How To Organize Weekly Meals & Shopping List w/ Nutritionist Linda Miner – Goal #5

ichange.com Registered Nutritionist Linda Miner shows you how to plan out 1 week’s worth of meals, prepare a shopping list and make a meal in under 10 minutes. You will yourself save time, money, energy and frustration. www.MyHealthyBalance.com

Save Money On Groceries At Wholesale Clubs And Grocery Stores

Searching to cut your household costs so, you can just pay the bills? Feeling like the only thing left to cut is your monthly grocery bill? You can cut your grocery spending as much as 50 percent if you know where to shop, how to shop, and when to shop.

First, there is usually more than one place to do your grocery shopping every week. Even in the smallest burgs of America, you do have a choice. Grocery stores carry most of the standard food and non-food items, but prices vary from week to week. Wholesale clubs such as Sam’s Club, Costco and Gordon Foods sell food and non-food items in bulk packaging and are found in larger cities and metropolitan areas. These stores normally do not advertise sales, but typically accept manufacturers’ coupons. Convenience stores like Circle K and 7-11 are simply convenient to purchase one or two items and fill up with your favorite beverage while traveling or shopping. These types of stores do not offer sales on grocery items and charge more on standard grocery items. Then there is the online option. Yes, now more national retail chains are offering online shopping; they will either ship the grocery items or have them available for pick up if located nearby.

Knowing where to shop to save the most money on your weekly bill is the most important step. One does not have to buy groceries at the same place week after week and month after month. Even if you must travel a few miles, you may be able to save on your monthly food spending. Retail grocery chains such as Albertson’s, Kroger, Giant Eagle, Publix, Safeway, and others run an ad circular each week advertising select brands for a specific price; many also include their own brand items on sale as well. Check each circular for the items you buy the most and compare the prices. Buying only the items that you need and that are on sale will also save you money. It is important to know the price range for items you buy frequently, so you know which store is offering the best price.

Second, wholesale clubs can be more affordable on items that you use more often or specialty items. Canned food items including soups, beans, and drink mixes are sometimes cheaper to buy in bulk than at your traditional grocery store. When comparison-shopping, do not look at the ticket price alone. Wholesale clubs base their prices on volume (ounces or pounds), which can be found on the shelf price sticker. Compare the volume price to the weekly price at your grocery retailer over the course of a couple weeks since grocery chains vary their prices from week to week.

A comparison of several products between a Costco and Giant grocery store was conducted by AOL Money & Finance, which found many of the bulk products were much less expensive at the wholesale club.

Sample of products compared:

Tropicana Orange Juice, no pulp – Costco savings of $.60/quart Maxwell House coffee – Costco savings of $1.54/pound Fillippo Berio Extra Virgin Olive Oil – Costco savings of $9.93/quart Nabisco Oreo Cookies – Costco savings of $1.55/pound

 

Be aware that the above savings are for volume pricing only, and these savings do not represent the actual prices. Your state may charge additional fees including sales tax on food or non-food items. Wholesale or warehouse clubs also charge an annual fee, which varies at each club.

When you join and shop at warehouse or wholesale clubs, jot down what you buy, the date purchased and the date the item was completely used or the packaging was thrown away. This will give you an idea how long the product lasts and the cost to replace it on a monthly basis.

Lastly, knowing when to shop or which week has the best sale items is crucial. Typically, retail grocery chains will charge more the first week of every month. Why? Through observation and experience, retailers know this is when most people get their paychecks and Food Stamps are uploaded the first ten days of the month; therefore, people are likely to spend more on groceries. The best time of the month is to shop the third to fourth week when people are running low on cash and need to get through the rest of the month until payday. Oftentimes grocery chains will offer their 10 for $10 sale, which sometimes are good deals. In addition, they are more likely to sell multiple quantities of the same product for a reduced price.

Get more and spend less when you know where to buy groceries, when to shop during the month and how to stretch your budget throughout the month.

Save Money On Groceries: Stocking Up To Save 40-70% On Groceries!

www.CouponsToFreeGroceries.com Daniel Pereira, author of “Saving Money through Power Shopping” discusses how to save money on groceries through stocking up when the price is low. Vist our site to learn how to get free groceries. Grocery Store, Grocery Store Savings, Grocery, Grocery…

Saving Money on Groceries – the Price Book- Part III

I add items to my price book gradually. Say this week I’m thinking to buy canned pumpkin. Well I don’t buy that often so it may not be in my book. If I don’t need it right away, the next time I’m at a store I’ll just enter the price into my book and pass it up, and check out other stores as I find myself at them. I only enter a new line for an item when there is a new price to beat, but I always want to know where I can get the lowest regular price, too, in case it’s not on sale when I want it. One store might have the lowest everyday price, but another might have the lowest price when it’s in season and on sale. But typically, I’ll only have one or two entries for each item. When a regular price goes up, I erase the old price and correct it.

After I come home from a grocery shopping trip it’s a good time to spend 5 minutes writing down any new items. For some items, like fresh green beans or canned peas or chicken, your grocery tape may not say the price per pound or list the weight at all, so these in particular you want to catch after your shopping trip and before you discard the information on your food package.

I know everyone thinks they know the cheapest place to get your food, but trust me — you don’t! If you keep a price book and go to all the places in your area, you’ll start to see that you can save an awful lot! Like the white flour I used in the example that I usually purchase for $1; the two regular grocery stores in my town will occasionally have sales, usually before the holidays, but the regular price for white flour is about $2.79. That’s a high price to pay for the convenience of one-stop shopping when I can go to the dollar store once a month and get many items more cheaply there. One trip to buy flour and I save $1.79. It probably costs me less than a quarter in gas to drive there.

Using a price book doesn’t mean you have to always buy the cheapest generic item. Buy generic when it doesn’t matter to you so that you can splurge where it does matter and still have a low grocery budget. I know I can get a pound of coffee for under $3, but I really like the $6-10 a pound coffee! I’ll gladly eat generic pasta, tomato paste, beans, tuna fish, peanut butter, etc. to afford my better coffee, but luckily I can do all this, have my coffee, and still purchase all my groceries for about half the national average.

 

Weekly Menu Planner Tools

Saving Money on Groceries – the Price Book- Part 2

So for example, here are some entries in my price book, each entered under the appropriate page so that I can find it quickly:

lemons F 3/1.00 R
white flour D 5# 1.00 R
laundry detergent D 40 load 2.75 R

So in other words, I purchased 3 lemons at the flea market for a dollar, a 5# bag of white flour at a dollar store, and also at the dollar store a large jug of laundry detergent that will do 40 loads for $2.75. All these items I got at regular price.

So now that I have these entries, if I go to Sparks Supermarket and I see lemons on sale with a huge special sign at 1.99 for 3, I’m not fooled even though they are marketing it as if this “low” price is indeed unusual. I’ve got my handy book to tell me “the price to beat.” But if I go over to Cost-Less and I see they have laundry detergent that will do 40 loads and it’s $2.50, then I will write a new line right under the other laundry line like so:

laundry det D 40 load 2.75 R
laundry det C 40 load 2.50 R

So do I run all over creation to save a quarter? No. But it doesn’t work that way.
First start keeping your book and be sure to check out every store, stand, co-op, etc. within a comfortable drive of your home and on your way to work or any other route you regularly take for other reasons. The plan is, the place that is the best overall for fresh food prices, you will go to every week. The others stores you will rotate and visit one every week. So pretty much you only have to go to two stores a week, but you might be shopping for different items at five stores over the course of the month. Follow?

I prevent confusion when I shop by keeping separate shopping lists for the different stores. When I need to put an item on my shopping list, I look it up in my price book, and then, say it’s lemons, that would go on the flea market shopping list, while the flour and laundry soap would go on the dollar store list. Without much trouble you’ll get the knack of putting staples like flour on the shopping list before you start running low.

 

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Fundamentals of Menu Planning

Saving Money on Groceries – the Price Book- Part 1

The most useful tool I’ve found for reducing my grocery costs is to keep a “price book.” I first heard about the idea from Amy Dacyzn (pronounced “decision”), author of the Tightwad Gazette. She went from rags to riches (she has 6 kids, too!) by being a tightwad. So no, she’s not writing her gazette anymore, she’s probably getting a professional massage or is in the hot tub (I would hope), but the newsletters were compiled and released into three books and you can probably find them at your library. They are also now in one volume called, The Complete Tightwad Gazette.

Anyway, the price book was invaluable, and it is something you make yourself and it’s FREE! I found I only need about 20 pieces of paper in a small notebook. It has to be small because I want it to fit in my purse so that I always have it with me.

You can organize yours any way that makes sense to you, but I wrote at the tops of my pages:

Notes (This is where I write the key to my shorthand abbreviations, how many cups of flour are in a 5 pound bag, etc.)

Beans
Beverages
Dairy
Fruit
Grains
Herbs & Spices
Meat & Fish
Nuts
Oils, Butter, etc.
Vegetables
Misc.
Cleaners (& shampoo, etc.)
Paper and Plastic Products (& foil, tampons, etc)

So to start, set up your book at home and pull out any grocery tapes you have. This will only take you half an hour at most. It will take you a few weeks to get your price book rolling, but then after that it will be a lot less work, and it’s really not a lot of work to begin with.

For each item you typically buy, you want to write in pencil on a horizontal line in your book:

Item / a letter code for the store you buy it at / the weight, amount or volume / price / and then I like to add a one letter code, R for regular price, S for sale price and C for clearance price, and actually it’s also not a bad idea to put the date if you have room on your page.

 

The Joys Of Eating Diabetic Foods That Taste Outstanding

You will not have to quit eating all of the foods you love just because you have been diagnosed with diabetes. Eating fried foods and lots of pizza may appear like a thing of the past to you. Although, you are right when it comes to avoiding foods that are bad for you. But your taste buds do not have to suffer with foods that have no flavors at all. You can still consume diabetic foods that you will love, and can be of gourmet quality.

The terrific reward to creating a diabetes menu particular to you is that you can influence which diabetic foods you want to include. Just be careful that the foods you eat are going to help improve your diabetic condition. If need be, talk to your doctor about a diabetic food plan or even consult a dietician. They will help you to design a diabetic diet that is just right for you. If you need a diabetic diet to help keep your diabetes in check, then you have to know which diabetic foods are okay.

Your diabetic foods should be heart-healthy and include lean meats as well as foods that are lower in fat and sugar. Be certain you read the labels. This will open the doors to allow you to prepare meals that taste wonderful, and are also nutritious. By eating healthy diabetic foods, and maintaining your diabetes, you will also save your heart from developing heart disease. Eating the right foods will improve your overall health.

The last thing to keep in mind when creating a diabetic menu is if there could be a reaction between the foods you consume and your diabetic medications. You don’t want to eat foods that can cause serious problems when combined with your medicines, so it is important to consult with your doctor before you make any changes to your current diet.

In the beginning, making a diabetic menu can be daunting. Take your time and pick out the diabetic foods from each nutritional area that appeal to you and are good for you. This will become easier for you to do over time. You might even find great-tasting and enjoyable meal combinations that you never even dreamed of before!

Save Money On Groceries: Quiz 2 of 2

www.CouponsToFreeGroceries.com Daniel Pereira, author of “Saving Money through Power Shopping” discusses how to save money on groceries through a pop quiz. Vist our site to learn how to get free groceries. Grocery Store, Grocery Store Savings, Grocery, Grocery Savings, Save Money On…

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