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Frugal shopper skills lead to great tasting frugal meals in minutes.
The frugal shopper is one who has outlined and identified the main sources of cash drain involved in living the average modern family life.Frugal shopping is easy, fun and financially rewarding once you get the hang of it.First up, preparing frugal meals from foods you have grown yourself, or purchased at a steep discount through crafty timing and sleuthing sources. Let's go!The Frugal Shopper Saves Money on Groceries*Don't buy anything. What? That's right, frugal shopping starts by skipping a weeks grocery shopping right now to see how far you can improvise meal preparation using what is in your pantry now. Why? To get a baseline temperature of your families true food needs. You will buy less as your fears of not having enough subside. A Frugal Shopper Makes a List!*Shop once every two weeks and go alone. I mean alone, with your list, which you are sticking to. When I did not take my own good advice and shopped with three of my kids one day recently, I spent $14.78 I would not have had they been safely at home. What did I get? A bag of lemons my son wanted, $3.29. An extra huge bag of cheese sticks for $7.00. I knew better than to buy these because our fridge is not cooling properly. They went to waste, but when you know you need snacks for kindergarden what are you going to say? An extra huge bag of raisins, which my lemon son also proclaimed to suddenly love. $4.49. Case closed. *Check your freezer and pantry and don't buy anything you can make frugal meals out of and skate by without. *Grow your own and preserve everything you can. This is usually a summertime project as gardens are planted, watered and weeded. Make sure your children are working in your garden and also are involved in preparing fruits and vegetables to can and freeze. * If you don't have space for a large garden join a co op for seasonal boxes of fruits and vegetables. Save even more by working more than your share in the co op in return for free food. * Think your way out of expensive bad habits or spending patterns that are unnecessary. Ordering take out because you are sick of the 8 things you make for dinner over and over again? Visit copy cat restaurant recipe sites all over the internet and cook up some famous bourbon chicken and many of your families favorite restaurant foods. A Frugal Shopper Bakes!*Get them baking. We all eat bread everyday, over and over we spend upwards of $3.79 per loaf for anything with grains in it. Do you have a spare 11 year old child? You can teach older grade school age kids to make homemade yeast dough, rise it and bake it for an hour. Not difficult. Soon you will have a yeast prince or princess on your hands and at one loaf of bread per day, you will have a spare $113.70 in your coffers each month. They will naturally graduate to pizza dough, bagels, muffins and cookies. Provide baggies and a freezer and you are raking in the savings while your children swell with pride and accomplishment. A Frugal Shopper Uses Coupons!*Use grocery manufacturer coupons and online coupon sites where you can print out the coupons in advance and take them with you. Do not enter the coupon site until you have a list of what you are looking for, because there will be a million different things to buy that have savings attached to them, and you don't want to lose site of the fact that you are suddenly on a coupon site for upscale clothes, not buying laundry detergent and shampoo at a discount. *Before leaving the house, ask every dollar who he is and where does he think he's going? Ask the frugal shopper inside yourself these questions before spending your dollar:- Is this purchase a want or a need? - Can you put it off, even for a week? Purchases often "cool off" after even a few days. - Can I substitute for something I already have? - Can I borrow it from friends or family and return the favor when they need the same? - Can I live, I mean live, without it? The answer is almost always Yes. - How many hours, days, weeks or months will I have to work at my job to pay for this item? - If I charge this item, how many more hours, days, weeks or months will I have to work at my job to pay for this item? *A frugal shopper can avoid impulse shopping by imagining going through the mental motions of assembling, cleaning and storing this item. *A frugal shopper can make it instead of buying it. *Make enemies with the middleman, just in your head of course. Actively resenting the retail experience can go a long way to shopping on a whole different level of awareness. *Buy according to the best unit price, not the size of the product. Unit pricing is very easy to miss if you are not in the habit of using this information. For example, a warehouse store like Costco may certainly sell you a huge jar of pickles, and feels no obligation to give you the quantity discount you are expecting. The smaller jar may have a smaller unit price. Check. * The frugal shoppers know quality from junk. Lousy quality is never a better deal. In the case of clothing, it will rip, fade, shrink and become unwearable very soon, and in the case of foodstuffs, they will have an off taste, aroma or texture that will cause you not to eat it at all. Household products are suspect as well. I learned this the hard way when I bought a brand name toothpaste that goes for $3.00 retail for $1.00 at a dollar store. Awful tasting does not cover it. *Buy with cash or debit card, never credit. *Pride yourself on not forgetting to send off that rebate after the shopping. *Frugal meals cannot be make with plastic. Do not buy anything disposable, with fancy packaging or that is excessively packaged. *Make a game with your kids about how to go about making a packaged "kid food" at home, and show them the savings in dollars and cents for doing so. Household StaplesMake your own homemade laundry detergents, stain removers and fabric softeners
Mix Fels Naptha in a saucepan with the 3 Pints water, heat on low until dissolved. Stir in washing soda and Borax, heat to thickened. Add 1 Quart hot water to the bucket, adding the soap mixture. Cap and shake gently to mix. Thickening will take place after 12 hours. Use 1/2 Cup per load. Fabric Softener
Combine slowly as the soda and vinegar will fizz up. Pour into an empty plastic fabric softener bottle. Use 1/4 cup in the final rinse. Stain Remover
Mix all of the above and store in the last Spray and Wash bottle you will ever buy. There are so many more hints and tips we will offer you for saving money, shopping smart and living frugally. Check back often! Frugal Shopper to Frugal Living |
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