Feeding a family on a looooowww budget - What are the secrets?

Learn when the sales start. At a store near me the cereal sales start on Wednesday and by Friday night the cereal on sale is sold out.

Make baby food with a blender. It’s simple - insert carrot or whatever, puree, serve carrot mush. It’s almost 100% cheaper.

Write your favorite manufacturers and tell them WHY you like their product. Many times you’ll get coupons as a thank you. I got $80 in hotel coupons once after holding a company meeting there and getting great treatment. I wrote the chain home office and praised the local manager and they sent me discount coupons.

Day old bread shops are another thing. There’s a Wonder bakery near me where everything is near the expire date but is on the cheap. Buy a little and eat it quick.

We have a warehouse distribution center here too. Any canned goods the break free from their box wind up at on of two local stores on special shelving. It may be dented or have a torn wrapper but it’s about 75% off. It’s always just dumped out onto the shelf unsorted and always a scavenger hunt but you never know what you’ll find. They sell 50lb bags of mixed brands dog or cat food pretty cheap as well. My pets are as fat as any on it.

This one is weird and you need a freezer and some cash.

Our local university has been known to sell sides of beef when the Ag Studies folks get done with their cows. The meat is a fraction of what you’d pay at the grocer.

I just started reading Jeffrey Steingarten’s The Man Who Ate Everything a book that I would heartily recommend to anyone interested in food in any way. It is very funny.

Ironically while at The Hog’s Breath Cafe devouring a 400g blackened prime rib with baked potato and a mango vinagrette salad, I was reading Chapter 2 of Steingarten’s book Staying Alive in which he tries to find the minimum subsistence diet possible. He tried the Thrifty Food Plan which forms the basis for the allocation of food stamps. While not a fan of all the recipes and feeling that the diet was over reliant on meat he thought the food economics were very good. In the book for instance he details how one portion of turkey became 3 meals.

When we’re tightening our belt, I cook a lot of Mexican food. When I do tacos or enchiladas, I use about 1/2 the normal amount of meat, and I use spanish rice or potatos O’Brien as filler. Really yummy and dirt cheap.

I’d buy a second freezer from the Want Ads and stock up on meat when it went on sale. Or I might even check out buying a side of beef. This used to be an incredibly cheap way of buying beef, but don’t know if it still is. You get tons of ground beef which is very versatile.

Invest in the Sunday paper for their ads. Clip coupons and look where the sale items are. Then go to those stores and only buy the sale items.

Buy in bulk at Sam’s where it makes sense but avoid the convenience processed foods. Per pound they are a lot more expensive.

If you want an occasional treat, go to a restaurant on a day where kids eat free. Don’t buy alchohol or desserts, which are high-profit items that quickly add to the bill. Or buy an Entertainment book and make the rounds at the buy one, get one free places.

Another thing I always do is to make stock(bouillon) from a roast chicken carcass; this is excellent for risotto the next day (with any little bits of leftover chicken thrown in.

Stock can be made from any meat bones and it can make all the difference between a meal and a feast; don’t throw out the carrot tops/peelings, celery trimmings, onion skins/tops etc - put them in the stock pot (you’ll be straining them all out at the end anyway).

I’ve got a freezer and cash, Dangerosa - now I just need to know which local university does this. That is, unless you’re keeping it a secret so you can get all the cheap meat. :wink:

Just remembered (this isn’t so much thrifty as “handy”). When you are making all this stock and stuff, remember that one good way to store it is not only in large amounts in the freezer, but also in small amounts. I always use ice-cube bags to store some of the stock I make. Just one or two of these “ice-cubes” in a sauce or whatever can be enough to make it a little tastier. I also did this with apple sauce that I made from about 10 kilos of apples. I eat them by themselves like an ice-pop, or throw one into a bowl of porridge or drop one into a chicken when I am roasting it. Ice-cube-tray/bags are really handy when you are getting “the most” out of stuff.

Ha. Yeah, me too. I bring my calculator to the grocery store. I find couponing and bargain hunting fun. Here are some thoughts on various topics:

–Choosing a supermarket. There are 4 supermarkets within a mile of my house. Two I don’t like at all. I prefer Pathmark to Shop-rite. Pathmark looks a lot more “crummy” and has fewer gourmet/specialty items, but the sales tend to be much much better and the store is easier to shop. And lines are much shorter. In Shop-rite’s favor, it has double coupons up to .99, while Pathmark has double coupons up to .50. And of course, they sometimes have amazing sales on things I want. So I shop Pathmark primarily, but sometimes take a trip to Shoprite to get sale items. While I’m there, I redeem some of my higher-value coupons. At the supermarket near my mom’s house, they double $1 coupons. So, I sometimes take a trip there to get non-perishables for a low low price. You can drive yourself crazy going to every supermarket in town for the best deals on each item, so I’m not recommending that. But being willing to shop several stores can be very worthwhile.

–Loss leaders. Loss leaders are where the most significant savings are to be had. Some recent sales: Boneless chicken breast, $1.49/lb. Whole chicken, .19/lb, 2.5 dozen eggs, $1.99. Often packaged brand name items are on loss-leader sale. Combined with double coupons, things are often free. Take advantage of loss leaders.

–Read sale flyers and know what items go on sale regularly. If you have an idea of what things go on sale and how often, then you can have a better idea of when to buy and how much to buy. You can either stock up, or put a purchase off. I may have a coupon for Progresso soup, but I won’t redeem it unless the soup is also on sale. Progresso soup is on sale very frequently. Sometimes it’s on sale for $1.50 a can, but I know that a sale for .99 per can will come up soon. And I usually have a $1 off 4 coupon. That’s .75 a can, instead of 2.19.

–Coupons. Coupons are fun! Combining double coupons and sales, I can get lots of things free or for pennies. If I’m careful, I can undercut the price of most store brands even. I got 4 pounds of Sorrento mozzarella for .99 a pound last month, and the dates on the packages were very good. And sometimes, stores run triple coupon sales. A couple of weeks ago, Pathmark had a triple coupon sale (up to .99) and I got stacks of stuff for free–Brillo pads, Herb-ox boullion, Mott’s applesauce. If I can get something for free that I don’t really want, I’ll take it and donate it to the food bank. The trick, of course, is to make sure that the item is really a good deal even with the coupon. A lot of things are still expensive with the coupons, like a lot of highly processed foods. It’s hard to draw the line between cutting too many and too few coupons. For example, I don’t buy pre-shredded cheese, so I don’t cut the coupons for it. But last week, if I had had the coupon, I could have gotten it for free. For free, I’d use it. So I was kind of mad at myself.

The upshot is that bargain hunting can be a lot of fun. I make a lot of very economical meals, and sometimes buy “luxury” items for low prices. Either way, since I’ve started doing this, I’ve eaten better for a lot less money.

always recheck your receipts and make sure they gave you the money off when they were supposed to.
you’d be surprised…

Textured vegetable protein. It’s a by-product of making soybean oil, and it’s a great hamburger extender. It comes dry, and you soak it for a few minutes to reconstitute it. It doesn’t really have any flavour, and it looks kind of like Grape-Nuts when dry- I may try using it as part of the topping for fruit crumbles. It costs about $.50 to $1.50 a pound dry, and probably triples in weight when you soak it.
I fifteenth the “extra freezer” and buy in bulk votes. My husband and I are living in a bachelor apartment on very little money, and we have a small freezer. I don’t think we could manage without it. I also just came home with 45 lbs of flour, on sale, which I have cleverly squirelled away for my once or twice a week baking sprees. I make all our bread and baked stuff, and we’re eating lots of beans and pasta with vegetables. I’m trying to budget for an average $30 per week for both of us. So far, it’s been a bit higher, but I’ve been buying stuff like bulk oil and spices- things he didn’t have.

Has anyone else read The Tightwad Gazette? I have the complete book, and it’s wonderful.

I was just going to suggest the Tightwad Gazette books. There are three of them, IIRC. Some of the suggestions are a bit extreme, but there are some really good penny-pinching ideas in them.

Ok, I guess suggestion * The Tightwad Gazette * has already been done…

Yes, there are three of them, but you can also buy * The Complete Tightwad Gazette*, which contains all three books plus the last 7-8 issues that didn’t get put into any of the previous books.

Now if only I could get my husband to read it…

If you live in Utah (not sure if they provide services elsewhere) you can join a service called Shopping Smart. This company tracks the prices of all major items in grocery stores in the area and then sends out a weekly mailer. All of the best deals are included in the mailer with a rating (three stars is good, four stars is great, five stars is phenomenal). This rating includes data regarding store and manufacturer’s coupons (which they also track). My mother has been a member of this service for quite some time and has occasionally been able to get products for free and in some cases has even been paid to “purchase” them. By combining coupons with the absolute low point in prices for products, and stocking up until the next low point you can cut as much as 50% (or more) off of the monthly food budget.

Grim

Most of what I said has largely been mentioned, but since I feel so important I’ll say what I wanted to anyhow. :wink:

POULTRY AND RICE/PASTA IS YOUR FRIEND.

You should not have to pay more than 1/lb for it. If you can get it for, say, .79, stock up.

For chicken, seperate it yourself and save the carcass to make soups out of. Same thing with Turkey. If you bake the whole bird for easter/thanksgiving, save the carcass and make soup. It’ll keep for a few months in the freezer, so you don’t have to be so concerned about eating Turkey for a full month after Christmas.

Cans of soup are great too. You can make cheap and good sauces out of them with the aforementioned poultry and (if you’re going to splurge) ground beef.

If you really like beef and pork, consider calling a butcher. They’ll very often sell you farmer-direct and cut to your spec and a fraction of the cost of store bought. I can buy a beef slaughtered cut/wrapped to my specs for less than $2/lb… actually, I think its closer to $1.50 now. You can’t even buy lean hamburger at that price most of the time, but you get the whole 9yards this way, T-Bones, Roasts, you name it. If you can afford the initial outlay of say, $600-$1000 (depending on the size of animal, of course!) you may not have to buy meat for months. We’ve got a 1/2 buffalo we bought in November for $400 cut/wrapped. We haven’t bought meat since and shouldn’t have to again until June/July.

Mrs. Bernse lived on $40/month for food while she was in University, and ate quite well with just poultry, rice, cream of mushroom soup and veggies (the very rare pound or two of hamburger as a treat).

You can make perfectly good yogurt yourself. The cheapest version is made out of powdered milk. Mine is runnier than the store stuff, but it doesn’t have any sugar either, and it tastes yummy.

Yup. I have The Complete Tightwad Gazette. It’s great.

Actually, Amy Dacyczyn writes about the “buy a whole cow” thing in the aforementioned Gazette. She said, as I recall, that it was a good idea if you would probably have bought the more expensive cuts like roasts anyway, but if you’re trying to really save money, it’s cheaper to buy loss-leader hamburger and chicken legs.

Mmmmm…potatoes.

If they’re good enough for Dan Quayle, they’re good enough for poor folks like me.

Just to mention -

How about hunting and fishing? I put a lot of meat in the freezer that way. Combine that with a small garden, and canning the veggies, it can put a good dent in the grocery bill. The problem is gear. It’s very easy to be dazzled by expensive equipment.

Fishing tackle can be had very cheap. A single shot H&R 12 gauge is about 90 bucks. With some practice and reading, you can fill a freezer full of rabbit, turkey, venison, etc. The co-op I worked at in my younger years closed a day or two during the salmon run, so everyone could stock up for the winter, plus the first day of deer season practically closed the whole town.

Shop the “dead” veggies rack at the supermarket. We get a lot of good stuff from there. (a lot of this stuff just has cosmetic issues)

We also have a “reserve” pantry. When stuff goes REALLY on sale try to stock up a litte. Our local market put their store brand veggies on sale last fall at 4 cans for 88 cents. We’re still using up the ones we bought then. For 10 dollars you could get 45 cans of veggies, but you gotta have a place to put 'em.

Preserve.

In the fall you can get squash for next to nothing. Cook it, mash it, freeze it. Use it all winter.

Fresh apples can be had for around $4 a bushel around here in October. Can you say applesause?

People beg you to take away zuccini and tomatoes in the fall. Boil them up together and then freeze them. This is a great veggie dish served in many upscale resteraunts.