$$$ Strategies

Since I've learned it's almost impossible not to spend money (although I'm still trying to avoid that whenever I can), I'm changing my tactics to spend as little as possible. Since food is our biggest expense every month, I'm competitively shopping at three different supermarkets and beefing up my emergency pantry. The latter I need to do anyway in preparation for hurricane season, but it helps.

I cook at home nearly every night now, and make judicious use of leftovers. We eat well, although beef is out of my budget for the most part. My guy and our nephew eat about twice the amount of food I do, so I'm cooking recipes for basically five. By avoiding convenience foods and purchasing whole foods instead I'm spending about $130.00 or less per week at the market, keeping us at about $500.00 per month for food.

I am thrifting or buying at the dollar store everything I can these days: books, cleaners, clothes, certain foods (when they're cheaper at the dollar store) household supplies, storage containers, supplies for my crochet and quilting and toiletries. This reduces the amount I have to spend on these items by 50% to 75%.

Example: I needed some new pajamas for the cold weeks we've been having, but Target wanted $33.99 for the set I liked there. I thrifted instead and bought three sets of pajamas for $20.00.

For items I need that I can't thrift I buy multiples when they're on sale, so I'm constantly watching the prices of everything we regularly use. We go through a ton of foaming handsoap, for example, so when it went on sale for a BOGO I bought four for the price of two. That should last us until spring.

Finally, I'm learning to make myself things I use to buy packaged, like stocks. I save the trimmings from the chicken I buy and then make chicken stock out of it, which I then freeze in the amounts I use for certain recipes. I haven't bought packaged stock in over a year now. Same thing with bagels, and the fellas actually prefer my homemade over the store bought now.

Image credit: supermarket pic by ElasticComputeFarm; clothes pic by El Sun; and sale pic by Sammy-Sander, all from Pixabay