Category Archives: Smart Shopping

Guest post: 12 essential tools for your frugal kitchen – Part I

kitchen tools
Photo by photoartist3

(This is a guest post from my husband, Tony, an amateur chef who cooks professional-quality dishes. As the primary beneficiary of his culinary talents, I can absolutely attest to his abilities in the kitchen. Here are his recommendations for the only 12 tools you need to make pretty much anything without cramming your cupboards or breaking the bank.)

Stocking a frugal kitchen is a balancing act. Weighing the pros and cons of a particular tool and trying to figure out how much money you should put down for it is as delicate an art as cooking or baking. Depending on the situation, money either is or is not synonymous with quality, which is why the only rule you should ever have when buying a kitchen tool is this: is it a multi-tasker?

I don’t want to suggest a kitchen can survive with just 12 pieces. But these strategically purchased pieces can help cut down on the clutter coming in and the dollars going out.

12.) A 10- or 12-inch nonstick pan. I would never pay more for a non-stick pan than I would want to pay again in the next few years. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter if you buy the cheapest non-stick pan or the most expensive non-stick pan: both are susceptible to that single nick that will cause them to lose their functionality. Although keeping a non-stick pan in pristine condition for multiple years is certainly not impossible, most of us don’t store it in a museum display case and will have an accident that will begin to ruin the pan. Look for a pan in the low-middle cost range; something that has a little heft to it (to hold heat and allow for even cooking, which the cheapest ones don’t) but won’t make your bank account cry if you chip it.

11.) A thick rubber-handled manual can opener. Cheaper than an electric variety, easier to clean, and if the handle is rubber, it can moonlight as a jar opener.

10.) A large pot, 8 to 12 quarts. Perfect for soups, stews, and stocks. (Every frugal kitchen should be making its own stocks!)

9.) In most cases, buy plastic instead of metal. It’s cheaper and it lasts longer. Metal, particularly stainless steel, looks beautiful — but cheap metal measuring cups can bend at the handle, and cheap metal measuring spoons can rust. My mother still uses the same simple plastic measuring devices she received at her wedding. And if you’re looking into plastic utensils (particularly flexible-head spoon spatulas), it’s worth the extra dollar or two to buy something that is safe to high temperatures; melted plastic is never a tasty ingredient.

8.) Tongs. They’re like a third hand. If you can only buy one, get the ones with heat-resistant plastic on the ends so they won’t ruin your non-stick cookware.

Tony is my husband, an excellent cook, a grad student, and a movie reviewer. Check back tomorrow for the second installment of his guide to essential tools for the frugal kitchen!

Easy ways to cut your grocery spending

grocery-shoppingIt was less than a year ago that I was frustrated with our $85-$100 a week grocery spending. I didn’t feel like we were being extravagant, and yet we couldn’t seem to cut our spending. Looking back, I realize that we were making a lot of mistakes. By making a few simple changes, we’ve cut our spending by $30-$40 a week without feeling deprived. That’s a savings of over $100 a month!

These tips may not apply to you if you’re already living frugally. But if you’re just getting started or you’re struggling to cut high grocery costs, this may be a good place to start.

Plan your meals around the sales.

Every week, we look at the grocery ads for both of the stores in our area. You can do this online at MyGroceryDeals.com. After looking at all of the sales, we plan meals based on what’s on special that week, or we plan to stock up on staples that are on sale to save money in later weeks. Make a list, and stick to it! Impulse purchases are almost always unnecessary.

Stockpile when staple items are on sale.

We cook a lot of chicken-based meals. One of the first things I realized when we started cutting grocery spending is that buying just enough chicken for the week was eating up our budget. If we needed three chicken breasts for the week, we’d pay as much as $4 a pound just to buy what we needed. Now that I stockpile, I’ve realized that chicken breasts go on sale for $1.99 a pound once a month. When that happens, we stock up with 12 or 15 chicken breasts, freeze them in serving sizes, and use it throughout the month. You can do this with other meats as well as non-perishable or freezable staples.

Avoid snacks and other extras.

When I took a good look at our grocery spending last year, I realized that a lot of what we were buying wasn’t for meals. It was extra stuff that may have been on sale or just looked good that we were throwing into the cart. Cutting out these extra purchases will cut your spending and make it easier to avoid snacking at home. In the beginning we cut out everything that wasn’t part of a meal just to get used to the concept of buying only for meals. Now we’ve been able to work healthy snacks back into our grocery trips by shopping the sales and limiting ourselves.

Drink water or iced tea instead of soda.

Seriously. I still struggle with this one because I enjoy drinking a diet soda with dinner, but you can cut your grocery spending by $12-$20 a month just by cutting out soda and packaged beverages.

Clip coupons.

I’ll be honest. I’m terrible at clipping coupons, and this has not been part of my grocery saving strategy. But if you find you have a knack for coupon clipping, you can save a ton by matching coupons with in-store deals. We typically don’t purchase packaged foods, so I’ve found that coupons aren’t very useful for us for groceries.

Add a “leftovers night” to your meal plan.

You can easily cut about $10 a week from your grocery cost by planning for six meals instead of seven. This is also a good way to clear out your refrigerator and avoid wasting leftover food.

Our $50-$60 a week grocery budget is considered pretty high for two people in the frugal world. Many frugal families of four are able to eat well for $30-$40 a week. But we consider groceries to be one of our few luxuries because we love to cook and eat.

What about you? How do you keep your grocery costs down?

Photo by B tal

A Mother’s Day meal fit for a queen — the frugal way

lobsterThis weekend, my parents are coming to visit. I haven’t seen them since Christmas, and I can’t wait.

Last weekend my mom celebrated her birthday. And of course, this weekend we’ll celebrate Mother’s Day with her. We really want to do something special for her, so we started brainstorming super luxurious meals we could cook.

Since one of our goals for 2011 is cooking lobster at home and it’s one of her favorite foods, we decided surf and turf would be the perfect Mother’s Day feast.

Steak and lobster meals typically cost about $25 in chain restaurants, and even more than that in gourmet establishments. We figured by cooking it at home we could keep it healthier and save a little money. I was surprised to find out just how much this meal can cost even at home.

Tony really wanted to cook live lobster. At $14.99 a pound and roughly 1.5 pounds per lobster, we would have spent about $90 on lobster alone if we each ate a whole one. The most economical option is buying two whole lobsters, which would probably yield plenty of meat for the four of us. But that would cut down on the amount of tail meat that each person gets, and the lobster tail is the best part. Not only that, but I wasn’t too excited about the gruesome reality of cooking a live lobster. I’m a little squeamish about eating anything with eyes. Yuck.

We decided to go for frozen lobster tails instead. Our grocery store typically sells frozen lobster tails at $9.99 each for about 4.5 ounces. That’s about $35.50/pound. I had no idea lobster was so pricey!

In a tremendous stroke of luck, it turns out frozen lobster tails are half price this week at our grocery store. So we’re buying 4 frozen lobster tails for $20, or about $17 a pound. It’s more expensive per pound, but we’re not paying for the inedible waste we’d have with whole lobsters. I have a feeling that when you weigh only the edible parts of the whole lobster, the per pound price would probably be more than $14.99.

We were prepared to serve any type of steak, but after shopping around we discovered that we could get beautiful cuts of filet mignon for $7.99 a pound at Costco. We normally wouldn’t spring for a pricier cut of meat like that, but this is my mom’s birthday/Mother’s Day meal after all.

For side dishes, we’re serving creamed spinach and baked potatoes. All together, this feast for four people will cost less than $60, or about $15 per person, including a nice bottle of wine. That’s a pretty pricey home-cooked meal, but when you consider what we’d spend at a restaurant, I’d say it’s a steal.

Tony says lobster tails don’t count and he still wants to cook a live lobster, but I’m still going to cross that one off the list anyway. :)

Photo by tangaroo

Always track your rebate claims

In February, I bought a year’s supply of contact lenses at Costco after searching for the best price. One of the main reasons I decided to go with Costco was the $20 rebate on a year’s supply, which brought their price down to the lowest.

Costco allows online rebate claim submission, and it was pretty simple. I filled out a form with information that was readily available on my receipt. I figured it would be several weeks, maybe even a couple months, before I received my check, so I kind of forgot about it.

Yesterday it was time to replace my contacts with a new pair of lenses. For the first time since I’d submitted the claim, I thought about my rebate. It had now been over two months since I submitted it, and I haven’t received a check.

I logged onto the Costco site and checked the status of the claim using the claim number they emailed me. It was so easy that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t checked it before. According to their records, the check was sent on March 17 and should have arrived 7-10 business days after that. It didn’t.

When I called the rebate hotline, they were extremely helpful. Within about 5 minutes they were able to determine that my rebate check had been sent and returned to them. The customer service rep assured me that a new check would be in the mail by Monday sent by certified mail to ensure delivery.

While the hotline was extremely helpful in resolving the problem, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t thought to check on it. It’s only $20, an amount that many people might not bother to follow up on. If I hadn’t called last night, I probably never would have received a check.

It would have been nice if they had recognized the problem and resolved it without a call, but to be fair I don’t really expect them to track that sort of thing for me. It’s my money, after all. If I don’t care enough about it to track it, why should they?

People who regularly submit rebates for Walgreens and other stores usually have intricate systems for tracking this sort of thing. I don’t regularly submit rebates (only when I happen to buy a product that offers one), so I easily could have let it slip my mind.

When I bought my computer, it came with a $200 rebate. You better believe I tracked that one. I sent the required materials by certified mail to ensure that they weren’t lost, and frequently checked the status on my claim until I received my check. After all, $200 is a lot of money.

But $20 is just as important when it comes to getting a little money back after a purchase. It’s so easy to submit and track rebates these days, there’s no reason to lose track of that money. I takes more trouble to clip coupons than it did to log in and check on that rebate, and coupons usually only save cents. I would be careful to keep track of a $20 bill; why lose track of a $20 rebate?

An easy guide to buying generics

Buying generic or store-brand items is one of my favorite ways to keep grocery costs down. But I’m frugal, not cheap, which means I won’t sacrifice quality completely just to save a few cents.

Generics have come a long way since I was a kid. Our grocery store even stocks a variety of low-cost organic generics. But there are still many generic products that, in my opinion, aren’t worth the pennies it cost to make them, let alone 75% of what I’d pay for a quality name-brand item.

Finding quality generics is a game of trial and error. The only way to know for sure if a generic is worth buying is to try it for yourself. There are some general rules I’ve found that can make the process easier, though.

Always

Staples – Milk, eggs, sugar, flour, tea, bread, butter, and other basics cost 25-40% less for generics, and you’ll never know the difference.

Canned fruits & vegetables – Many times the store-brand versions are even higher quality than their name-brand counterparts.

Medicine – The active ingredients are the same, but the cost difference is mind-boggling. Acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and all of the various cold medicines are as much as 75% cheaper in generic.

Tony takes a Claritin knock-off for his seasonal allergies, and it costs almost 1/4 of what we’d pay for Claritin. Seriously, 30 pills for $4 compared to 30 pills for $17 in the name brand. The store brand works just as well. The same is true for prescription medications. Always ask for the generic, and make sure your doctor writes substitutions into the prescription.

Sometimes

Cleaning products – Store-brand glass cleaner and bleach work just as well as their name-brand counterparts, but I notice a dip in quality for heavy-duty cleaners like shower and tub cleaners.

Cereal – Almost all of the major brand-name cereals come in a generic version, and we’ve only tried a handful that weren’t very good. At half the price of name brand, it’s always worth it to try.

Hygiene products – We buy name-brand toothpaste and deodorant, but Tony’s shampoo is always generic. This is one of those areas where you really have to try the product to know for sure.

Remember, if the product is low quality or doesn’t do its job, you’re not really saving money by buying the generic — you’re just throwing money down the drain on a low quality product.

Never

Dog food – It’s all our dog eats, so we spring for the good stuff. On the spectrum of dog food brands and prices, the food we buy probably falls somewhere on the upper side of the middle. It’s not the super expensive stuff, but definitely not super cheap or generic.

Peanut butter – We’re both picky about peanut butter, and ever since we discovered Skippy Natural we’ve been hooked.

Paper towels & toilet paper – I’ve experimented with generics, and the result wasn’t pretty. We use coupons and buy in bulk to reduce the cost.

Coffee – We brew a half pot every morning, and we each drink a cup. We’ve tried to buy store-brand to save money, but it’s like drinking mud. We don’t go all out and buy Starbucks, but we spring for a cost-effective name brand and save money by buying in bulk and limiting our consumption.

What are your rules for buying generic?

Time for new tires — or why I’m glad we have an emergency fund

new-tires
photo by kalebdf

Last week Tony took the car in for an oil change and brake check. I wasn’t expecting the news he gave me when he came home. One of our tires had a bubble and needed to be replaced immediately. The other three were on their last legs and needed to be replaced as well.

Our car only has about 20,000 miles, so we weren’t expecting this for some time. There was a time when a surprise like this would lead to panic and, most likely, debt. I didn’t have $200-$500 available for new tires at any given time, so I would have charged it on a credit card (unless my cards were maxed out).

This time it was a surprise, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t prepared.

Every month, we save $25 for car expenses. We’d accumulated about $90 in that account since using it to pay for maintenance before driving to Indiana in December.

The $90 would help, but it wasn’t enough. If we replaced all four tires, it would cost about $450.

I wanted to be sure that it was necessary, though. After all, the tires only had 20,000 miles on them. We knew we needed to replace the damaged tire, but I wanted to make sure the other three really needed to be replaced before taking money out of our emergency fund. We did the penny test and discovered that the back two tires were still okay.

We decided to replace the front two tires. We’ll monitor the tread and condition of the two back tires to make sure they’re still safe, and try to save up the money to replace them within the next few months.

We called for quotes at three different places — AAA, Wal-Mart, and Firestone. Firestone was the cheapest by about $100. The total for two new tires at Firestone was $215 with installation and other fees. Because we save additional money for car expenses, we only had to use $125 from our emergency fund. No big deal.

This is the first time I’ve had to tap the emergency fund, and I can’t tell you how glad I am that we have it. Before our emergency fund, I lived in constant fear that something like this would happen (and it always did). Our emergency fund made a normally stressful situation much easier.

I also learned that we’ve been too lax about tire safety. Just last weekend I drove over 100 miles on those tires — and one of them probably already had a bubble. I’m so thankful that I didn’t blow a tire going 70 miles per hour on the highway. Yikes.

From now on, we’ll keep a closer watch on our tire pressure and tread and check for tire problems, especially before long drives.

Wow, did I get a great deal on new clothes

My shopping trip yesterday was a phenomenal success. I was looking for fashionable, versatile clothing that would be professional enough for an upcoming business trip and comfortable enough to wear in my pretty casual office. I shopped with a friend, and we went to Anthropologie, Banana Republic, and Old Navy.

Before the trip, I decided I could afford to spend $150. That felt like a lot of money to spend on clothing in one month, but I haven’t shopped in about a year.

My friend suggested Anthropologie because I was looking for fashion, and even though they offer a pretty large sale selection, the sale prices were high for me. I did end up getting a nice cardigan from the sale rack, but at $40 it was the most expensive item I bought today.

Banana Repubic and Old Navy (as well as the Gap) are offering 30% off your entire purchase this weekend. This is in addition to sale prices and clearance mark downs. I found a TON of great stuff. After Banana Republic, I was still under budget, so I took my coupon to Old Navy where I bought some plain layering tees and camis — stuff that I always need, but usually don’t want to spend the money to get.

Here’s what I bought:

  • 1 pair dress pants
  • 2 cardigan sweaters
  • 3 dressy shirts
  • 5 layering camis
  • 2 t-shirts for me
  • 4 t-shirts for Tony

My total ended up being $165.22. If I had paid full price (which I would never do, but it’s still fun to see), it would have been $478.77. That’s a savings of over 65% off the original price!

It’s unlikely I would ever pay full price since I always shop the sales. A more likely scenario is that I would have paid sale and clearance prices without the 30% discount. If that was the case, it would have been $218.03 (including my $40 cardigan, which wasn’t marked down another 30%). So the 30% discount at Banana Republic and Old Navy saved me roughly $52.81.

How did I do it? Well, obviously, the 30% off everything sale really helped. But I also shopped exclusively from the clearance and deeply discounted racks. Not a single item was full price, even without the 30% discount.

My favorite item is a button-down cardigan. It was hanging on the clearance rack, marked down to $9.97 from $79. Why was it marked down almost 90%, and why on Earth was it still on the rack at that price? Well, there was a pretty big rip in the seam on the neckline. Because it was “damaged,” they took an additional 10% off the clearance price. Then I got another 30% off that. I paid $6.28 total for the sweater, which is a total savings of 92% off the original price.

When I got home, I stitched up the rip in the seam, and now the sweater is good as new. Even without the extreme discounts, it probably would have been my favorite item because it’s so versatile, comfortable, and cute. Never disregard the “damaged” items! It’s often a simple fix, and you can get some amazing deals if you’re willing to do some stitching.

The most important thing is that my wardrobe is refreshed with nice, versatile clothing that I can wear for business and daily life. But it definitely helps that I found such great deals!

If you haven’t checked it out yet, I strongly suggest you head over to Old Navy, Banana Republic, and the Gap to see if there’s anything left on the clearance racks. The 30% off sale ends today!

Clothes shopping stresses me out

This weekend I’m heading out to shop for clothes. It’s probably been about 8 months since I bought anything new, and even then it was just random clearance items I found every once in a while at the store where I worked.

This week, Kacie at Sense to Save wrote about how budgeting gave her permission to buy new clothing. Like Kacie, I hate to spend money on clothes. I take care of the ones I have and typically wear them for longer than I should. I’m just not that into fashion, and I’d rather spend that money on other things. As long as the clothes I’m wearing are in pretty good condition with no holes or stains, they’re usually fine with me.

I work in an office with a really casual dress code. Sometimes the women wear dress pants, but for the most part everyone comes to work in jeans. Obviously, we have to maintain a somewhat professional appearance, so holey t-shirts and old blue jeans aren’t acceptable, but for the most part it’s pretty casual.

I have plenty of nice casual wear that’s still in good condition, which is why I haven’t felt rushed to spend money on clothing. But next week I’m going on a business trip to a conference, and I need some suitable business casual attire. Now is a good opportunity for me to expand my wardrobe a little with nicer outfits that are casual enough for work and dressy enough for professional events.

I’ve set a budget, decided what I need, and I’m heading out today to do some shopping. Now I’m just worried about finding clothes that fit well, look nice, and don’t cost a fortune. When I’ve gone on shopping trips like this in the past, I’ve always found that the items on sale either aren’t in my size or don’t look nice. It can be pretty frustrating. Anyone have any suggestions for stores where I might find fairly fashionable business casual clothes for a good price?

The results of my search for low-priced contact lenses

I agreed to let my optometrist write my prescription for newer lenses instead of the older ones I’ve been using. I like that the new ones are monthly instead of bi-weekly lenses. I also found they were more comfortable than my old lenses, and the office assured me that they would end up costing roughly the same amount per year as my old lenses.

However, I made sure I would be able to change my mind. Since the lens brand is part of the prescription, they told me they could only write it for a certain brand. I was nervous about finding a good deal on the newer lenses, though. I made sure that if I decided after doing some comparison shopping that the new lenses were just too expensive, I could call the optometrist’s office and have them write me a new prescription for the old lenses. They said that would be fine.

Before I left the office, I had them price a year’s supply of contacts with my insurance discount and any rebates. The original price was $250 for a year’s supply or $62.50 per box. A 20 percent discount through my insurance would bring the total to $200.

There was also a $50 mail-in rebate for a year’s supply. However, I would need to mail in my receipt and proof of purchase, and then wait for a check. With discounts and rebates, the total would be $150 or $37.50 per box. Not great, but I guess it could be worse.

When I asked for my prescription, the manager of the optical office said I should let him know if I found a lower price. He said sometimes he’s able to match prices. Good to know, though I didn’t end up taking him up on it.

Next I checked at 1800-contacts.com (which  powers WalMart.com contact lens sales). I was not impressed at all. Their price was $50 per box. They offered an automatic $30 discount for a year’s supply, which would bring the total to $170 or $42.50 per box.

Today I checked Costco. The regular price was $32.25 per box. They also offered an electronic rebate of $20 for a year’s supply. The final price was $109 or $27.25 per box. That’s $90 less than I would have paid out of pocket at the optometrist’s office, and $40 less after all the discounts and rebates they offered.

For the record, I also priced my old lenses just for comparison’s sake. A year’s supply at Costco would have cost $112. So I actually saved $3 by going with the new, high-tech lenses. :)

It seems like a lot of money in a lump sum. However, since they’re monthly lenses, it works out to about $9 a month. It doesn’t seem too expensive when you think about it that way.

I feel bad for all those years that my parents ordered my contact lenses directly through the optometrist. Even with discounts and rebates, it’s usually just not the best deal.

I was also surprised to find out that 1800contacts isn’t as great a bargain as I thought. I think a lot of people order through them without shopping around, because they market themselves as the lowest-priced contacts dealer. 1800contacts were actually more expensive than the optometrist’s office, though. Just thought that was interesting.

Just remember, there’s almost always a better deal out there if you’re willing to do some leg work.