- I live on rice, cheap frozen veggies, and dried beans. It’s fast (throw it in the rice cooker, and half an hour later, dinner!), you can vary the spices to make it interesting, and one little potful is two days worth of meals for practically nothing.
- Instead of buying coffee, I brew yerba mate at home. It’s cheap at the local supermarket and gives me same caffeine boost for less money.
- I make all my clothes out of scavenged items or thrift store finds. (It drives my mother nuts)
- No cable, no gym, no car, no satellite.
- No air conditioning or excessive heating. My house is 100 years old, so controlling its temperature beyond the most basic necessities is throwing money away. Outside temp in the summer, lowest we can get the thermostat to go in the winter.
- No buying books. Libraries are good enough for me.
-Scavenge everything you can. - Never carry a debit card unless you are at the store for a specific reason. If you don’t have access to money, you can’t spend it.
Rather than renting a 100-meter mediterranean superyacht for your family vacation, consider buying a second-hand one in Turkey. Then when you’re finished you can re-sell it in Nice for the approximate cost that you paid for it.
Maybe I’m being whooshed, but why couldn’t you just switch to some other food?? I usually just take leftovers to work.
Also, I try not to carry any $1 bills or quarters with me; if I have them in my wallet I’d leave them home. That way I don’t get tempted by the vending machines at work, which helps both my health and finances.
Since this was brought up again, yes, I had sandwiches and chips (the same kind of each) three days a week every week for 3.5 to four months. Then I switched to another filling for the rest of the time. Then I had the sandwich crash. But before that, I was considering switching to a third filling and just eating more sandwiches.
For me, dinner leftovers are for dinners. Period. In my mind, dinners are more expensive than lunches (and take more time to cook), so I save more money using dinner leftovers for future nights’ dinners than for lunches.
As for eating other stuff, well, I couldn’t think of anything else I wouldn’t have to cook or freeze (rather than refrigerate). I even posted a thread about it in CS asking for help. Got good suggestions, but I was never really able to follow up before the sandwich crash… I needed some time to “weed out” the ingredients I didn’t like and find time to basically cook a second dinner.
I married a guy who is generally handy. He can fix pretty much anything from cars to household stuff to appliances. I am sure it has saved us thousands.
Our motto in general when it comes to stuff, is “less stuff, but better quality.” We research and price shop, and then buy the best we can afford and pay cash (or debit or credit, I just mean we don’t pay payments.)
We get paid weekly so each week I pay bills first, then figure out how much cash we need for the week and the rest goes into savings. I don’t leave money hanging around in the checking account without a purpose.
I find I can get some mall store clothes for as cheap as about anywhere except thrift by shopping sales and signing up for e-mail lists. Often stores with online shops also have additional deals online and I usually get free shipping. Before I buy anything I just google ‘store name coupons’ and a bunch of sites will come up with codes. Kids’ clothes especially get really marked down and I get rewards and points and stuff from my favorites to get even bigger discounts. Gap brand stores especially send me discount codes all the time. I am back to school shopping now and found jeans for $9 at Crazy 8 (a subsidiary of Gymboree) so I stocked up for the year for my 6 year old. That was a good score.
We don’t eat out a whole lot but the few times we do, we go someplace good and splurge. I would rather have fewer really good meals than lots of mediocre ones. Plus I am a decent cook so I can make a lot at home myself. We get good wine and beer for a discount by shopping a local place that specializes in those, we get e-mails when they have overstock and are trying to move product. I just got a case of decent wine that I have seen in stores for $8-10 a bottle for $30.
I am not concerned with privacy when it comes to my consumerism, so I also am signed up for a few product research groups. One online, and 2 local in person. I often get free products to try that way (my best score was a complete set of Calphalon pans, but it is usually things like hair/cosmetic and household products) and sometimes cash for participating in focus groups. The best is when they overbook, I went to one a few weeks ago, they told me they were full and handed me $60 and sent me home. Usually they take about an hour.