Cutting your household budget is a hard thing to do.
No matter what your budget allows for it seems with
prices rising as they are it's never enough.
Here's some time tested true classic tips to help
you save money on your household expenses
without breaking the bank or taking out a
loan on your mortgage.
1. Buy Store Brand NonStick Cooking Spray
These spray cans of cooking oils have turned out to be a
great economical convenience for me. At first we started
using them because they were easy but I've noticed now we
buy a ton less of cooking oils by using these. Buy canola
oil, vegetable oil,olive oil and butter flavored oils in
the spray cans. Take the tops off them & toss those
because they are way too hard to get off when you're
trying to cook, I wish manufacturers would make them
easier to remove. Put them near your stove out in plain
view so you will reach for them all the time. You can use
these just about anywhere you use the actual cooking
oils.You'll save money & calories both without any effort.
Even though I'm a huge coupon user/fan I say store brand
on this product because even with a coupon doubled you
have to pay way too much for the name brand ones. I've
tried them all & you can't tell the difference in the
store brands so go ahead and
get it.
2. Cut back on All Pepsi,Coke & Other Soda Pop
intake For Everyone
Yes, I know we just have to have it here too. I'm a big
pepsi fan myself. But at $8.50 a case it's just gotten out
of hand. That's ridiculous to pay for so have everyone in
the house figure out just how much soda pop is being
consumed at your house and agree to cut it in half if
possible. Have everyone start drinking more bottled water
since it's better for you anyway. Try making some 2 quart
pitchers of Kool-aid again. That's right Kool-aid, use 1/4
cup less sugar than called for in the recipe as it makes
it taste better & will not be so sweet making it a little
healthier for you. Actually I now make my kool-aid with
Splenda since there is no aftertaste so there's no
calories involved at all. I use kroger's brand of splenda
store brand is what I'm saying it's much cheaper.
3. Start double cooking the quantity of your meals
eating leftovers; Don't freeze them
Cook some meals in double size portions & make everyone
actually have leftovers the next day. It can either be the same
meal eaten again or be creative & turn the leftovers into
a totally different meal the 2nd time around. My family
won't eat anything leftover from the freezer so I can't
recommend stocking up the freezer with precooked meals. I
say cook the double batch & eat it twice that same week.
Don't bother to go to all the trouble of freezing it.
4. Drink Ice Cold Tap Water At The Dinner Table Nightly
This is a great new resolution to start. Water is so much
healthier for us than anything else. It also helps fill
you up when you think you're hungry. Everyone in the
family can be better served by boosting their water intake
a little. Hey, you might actually like it and you're
already paying for it. You're paying for your tap water
on a montly basis aka water bill, so you should be
drinking it.
5. Fix Up Some Premade Food Snacks For Hungry Times
Grab those ziploc (store brand), snack size bags or
baggies & grab all the snacks in the house down from the
cabinets & the pantry. Look on the nutrition labels of
each one & put single serving sizes of them into each
baggie. Put them in a huge basket & leave them there.
Anyone running out can grab one to eat on their way to
somewhere without stopping at a fast food drive thru and
spending more money. Besides,
you'll be amazed at what an actual serving size is for
most foods especially snacks. Make the family eat these
first before clearing out the cabinets.
People at home will definitely grab one of the snack bags
whenever they want a snack. I guarantee you the snack
baggies are smaller amounts of anything your family's been
eating on a regular basis.
There's a huge difference in grabbing a new bag of chips &
finishing off half the bag & eating a correct serving of
say 10 Chips. It's enough to cure their hunger pains or
their cravings and you'll save a lot of money in the long
run. Don't overstuff any of the baggies. Put exactly one
serving size in each one. If you have tiny children at
home you can make up special ones for them with probably
half of a serving.
6. Make your 100% Juices go further by watering them down
just a little. Take your big bottle of juice & pour
2 cups into a 2qt pitcher. Fill the rest up with water.
Over ice this will be a nice refreshing drink. It will be
lightly flavored of the juice & will be much healthier.
Since you'll mainly be drinking water you'll save a ton of
money everytime you do this. No one needs to chug down
straight shots of expensive juice all the time.
7. Go out to your laundry room & get out all the dryer
sheet boxes you have. Take them to your kitchen & using
your kitchen shears, cut by the stacks full all of them in
half. Dryer loads come out just as good with a half of a
static sheet rather than a whole one. They charge way too
much money for those. I only buy the store brand unscented
ones for us which will save you about $50 a year.
8. Buy flat textured surface hand towels to use as
table napkins
Start setting everyone's place setting with
a folded cloth napkin. You'll save a ton of money by not
buying as many paper napkins. Since they cost about $4.00
for 100 of them & the average person eating a meal uses at
least 3 figure that out. Your saving big bucks.
9. Stop buying Hostess or other expensive overpriced
cupcakes
They are way overpriced & they are not even a bit good for you. You can do better at such a cost difference.Make some
cupcakes of your own every week & have them out in the
cake taker for everyone to snack on or for dessert. Leave
them plain or dust them with powdered sugar or cool whip.
If you really want the twinkie or cupcake taste squire
some cool whip inside of your finished cake from the
bottom & then frost with frosting. The box of cake mix can
be bought for sometimes 88cents & it makes 24 cupcakes.
The Hostess ones are about $5.50 a box or more & you only
get 8 of them! As long as you make cupcakes once every
couple of weeks no one will miss the Hostess goodies.
10. Stop eating out!
Make eating out a once a month
thing or less. That's right once a month. If you write down
how much your family is spending on eating out you might
have a heart attack reading the numbers.
11. Pack a lunch or a good healthy snack
Or skip lunch altogether & just have a healthy
snack everyday at lunchtime.
12. For Spaghetti meals that use 1lb of ground beef cut it
down to 1/2 lb
but chop the meat finer. No one will miss
the other 1/2 lb of meat and you'll save a lot of money.
Plus the meal will be so much better for you.
13. Make your own garlic bread, garlic toast
It's super
simple & much
cheaper. Fix up a whole loaf at a time & freeze them. Look
at that, the next time you use just 6 slices of those you
saved about $6.50.
14. Make your own french fries
When you buy a bag of
french fries did you know that in that bag is actually 1
or 2 potatoes? That's right you just paid $3.79 for 2
potatoes. Buy a whole bag of potatoes for $5.00 & fix 2 of
them yourself into fries or baked fries.
15. Get all your fruits & vegetables at your local farmer's
market
You'll save lots of cash & they will be fresher.
16. Every 2 or 3 days check your fridge for possible
leftovers that are in there covered in foil
Add them to
the next meal in some way or decide that this is the next
day's lunch for yourself. You bought it so don't waste it.
17. Start keeping Jell-0 (store brand) in the fridge ALWAYS
Make up a couple of boxes at one time & put them into
individual serving size dishes. Everyone loves jell-o &
it's cheap. Add fruit if you'd like or dress it up with
cool whip topping. People are basically lazy. But if they
open the fridge & spot something already in a dish just
for them, they'll eat it.
I keep sugar free jell-o in the fridge at all times. That
with a dab of fat free cool whip is the perfect snack and
it's only 10 calories!
18. Make your own cool whip topping
Look up a recipe but
all it is is whipped cream. Buy cans of evaporated skim
milk & put them in the fridge to use just for making your
own cool whip. You don't have to buy real whipping cream,
as long as you have the evaporated milk really cold, it
will give the same result. Add a tablespoon of sugar and a
bit of vanilla extract and it's heavenly whipped topping.
19. Start making pudding for desserts
It's very economical
& everyone will love it. Do it like the jell-o, put it in
individual 1/2 cup dishes. You can make your own even
cheaper than buying the boxed type. I'm a huge chocolate
pudding fan and it will make you feel like you've just had
the best most decadent candy bar with over 300 caloires,
while in reality you're satisfied and only about 100
calories!
20. If you smoke quit
Figure out how much money you spend
on smoking everyday, be honest here. Take that amount of
money & put it in your pocket, just a day's worth. Now
everyday when you want a cigarette pull that money out of
your pocket & leave it in front of you for the rest of the
day. Everytime you get the urge to smoke pull it back out
of your pocket as needed.
21. Plan your meals around your weekly sale ad using a list
& a menu
Also match up your coupons to all items that you
can. Use your store shopping card. Go online & add your
card to their site usually it will preload coupons onto it
too.
22. Buy only generic prescription drugs
Use a pharmacy
coupon. Most pharmacies now will let you use a
competitor's coupon which is great. I have over $200 of
free gift cards right now just by using a competitor's
coupon everytime I fill a prescription. I plan on using
the free money for buying grocery items that they have in
their stores which is quite a few things.
23. Look over your pantry stockpile often to use up things
that have been sitting out there
It's not a
savings if you buy it but don't ever use it. It's just a
waste of money if you let it expire. Use it up cook
something in a new way and just try it out. Have a
sampling night and cook some pantry stapes that've been
in their awhile. Everyone will love trying a bit of this
and a little of that for dinner. It will be like you are
at your favorite family buffet.
24. Make up some homemade trail mixes
with all your pantry
goodies. Use those extra bits of cereals no one is eating
& mix & match. You can find many recipes for these mixes
online. Fix them up & make the little snack bags with
them. These are very good for you and so easy to assemble.
25. Only buy your loaves of bread
at the bread thrift
stores. We have a hostess one in our area but there are
many other's. Freeze the bread so you always have it on
hand. Also, you can use your bread machine to make your
own cheaper breads more on that below.
26. Pull out your bread machine again
& start using it.
Remember you can make your own pizza crusts,dinner
rolls,bagels,huge soft pretzels,french bread,italian
bread,cinnambon buns,doughnuts,buns.... with it. Use it to
save at least $20 every week on your baked goods.
It's amazing what a bit of flour can make.
29.Stop buying pre made pie crusts, biscuits. Make your
own.
27. Buy the milk that's on sale each week
By that I mean
pay attention to the ads. If the half gallon jugs are on
sale one week don't buy the gallon sized ones. I see many
people at the grocery store just grab some milk not even
noticing they just paid $5 for a gallon when they could
have bought 2 half gallons for $2.50 total! That's one of
my pet peeves,sorry. We use about 6-7 gallons a week so I
do pay attention closely to which milk we buy.
28. Pull out your spices often
Use some that you don't use
all the time every once in awhile to change a dish up just
a bit. Put them to use, you bought them so use them. Try
a new flavor every week you might enjoy it.
29. Buy Kosher salt in the big box instead of the table
salt in the little cartons
Sure kosher salt is about $6
but it will equal about 14 of those little round blue
containers that are now up to $2 each.
30. Stop buying tv guide every week
out of habit! Find out
if anyone is still actually using it at your house. If
they are search online for free tv guide. Usually all the
time you can find a free 1 yr. subscription for it
somewhere. Fill it out & once you start getting it stop
buying it. With all the features now on home dvr's I doubt
anyone is even still reading the tv guide.
31. Still buying Woman's Day & Family Circle
every month at
the checkout? Stop buying it, break the habit cycle. You
can read both of them & hundreds of complete magazines
online for free. Save that money for more food items. Just
search for your favorite
magazines online thru google.
32. Buy eggs in the 2&1/2 dozen medium sized cartons
instead of the 2 large egg cartons every week. It's much
more economical & they last an entire month or more. You
don't need to buy eggs every week that way.
33. Join Sam's Club
buy some of your goods there. Sure,
not everything is cheaper but quite a few things are. We
always buy our Kraft Parmesan cheese there in the huge
bottle instead of those expensive little green cans at the
market. Fruits are much fresher there too than our local
Kroger. Take your calculator with you & do the unit price
math on some of the items to determine the best price. If
you can get it cheaper elsewhere, don't buy it.
This especially true of pepsi & coke products at
Sam's---Don't buy them there they are overpriced! Do
your shopping homework and you can get some good bulk
purchasing deals at Sam's Club.
34. If your family uses the little paper cups
in the
bathroom everyday buy them at Sam's Club instead. You get
600 of them for about $7 instead of paying $4.75 for 80 of
them at the grocery store. This is a big Savings so only
buy these at Sam's. Now tell everyone they are limited to
1 tiny cup in the bathroom per day. I know it sounds mean
but seriously my son can go thru 8 of them in a day
himself! Have them turn theirs upside down & place it over
their standing toothbrush. It's right there in their site
& no confusion about whose it is. If they don't want to do
that make them use a marker for their
intial so they limit themselves to one cup a day. They'll
get used to it and you won't constantly be running out of
those little cups.
35. It's actually cheaper to buy canned green beans
at the
store than fresh. I know odd but true. If you cook up a
few cans at at ime in your crockpot with a couple of
chicken boullion cubes they will taste more like fresh
greenbeans. I keep a crockpot of them all the time in the
fridge for some healthy side dishes for me.
I hope from all these tips you walk away with a little
more knowledge about ways you can save extra money everyday
for your family with just a little bit of practice.
If none of these tips work for you and all else fails you can go
get yourself a
Recession Loan
to help you out.
Disclosure: This post is brought to you by Payday Loans and Business2
Blogger Network. My opinions are my own. Thanks to Payday Loans and
Business2Blogger for this campaign.
Source: http://www.diabeticsnacker.com/2012/02/money-saving-tips-to-slim-down-your.html
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