A very big area for savings is our daily morning coffee. The mark up on coffee is amazing and even with the recent spike in coffee prices at the grocery store, you will still save a bundle making this yourself.
At $3.00 for a medium, no frills cup of coffee, you spend $21.00 per week. For $8.00, you can buy a 30 oz container of coffee at the grocery store that will provide medium coffees each day for at least two weeks.
This amounts to $1095.00 per year buying coffee or $208 per year making it yourself.
A whopping savings of over $800.00 per year, or approximately $2.50 per DAY.
Lunches
At the deli counter, lunch meats can normally cost at LEAST twice as much as the roasts themselves. A great example is roast beef lunch meat. You can pick it up from the deli counter at your local grocery store for $7.99 per pound.
A better idea to do it on a budget is to purchase a roast beef, such as a bottom round roast, for as little as $2.49 per pound. Unless you can master slicing the meat thin enough, you may want to invest in a home meat slicer. So where is the savings? The optional investment in a meat slicer yields a long term savings.I purchased mine from Lowes for $99. They can also be found for roughly the same cost at Sears and other retail stores. On the surface, it looks like buying a slicer is actually against our do it on a budget principles. However, if we look closer:
At the Deli:
a. On average, 1 pound of lunch meat is roughly $5.20 per pound.
(ham $2.50, chicken breast $5, roast beef $8)
b. Low Average use of 1 pound per week (52 weeks * $5.20) = $270.40 per year
Verse do it yourself
a. Meat Slicer = $99 (optional)
b. Meat
(chicken at $2/lb, roast beef at $2.49/lb and ham $3.00/lb = overall $2.50/lb)
c. Assuming the same consumption of 1 pound per week (52 weeks * $2.50) = $130
Conservatively, within the first year, you come out ahead and you have the added benefit of knowing the lunch meat you make is fresh and free of added fillers, fats and preservatives.
After the first year, you save $140 per year and have less wasted leftovers. Of course also, you save much more, the more you consume.
Savings bonus: roasts and bulk meats are more often on sale then lunch meats and you can also save on meats by buying the larger quantities. What is not used can then be frozen and available for quickly made dinners in the future.
Dinner
There are numerous areas to save, especially on meats. Buying meats in bulk are a great way to save at least $.50 per pound.
On a 4 pound roast, that comes to $2.00 per day, or $720 per year.
Four pounds too much? The rest can either be frozen for future quick dinners, or used for lunches. The larger the quantity, the greater the savings!
For vegetables, frozen beats out fresh when it comes to savings! There is much less possibility for waste and there is a greater variety available, such as fozen mixed vegetables. Again, the larger packages are less expensive. Store brands are also much less expensive then premium brand names, but the quality is the same.
Dessert
For dessert, you can save money by creating your own fruit salad, rather then buy it already made.
Already made, fruit salad costs roughly $6.00 per pound.
By comparison you can buy fresh bananas for $.70 per pound, peaches for $1.20, apples for $1.00, pears for $1.29, etc. By making your own fruit salad, you know the ingredients are fresh and filled with quality items.
A Savings of roughly $2.00 per pound.
There are numerous ways to save money but the bottom line is, you pay for convenience, and sometimes you pay quite a lot. Anything you can do yourself will certainly go a long way to helping you do it on a budget.
Have any other tips or advice? We would love to hear your feed back and comments.
Until then Happy Savings!
