food savings

What We Keep In Our Pantry

/ John / 2 Comments

As a follow up to yesterday’s post I want to talk about some of the things that we keep extra on hand to quickly throw together for a meal or to make a meal go further with kids.

  • Pasta- you can get this for 49¢ at Kroger. We try to have 6-8 boxes.
  • Pasta Sauce:  we buy sugar free from Aldi- we keep 4 red and 4 white sauces
  • Peanut Butter
  • Beans (Black, Pinto, Kidney)
  • Olives (Black and Green)
  • Canned Mushrooms
  • Diced tomatoes
  • Tomato sauce (can)
  • Salsa
  • Real Maple Syrup
  • Pancake Mix
  • Rotel
  • Onion Soup Mix
  • Green Chiles
  • Chicken and Beef Broth
  • Tortillas

These are some of the things we keep in stock at the house because they are things that we use on a regular basis.  We shop first out of our pantry and if we had more space I would expand this to many more items. When you have a deep pantry you can wait to buy things when they go on sale rather then just buying whatever you need the day or week you need it.

We have a deep freezer that needs to be cleaned out this spring. Once we get the freezer cleaned out we will be expanding to meats and start to make frozen meals.  It doesn’t necessarily  cost double to double a recipe.  This can reduce the overall cost of meals to less than $1 a meal.

Tomorrow we will talk about Aldi vs. Everywhere else.pantry

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Do you spend too much on groceries?

/ John / 2 Comments

Today was grocery shopping day for the week (yes, I said the week). We plan and shop on a weekly basis to help save money on groceries. There are numerous reasons I think this can be beneficial financially some of them that immediately comes to mind are:

  1. We have a plan for the week. We are not governed by a whim during the week
  2. We are less likely to go out because we have a plan and we know what we are going to eat every day.
  3. We can take advantage of buying ingredients for more than one meal (5 pounds of chicken, 3 pounds ground beef and vegetables can be purchased and not wasted.
  4. We can buy extra when things are on sale and plan meals to use them on.

There are many more things that can be said and many more strategies that I will get into eventually but here are some details from our first 2 months of 2017.

  • Total spent including eating out was $1230
  • Total number of days 55
  • Cost per day 22.36
  • Cost per meal/person- $1.06

We ate out 4 times in those 2 months with all 5 kids and we eat a TON. A few numbers from last week: 15+ pounds of fruit, 7 pounds of ground beef, 2 pounds of chicken and more. My 2 year old eats more than some adults and we still spent just over a $1 a meal for 2 months.

How much would that be for a family of 4? $90/week including all eating out.

Save just $10 a week and you could end up with $7,520 in a savings account in 10 years or nearly $21,000 in 20 if you invested it.

Are the 2 boxes of Keurig coffee worth that much? Make up your Continue reading →