Ways That We Save Money & Live Frugally – Part 3

If you missed Part 2, you can read it here…

And Part 1 here…

*Food – The best way to save money on food is to not eat out! 😊 (easier said than done, I know!) We have always limited our eating out. At the most it would typically be limited to date nights, carryout pizza once a month, or we used to do Chinese instead of pizza when we lived in South Beloit & a carryout meal for the family was about $17! Lol. Times definitely change!

The only times we typically eat out as a family is for birthdays & we like to go to Pizza Ranch, especially if we can go on Kids Eat Free days, it makes it pretty reasonable. We usually allow the birthday kids to bring a friend each. We have missed that the past year! We also do kid dates (a rotating schedule each child gets a turn…more on that next time.)

The 2nd way to save money on food is to create a meal plan – especially when you can do one based on what food you have on hand (so as to reduce food waste!) I often meal plan based on what we have in the fridge, freezer and pantry & sale fliers.

When you have a written plan, you are more likely to stick to it & not get caught in the “Oh no, I didn’t plan anything, so now we have to go out & buy something!” Every morning (or ideally the night before), make sure you have meat out of the freezer & thawing, any needed prep done, etc. Also when you do the meal plan, make sure you add anything needed to your grocery list.

Ideally, it’s great to do a 2 week or even a 1 month meal plan, but at the season we’re in, doing a 1 week works best for us. I always look at the calendar when making the meal plan. On busy days, I plan easy meals, crockpot meals, etc. On days I’m home all day, I plan “bigger” (meat, potatoes, sides, etc,) meals. We try to do at least 2-3 big meals a week (& always on Sundays), with plenty of leftovers for lunches.

I always like to keep a few easy meals on hand for if something comes up & we can’t/don’t do the meal we had planned. A few examples are eggs & sausage (sausage is always in our freezer & thaws quickly), Spaghetti (with GF noodles if needed), pancakes that the kids can make, can be paired with sausage. Think of a few meals you like & are easy & have them on hand.

Also I shop grocery sales whenever I can find good deals & stock up on foods (especially meats) that we eat often. Example…last week we were at Costco & they had an unadvertised sale for $3 off each pack of pork chops. No limit was posted, so we bought 5 packs. That’s 5 meals for our family at just around $1 a pound! It’s normally around $1.49-$1.69 per pound, which is a good price for meat already. Our whole family loves pork chops, so we like to do them about twice a month.

We have created a Google Doc Spreadsheet that keeps track of the food we have on hand. We have 1 tab for our freezer & 1 tab for our pantry items. It took some time to set up & you have to be diligent to maintain it…every time you bring home groceries, it takes a few minutes to add the food before putting it away & every time you get food out, you have to take it off the inventory. But it is a huge help & time well spent! I often will pull it up at the store when I’m wondering if we have, say, any jam left. For the pantry items we also put the expiration date so you can sort that way & see what needs used up. I often check the inventory when making the weekly meal plans.

We have also done some figuring from time to time to see how much each meal costs, saving more expensive meals for special occasions, etc. It’s definitely eye opening to see, when you don’t think you are spending so much!

Example: We had 16 people for Valentine’s Day lunch & we served steaks, baked potatoes, several veggies & homemade rolls. We calculated it & it only cost about $3 per person! For a steak dinner, that’s awesome! And it was so delicious! I had found a 5 lb filet tenderloin at Woodman’s a few weeks ago on sale & bought it for this purpose, & we also did a couple packs of new York strips from the freezer (we buy a 1/4 cow from some friends from time to time). (I had thought this filet deal was temporary & it may still be, but I was just at Woodman’s yesterday & found the same filet deal – $5.99 a lb for a tenderloin. It does mean that it takes a bit of time to clean off the silver skin & fat and cut it up. I probably spent 45 minutes doing that, but for the cost savings, it was worth it! I did look up a YouTube tutorial & then tried to cut the filet into 5 equal size portions so they would cook evenly. I may even do a blog post about it. 😉)

*Budgeting – Budgeting is super important. It helps you to live within your means, which is the KEY to being frugal & saving money. If you don’t know where all your money is going, I would highly recommend keeping track of your spending for a month & see. You’ll be surprised! (More on that next post).

Being wealthy isn’t a function of earnings, as much as a function of savings.

Make it a point to spend less than you make. Even if it means having to save up for items you want. Even if it means *gasp* eating beans & rice! (Keep trying recipes until you find something you like. Grant doesn’t care for lentils & rice, so we eat it for lunches or on a day he’s fasting as most everyone else loves it. Grant does really enjoy the homemade baked beans, as well as the Cilantro Lime Jasmine Rice with Mexican Black Beans that we have been making the past couple months.) You might even find, as our family has, that you like it! 😉

I was concerned when we went Gluten Free & Dairy Free that it would be more expensive, but it really hasn’t been! We’ve been relying more on more fruits & veggies, rice, beans & potatoes instead of the bread & pasta we used to eat so much of. We still eat meat most days, too. I have discovered a good GF homemade bread recipe that I’ve been making every week. We are not buying bread, milk, butter, cheese, etc any more (we’ve been using lard mostly, or olive oil as a replacement for butter, & some almond milk sparingly.)

If you take nothing else away from these Frugal Blog Posts, please hear this…Budgeting is a MUST if you want to escape the trap of living paycheck to paycheck.

*Phone – We got rid of our landline about 18 years ago when we got cell phones. It cost money for each phone call we made (where we lived, everywhere was considered long distance) & it would go out for several days every time it stormed, so it didn’t make sense to keep paying for a landline that we didn’t use.

Think about it…Are there any services like that you could get rid of?

For cell phones – pick a plan & stick to it. Pick the lowest plan your family can reasonably use. Shop around. We don’t get new phones every year or even every 2 years. We take care of them & keep using them until they die (you may wish to back up any pictures or anything that’s important to you! Not a bad habit to be in regularly at any rate!)

*Internet – We have always used the least expensive internet option we could, we don’t need all the bells & whistles. Last year we got rid of our internet all together – it kept going put every time we had a bad storm, was slow & laggy, etc.. It cost about the same as adding another cell phone to our plan, so when we got a phone for Lizzy (so there’s always a phone at home for emergencies & we can be in touch while we’re gone), we cancelled our internet. Now we use a mobile hotspot from our phones anytime we need internet. It has worked just fine!

We do not feel that young teens need cell phones. It’s important to have some type of phone at home if we’re gone, but that doesn’t have to be a smart phone. Once teens start driving, yes, it’s important for them to have a phone for safety.

Read Part 1

Read Part 2