Books…

ok, I admit it, I am a voracious reader. Since the first of the year I have finished 28 books. If I paid full price for every book I read, we would be living on the streets. Fortunately, I don’t. We have a decent library system here in town, and I make use of it, but even if we didn’t (and we have lived in places that don’t) I still get books at cut prices.

I am a member of Paperbackswap.com PBS is a great site that allows you to list the books you are willing to get rid of, and when someone requests a book, you mail it out, at first class or media mail rates, whichever is cheaper. (some kids books, and small things like harliquins are cheaper to mail first class.) You pay the postage when something is requested. For each book you mail out, you get a credit, 2 credits for audio books, and when you use credits to order books, you pay nothing.  Occasionally something may happen, such as a book being lost or damaged in the mail, but these are rare. I have been a member at PBS for 3 1/2 years and totally love it. This is one of the best book sites on the web!

The also have sister sites for DVD’s and for CD’s check them out!

lunches

What do you spend to buy lunch each day at work, or even for your kids at school? Packing and carrying a lunch is much cheaper than buying it each day, not to mention, much healthier than most alternatives.

My kids school serves fairly healthy meals, but they are $2 a day, which includes milk, or they can get milk to go with their packed lunch for $.25 a day. As long as I don’t buy lots of prepackaged single serving foods to go in their lunch, I spend way less than that to send them their lunches each day. I often will buy a full sized box of graham crackers and then divide it up into serving sizes (usually 2 crackers, broken in half, so 4 halves) and put them in sandwich bags. I send baby carrots, hot soups, macaroni and cheese, sandwiches, fruit, yogurt, salads (yes, I have a child who requests salad in her lunch) with Cubies (about $3.50 a box at Walmart) or a soup thermos I can send hot or cold meals and have them last until meal time.

The same thing goes for my husband for his lunches, his options for lunch are fast food picked up on the way in, a packed lunch from home, or junk food from the company store, they are not allowed to leave the site for lunch, so here, packing lunches becomes even more important, and gives us more opportunity to save money. My husband likes to take stews to work, he really likes the Campbell’s Chunky stews, which around here, run about $4 each if you get them in the microwavable bowl, or $3.50 in the can, which adds up really quickly. However, last week I made a stew, and put it in serving size bowls, and froze it. We did the math, that stew ended up costing about $2 a bowl. HUGE savings and it really adds up fast.

Those left overs in the fridge.. Can you heat them up and send them? My oldest daughter loves me to send left over spaghetti in her lunch, she says it is a real treat to open up the thermos and find spaghetti. And for my husband, I don’t even heat it up, he has access to a microwave, so I just pull it out of the fridge, make sure it is in a good container (and not too much) and send it.

If you generally drink sodas or juice at work / school, buying in large packaging and taking from home is much much cheaper than a vending machine, especially if you can buy on sale too. Think about it, $1 a can for a soda in a machine or $3 a 12 pack on sale, or even $5 not on sale is still cheaper, juice even more so because of the value.

Plus, if you are buying larger containers, and using reusable containers, it is less waste and better for the environment too.

Killer deal

I do most of my shopping, with the exception of meats, at the local Walmart super-center, meats, I usually get somewhere else because of price, and beef quality. However.. Today while doing my weekly shopping I noticed that my local walmart has 10lb bags of chicken leg quarters for $5, this works out to 50 cents a lb. So I got one, it is currently on the stove boiling, and once done, I will skin and bone it and divide the meat in to meal size portions, put in zipper bags and freeze.

I think I will go pick up at least one more in the next day or two and get those put up too. I can’t pass up the price and it makes dinner prep that much easier. I can pull a bag of already cooked chicken out of the freezer and make rice and we have chicken and rice. or make enchiladas out of it and with the chicken already done, that is more than half the work.

Check your local stores for deals, a lot of stores are putting freezer items on sale so that they have the space to put out turkeys for the holidays, maybe a store near you has a really great deal too.

Things you might not think of….

• Errands. Save them up and run as many as you can in one trip, especially with the prices gas has been hitting recently. This also tends to save time, since you are already out and quite likely, closer to where the errands are than home.
• Light bulbs. Florescent light bulbs cost a little more to buy, but you more than get it back in your electric bill, and the frequency in which you have to replace them (or lack there of) compared to traditional light bulbs.
• Menus. Making a menu for the week/pay period/month, and then a grocery list from the menu, and shopping only for those items on the list can dramatically cut your food bills, especially if you put things on your menu that are budget friendly foods (like.. no steak every night, but pasta’s and rice are very inexpensive.)
• Packing lunch instead of eating out. Think about it.. you can pack a lunch, even a TV dinner style lunch for $1-2 but if you go to a restaurant, or drive through, you easily pay $5-10, multiply that times 5 workdays a week and it adds up fast.
• What are you drinking? Sodas are big money, not to mention the amount of sugar in them is not good for us, and if you are buying pre-made tea, that is expensive. Bottled water is big bucks too. I make my own sun tea, and I don’t add sugar, to me, this is the nectar of the gods. But, still, invest in a water filter and a reusable water bottle, whether plastic or metal. a good filter takes all the flavors out of municipal water, and makes it every bit as good as bottled, and the cost works out to less than pennies a bottle over time.

Speaking of Bread…

I have recently started making bread more often as well (when temperatures outside top 115F, and it is costing you way too much to keep the house at 85F, you don’t bake… at all.) I own a bread machine, but I hate it. It takes up too much space on my counter top, and I hate that square loaf it makes. I could just take the bread out after the kneading and put it in a loaf pan to raise, and bake myself, but then I still have that counterspace issue. So I have a different recipe, it is a batter bread.. NO KNEADING!! it tastes great and my kids love it.

Batter White Bread

1 tbsp yeast (or one package, my family likes yeast, we use a little extra)

2 tbsp oil

1 1/4 C warm water

2 tbsp white sugar

2 tsp salt

3 C all purpose flour

1. in measuring cup, mix water, sugar and yeast, let set 5 mins, until bubbly (this activates your yeast, and also makes sure it is still alive.) In mixing bowl combine 1 1/2 C flour with the salt, then add the yeast mixture, beat by hand 300 strokes, or 3 minutes in a mixer. Add remaining flour, scraping bowl often, and mix all together until smooth.
2. Cover with clean cloth and let rise until doubled in volume.
3. Stir dough down gently, and spoon into a lightly greased loaf pan (9X5″) pat down with lightly floured hands to help shape. Cover again and let rise for about 30 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 375F
5. Bake for about 45mins, until browned. when you tap on the top of the loaf, it should sound hollow.

I did a little bit of math, I had most things on hand, and don’t recall what I paid for them.  But this loaf uses 22.5 CENTS worth of flour. How much is a loaf of bread where you are? Here it is a a minnimum, 5 times that.

General Rules.

This is things I do as a general rule, to keep costs down, not something you have to do, but every little bit helps.

1. Buy generic / store brand.  Most items are made in the same factories, with the same recipe (food items) as the name brands, but with the generic, you are not paying for things like advertising, coupons (because, yes, they up the price to offer those coupons) etc. Medications, again, generic, federal laws require that generic medication be chemically identical to name brand, so why pay 3 times as much for the use of a name?  OK, I admit it, there are somethings I don’t buy generic for, I have not found a generic ketchup I like as much as Heinz, and Bounty makes the best paper towels to me. But in my house, name brand is the exception, not the rule.
2. Nix disposable. Paper Towels, paper plates, paper cups, paper lunch bags, even disposable diapers, you are spending your money on things that you are PLANNING on throwing away after a single use. Yes, I use paper towels, the main use they have is to wrap sandwiches, inside a plastic container, in my childrens, reusable lunch bags… this way they have a napkin right there when they eat at school. A roll of paper towels will generally last my family a month or so. At home we  use cloth for most things. Cloth napkins and placemats, napkins are washed after every meal, placemats, those depend on how messy the eaters were, often one or two a meal will be replaced, so it pays off to have a largish (depending on household size and how often you do laundry) collection of coordinating placemats.
3. Buy in bulk. This only really works if you only buy things you will use that much of, for instance, say you only bake at the holidays. If you buy a 25lb of flour, chances are you won’t use it all, and again, likely hood is that bugs will get into it before the next year rolls around. But say you eat a lot of spaghetti. Instead of buying only enough meat to do one meal at a time, buy a large package, break it up and freeze it. Personally, I cook it all, then break it up and freeze it. This also helps with my preperation times. and prices are often lower for larger packages. If you run across a really great price on YOUR laundry soap… (it does no good if it is a soap you don’t/won’t use) buy an extra, or two, it will store just fine and you have saved a little on the price.
4. Multiple use items. Ok, to quote Alton Brown, “the only unitasker I want in my kitchen is the fire extinguisher” this is not limited to the kitchen. There are often things that can be used for multiple uses.. I have one of the over the door pocket shoe organizers in my daughter’s bedroom, it is used to store small toys, and other items, one pocket has  pencils, another has small notebooks, another has barbies.
5. Electric rates. Depending on where you are, and your local power companies, you may have several rate plans to choose from. Personally, I am in the southwest, and it is HOT. We have a choice of 3 electrical plans. The first is a standard plan, the electricty is the same rate all day long. From Nov-March it is a fairly low rate, but from April-Oct it is about 4 times as much. The second plan has a very high rate from 9am-9pm and about 1/4 of that rate from 9pm to 9am Monday-Friday, weekends are at the night time rate. The third rate plan has a high rate and a low rate, the high is a about the same as the second plan, but the low is a little higher than the second plan’s low rate,  however the times are much better, peak rates are noon-7pm and off peak are 7pm-noon and weekends, and 6 holidays a year. This is the rate we have, it allows me time to do laundry in the  mornings and evenings, as well as run the dishwasher, everyone to bathe, run the vacuum, etc. We use as little power as possible during peak hours.