I think this is an important point. It comes naturally to me because I quite like to bargain shop so I’m very price-focused (even as a kid, my favorite show was The Price is Right 
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Just because it’s at the 99cent store, it’s not necessarily a deal. We have a Discount Grocery Outlet in our neighborhood and they have a lot of GREAT deals, but they have tons of stuff that is not cheap at all. You just have to start building an awareness of a target price per unit for different products.
My car is paid in full. My husband’s car story is more complicated, but sufficed to say we’re in a very ideal situation with respect to vehicles, and it’ll probably be about 10 years before we’re in the market again.
[QUOTE=Palo Verde]
It’s hard. You have to really pay attention to what you are buying and what it costs. Sometimes you still have to put something back because you are a little over. But you’ll end up buying only what you need.
[/QUOTE]
I think we might have to do this for groceries from now on. My husband has agreed to switch to dried beans, and we are going to order quinoa in bulk to save half price, and cashews in bulk to save $5/pound. (Cashews are pricey, I know, but they are one of the precious few sources of fat and protein that my husband even has, with his 13 food allergies.) It looks like we can get brown rice pasta for cheaper in bulk on Amazon than we can in the store, and I found a cheaper brand of rice to switch to that will save us about $3/pound. Little by little I’m finding ways to trim down this food budget. I’ve also talked him out of canned vegetables.
One thing I do appreciate about Wegman’s is that they always list price per unit on the tags.
I love the suggestions to grow our own food, but alas we are apartment dwellers.
Another potential big-ticket savings is loan consolidation. If you can move some loans or credit card debt from 20% to 5%, that can save you hundreds of dollars a month. Not sexy, but worth the effort.
Oh - I appreciate the credit advice too, but am happy to say we have no credit card debt. We put our purchases on a credit card for cashback purposes and pay it in full each month.
I’ve been working on gardening vegetables for a couple of years now, and you do have to be careful with that, as previously noted, so you don’t spend $20 getting $1 worth of produce. That said, there are things you can grow if you have a balcony that would be worth your while - a couple of lettuce plants will give you all the lettuce you can stand all summer long (for some reason I thought of lettuce as a delicate plant - it isn’t. It’s practically a weed.) Herbs grow well in containers, too, as well as tomatoes.
Another vote for planning grocery shopping trips. We started to do this when my wife had eye problems and I had to go alone, and have never looked back. Inventory the freezer, look at the sales, and plan meals based on what is in the freezer and on sale. We build a list based in ingredient requirements in the recipes we are going to use. If you can afford it, stock up when things are cheap. We prefer Starbucks beans, but we buy a ton when they are on sale, saving $3 - $4 per bag. You’ll get the rhythm of sales. We don’t buy anything not on our list, and we’ve found that wasted food is way down from what it used to be.
I have a garden, so we rarely even buy vegetables in the summer. In Northern California, anyway, farmers markets usually have lower priced produce than the grocery, because there is immediate competition amongst the vendors. But my garden is even cheaper.
Some ideas I haven’t seen here. Safeway at least has a good on-line system for its club card. If you sign up you can get the special $5 Friday deals all weekend, and they also let you load coupons into your card.
Check out thrift stores. There is a really good one near us. There are often very reasonable clothes, lots of utensils and things, and lots of very cheap books. I do jigsaw puzzles, and the 99 cent ones there are just as good as the ones you buy for $10.
Also look for bakery thrift stores. I used to work near the Orowheat/Entemann’s one, and the bread was just as fresh as store bread at half the price - plus you got something free if you bought more than $7 worth and two things free when you filled up your card. We changed locations and I miss it.
Thrift stores, but be prepared to take some time looking. Remember, buying used stuff is very green–it’s not being thrown away and replaced with new.
Most municipalities have laws that anything curbside awaiting garbage pickup is considered “abandoned” and free for the taking. Again, very green. And you cannot beat the price!
Library book sales are a cheap way to support a good cause.
Regarding thrift stores and dollar stores, I will repeat a piece of advice I offered up-thread, which is: don’t shop. If you have a specific purchase in mind and you decide to look for it at a thrift store instead of the regular store, that’s good. If you don’t have a specific purchase in mind, but decide to go to the thrift store just to shop a little and see what they have, that’s bad. If you spent $10 on a tchotchke at the thrift store instead of the $50 you would have spent on it at a department store, you didn’t save $40. You spent $10. Just keep that in mind.
Totally unrelated to food shopping, Syms/Filene’s Basement has gone bankrupt and will be liquidating in the coming months. Perfect time to get some work outfits as the store is already well below retail for things like suits - there’s a Syms in Paramus and one in Seacausus, not sure how convenient it is for you -but if you are in the area, worth a trip.
I’d expand this advice from thrift shops to all kinds of stores (including online). Only go shopping when you know before you go that you need a particular item. When you’re there, get that item and get out. Only go to the area of the store where that item is likely to be. Don’t “look at what else they have,” or anything like that. If you’re going to a store or an online shopping site, it should be to buy a specific item, or a list of several specific items. Trips to stores not going for a specific item should be a rare treat (no more than a couple of times a month), if something you do at all.
Eat seasonally as much as you can (if you’re not doing this already). Fresh tomatoes are going to be expensive in January. That means you shouldn’t be eating dishes that feature fresh tomatoes in January. If this means you have to expand your cooking repertoire, the public library should have cookbooks.
Grow herbs, if the climate where you are is conducive to it. It may take some trial and error to figure out what does well where you are and with the level of maintenance you’re willing and able to do.
Durable goods, like furniture and cars, are to be used until they are no longer usable for their intended purpose. An ugly or unfashionable couch is still usable for its intended purpose. A car that breaks down frequently is not.
Don’t keep sweets or snack food on hand. You don’t need to eat chips, crackers, cookies, et cetera, and they ain’t free. This includes “healthy” snack foods and sweets. You don’t need that stuff. Your grandparents’ generation and earlier didn’t eat snacks nearly as much as we do now, and they survived. I’m on a diet (the No S Diet) where you don’t eat snacks or sweets on weekdays, and I’ve found myself spending less on food as a side effect.
Food cravings that are not satisfied will not kill you, or, if they will, it will take more than twelve years. I know, because I started keeping kosher 12 years ago. Food cravings actually go away after a while, even if you don’t satisfy them.
As others have mentioned, make friends with your grocery store circular. There’s two large local grocery store chains around me (but only one sends the circular to my home, grr), I shop at whichever’s got the better deal. The circular tells me what’s on sale that week and whether there are any “Buy one, get one” deals. (That’s how I stock up on pork tenderloins!)
Take this one step farther with coupons. Armed with what’s on sale from the circular, hit up your coupon collection to see if you have any coupons that match it. Don’t have a coupon collection? Start building one. Go to the aforementioned websites or Coupons.com. If there’s room in the budget, buy the Sunday paper every now and again. That junk mail you usually toss? Check the community paper and inserts for coupons. Match up any manufacturer coupons you find with any store coupons that might be in the store circular and save double!
Here in MN we’ve got laws so that you’ll never see any extreme couponing type sucesses, but you can still save a lot. One of the stores around here doubles up to 5 (sometimes 10) manufacturer’s coupons, but only coupons up to $1.00 and only on Wednesdays (usually). So Wednesdays are when I take my smaller coupons with me. Larger coupons or the store’s own coupons that don’t double I use any old time.
It can really add up.
I do a modified version of this.
My version is sort of like the old fashion adage that you should take one thing off before you leave the house. I do my frocery shopping, and then when I’m done but before I pay, I look at the cart and say “Really?” And you know, I end up dropping three or four things off.
Other tips that work for me:
The key, though, is patience. ** Don’t buy something on sale you wouldn’t have bought anyway** (in terms of item, not brand.) I buy pasta sauce, so when it went on sale I grabbed it.
Avoid buying anything you don’t have a plan to eat. Aside from staples, like salt and sugar and whatnot, you should buy only things you know you are going to eat within the lifetime of the food item. If you buy something because maybe you’ll like it there is an outstanding chance you will never eat it.
Anne is right. Minimize snacks. Snacks are expensive.
EU food regulations are totally off-topic, but equally are bizarre enough for a quick mention. Essentially the two classes that are graded are as you describe. Class I is “for fools” (but with a fairly solid guarantee that it isn’t going bad) Class II is cheaper because it ain’t as pretty. The perversities are manifold, such as how straight a Class I cucumber can be. It’s all to do with commoditisation sigh. I know something similar is done in the US at the wholesale level; it’s just a bit more in your face here.
Something to be careful on is to compare unit prices that are like for like on weight rather than per can or pack. My local supermarket is always trying on the 400g tin being only just cheaper than the 440g tin trick (ie nothing like 10%) or variations on this involving multipacks.
As already mentioned herbs will grow well indoors; so will tomatoes, especially cherry varieties. They just like a sunny-ish windowsill and regular watering. “Tumbling tom” is an easy tomato to grow and a quick search says it’s available in the US.
Last year, as a challenge to myself, I ate entirely seasonally - I now know more recipes for beetroot and cabbage than you can shake a stick at. It pays to not get them the first week they’re in season as the price is a bit higher then - I used that week to figure out what the heck I was going to do with whatever it was that was coming in. Winter into early spring is the hardest time but still pretty doable. The first salad of spring felt like the best meal ever. Recipe sites on the intertubes are plentiful also.
I’d never really noticed I didn’t do this but I’m possibly rare in that I’ve never had anything in the way of a sweet tooth and can take or leave crisps and the like. Biscuits only make their way into my house when my parents come for a visit.
A weekly stock of fresh fruit is another alternative. Allow a couple of pieces a day. YMMV on what you get. When I remember, I go for mostly apples with seasonal treats like apricots or plums.
You know, if I implemented this rule, it just might kill two birds with one stone.
I save a lot of money on dish soap. I bought the “pump” version of Dawn just one time. Then, instead of the expensive refills, I buy store-brand dish soap, add one squirt and fill the rest up with water.
Watered down store brand dish soap does the job just as well, for about 1/10 the price of regular stuff.
Occasionally, I’ve even been able to pick up store-brand dish soap at the dollar store, bringing the cost per refill down even lower. They also sell cheap liquid laundry detergent at a dollar for a bottle that supposedly is 24 loads worth, (I freely water it down and get many more loads than that) and you can substitute a squirt of that stuff for a dish soap refill just as easily. It doesn’t foam up the same, but it gets the dishes nice and clean.
So I used to spend $3 a month on dish soap, now I spend about $3 per year on dish soap. Sure, I’m only saving $9 per year, but every little bit helps.
Laundry detergent is another place where I was very reluctant to quit using the expensive name-brand stuff. It was literally, probably, the last name-brand holdout for me. I simply didn’t think it was possible that the cheaper stuff would get my clothes reasonably clean. Guess what? I was wrong. It works just fine. And it’s a LOT cheaper. $1.00 for 24 loads instead of $15 for 48 loads?
Cleaning supplies in general just seem to be cheaper at the dollar store. Other things, not so much. But there’s certainly some deals to be had.
Imagine this: it’s your nephew’s birthday. You’ve got the gift, so you swing by Hallmark or somewhere and buy him a birthday card ($4.00) some wrapping paper or a gift sack and some tissue ($5.00) and maybe a bow (3.00). Or, you drop by the dollar store and pick up a card (.50), a gift bag or some wrapping paper ($1.00) and maybe a bow. ($1.00). The $12.00 you might have spent at Hallmark is what I call “empty spending”, it benefits nobody except perhaps the Hallmark store owner. Your nephew will not notice or care that you cheaped out on wrapping his gift.
I’ve heard that vinegar makes a fine laundry detergent replacement. I might try it. I am very limited in laundry detergent options due to my sensitive skin.
Don’t know what kind of prices you found for cashews online, but Costco has pretty good prices on cashews and other nuts. We have a membership and go there every week, just about - the prices on OTC drugs alone make the membership pay for itself. (A year’s supply of generic Claritin for like $12? Generic Benadryl, 350 tablets for around $4? Can’t beat it!)
If you have the opportunity to get to the grocery fairly often and you have good self-control, shop for manager markdowns, which usually happen on the sell-by day. I like to buy fresh spinach in large plastic containers, but it’s pricey–maybe $4 or 5 regular price. I always look at the boxes to find the sell-by dates, then pop in that morning, when I often find them marked down to $1. I buy several and divide/freeze whatever I don’t use. This is a GREAT strategy for meat too–I almost never spend more than $1.75/# for any kind of meat.
Plan at least one cheap meal each week. I think someone mentioned this upthread, but it really works for me and the kids. If you’re eating super-duper cheap only 2X/week, you won’t feel so mistreated on the other nights when you go with the merely cheap meal!
I don’t buy any paper goods except toilet paper (Scott single-ply) and an occasional box of tissues when a kid gets a really bad winter cold. I don’t buy cleaning products except for soap/shampoo, dish soap, and detergent. I’m amazed at how much people spend on paper towels and napkins, for instance–if you really are short on money, it seems like a small fortune!
One way I trained my thinking was to consider percentages. Say I have $100 this week (that’s for kicks, I never have $100!). I’m deciding whether to buy 3 boxes of cereal for $10–a reasonable enough sale. But I always ask myself, “Am I willing to spend 10% of my budget on cereal?” 10% is a lot of my budget, so maybe I go with cheaper cereal, or I buy one box instead of 3. This really helps me a lot.
Just keep chipping away each week at saving a little here and there. It sounds like you’re making a good start!
Meat which was on sale often gets marked down the day after the sale ends, often Wednesday.
Biggest username post mismatch ever! Hell for me would be not having tissues in easy reach. This is inherited. My brother’s girlfriend once came over, saw that our house had a tissue box in every room, and said “you are really nose people.” It’s true. Some things are just worth it, but Costco often has large shrinkwrapped packages of tissues for a good price, and there is often a coupon.
BTW, while I like Costco, you need to be aware of store prices when you go, because many things are cheaper on sale at a supermarket. One example is soda.
True, but one question upthread was how to deal with a shopping addiction. Visiting a thrift shop can satisfy the urge for a lot less money than going to the mall - with the added advantage that thrift shops are often far away from other places to spend money.