New to the forum

[shadow_dave]

So for all this time I thought that I was the only one who tried to be frugal in the face of the media encouraging us to spend-spend-spend!!!  LOL

A little bit in the way of introducing myself.

I have always been frugal.   By what ya need and use it.  But buy responsibly.

Even with that idea always in my mind, I have never been able to save all that much, frankly. And I will be reading this forum to see how others do better.

We do not "live like the Rockefellers". We live in the better part an inexpensive Southwestern PA run-down/depressed mill town about a half hour drive from Pittsburgh.

We have a modest home and are close to paying it off 10 years early due to some refinancing along the way.

I ride a motorcycle to work every day, year round, unless there is ice or snow on the ground. That nets me free or reduced rate parking in the downtown area I (used to) work in and I get 30-35 mpg. Plus its a blast and I enjoy it.

I build my own computers and maintain them using as much free software as possible. I tend to keep computers and printers and such for years, til they are well beyond being "out of date" for many folks.

I keep the house at 65 degrees in the winter and run the AC in the summer only when it is the hottest time of year and we keep it at 74 degrees.

So I guess what I am saying is that we live carefully.  But there is always room for improvement.

We tend to eat out more often than we probably should, though we have done the math and it really isn't much cheaper to eat in that out in our area.  We do not eat "fancy".......subway, chinese, pizza and family restaurants and mom/pop type restaurants only. And even then I look for the best deals, especially on pizza. "Pizza and a movie night" once a week is our family fun night, and we use redbox so its cheap.  We get subway once a week ($5 footlongs) and maybe chinese once. Otherwise we eat in.  Once or twicea month we might eat at EatnPark or Kings or some such.  And I ALWAYS look for and use coupons when possible.

We do have cable TV and internet - which I see many folks here say you should drop.   My field is in video production, so staying current with the new graphic and video treatments being used on TV really is part of me staying current.   I have my favorite shows, but do admit that there are times it feels like the TV is an empty hole where my time goes.  The same could be said of the internet, really too.  Still, we have basic cable and HD service and basic internet - thats it....no HBO or showtime, and we use only ONE tv in the house....yet Comcast still manages to extract $160 a month from me. Would LOVE to find a way to cut them out of our lives, but they have monopolized the area.   No fiber yet, and dish sucks.  SO what can you do.

We have an outdated kitchen and bathrooms but they work fine so we have resisted the temptation to change that.   We did spring for new carpet in most of the house 5 years ago (the old stuff was 25 years old) and we chose middle-of-the-road stuff from Home Depot. I did the extraction of the old carpeting myself to save money.

So I like to save money. And I honestly think we do pretty well as far as cutting out the un-necessary.

And glad I have lived that way. I lost my job of 22 years last fall and have been looking like crazy for work.  To date nothing has panned out.   I had to buy a suit for interviews (which I hated to do cause in my line of work I do not wear suits but they are expected for interviews) and a laptop to be able to take my portfolio around to prospective employers.  Other than those extravagances, "discretion purchases" have more or less stopped , in an effort to save money for the long haul.  And it has helped.

But saving 50% seems like a far off goal.

We are blessed that my wife works and I got a sort of a severance from my old company. In a couple months I will be at the point where I will have to do something, so I will try to start freelancing again. I have been scrimping even more since I was laid off but still saving seems to be stagnant.

So I am hoping to read about new ideas to save here.

I was considering a move to chase work --- maybe the Northern Virginia area , or West Virginia perhaps -- I have always wanted to live in a rural setting. But it seems like as far as cost of living goes, I am in a great place if only I could find work.  When I look at COLA figures for the areas where jobs are, my eyes bug out. My house in my market is worth maybe $90k.   In a market like McLean, VA for instance, it would be a million dollar home!  Clearly out of my range.

So I am sort of at a crossroads of trying to find work in a place where I can afford to live at our current reasonable level and be happy.

So, that is me - more or less. I look forward to chatting with folks here.

[horsepoor]

Hi Dave - I am pretty new here myself and learning a lot.  One thing I'm curious about is how you do your shopping and cooking at home - if it is a similar price to go out even to Subway, that tells me there is some fat to trim.  Have you looked at your food budget in detail?  Things like buying dried beans in bulk to use as a base for meals will keep meal costs low.  In the fall, I buy 50# bags of potatoes and onions for less than $10 each and keep them in the basement to use as staples, and they last until spring.  If you're buying packaged foods, then yes, it can certainly be as expensive as going out for fast food.  One thing I like to do, is bake a small turkey on Sunday night (adjust for your family size).  With some roasted veg or a salad and baked potatoes on the side, it feels like a special occasion dinner.  Then, there's leftover turkey to use for other dishes the rest of the week.  Eggs are also very inexpensive and versatile.  If you're in a more rural area, consider growing some vegetables if you can. If you can't, be sure you are eating the things that are in season, and learn lots of recipes for humble ingredients like cabbage. If you eat meat and have a freezer, consider buying a beef quarter - it is a bigger up-front expense, but at least around here very high-quality local beef is available for about $3 a pound, when packages of decent ground beef are $5 and it goes up from there.  Also, as MMM himself has pointed out, FAT is a very cheap source of calories, and can be quite healthy.  Lately I've been experimenting with adding extra fats to my cooking, and it makes the rest of the ingredients go farther (the food is more filling), and contrary to what many of the popular sources might tell you, the right kinds of fat are actually quite healthy for you.

[shadow_dave]

Thanks for the reply!

What I meant about eating at home versus eating out:

For instance, a hamburger meal:

4 people, we buy just under2 pounds of ground meat - 85% lean. Runs about $4.50 a pound here unless you buy it in bulk.

That's $9

Pack of cheap store brand buns:  $1.00

The obligatory frozen fires, store brand - $3.00

Baked beans - $1.50  can

Add a tomato for the burgers - $1.50

2 kids drink millk - app. 1.50,
2 adults drink decaf sugar free ice tea bought in gallons for $2.75/gal...app  $1.25 for the meal

So around $19.00 plus condiments, cooking fuel, cheese slices. That is one meal

Spaghetti is cheap right? Couple bucks a box for noodles , but add $6.00 or so for sauce, $4 for garlic bread, add $5 or so if you want meat in it. $15 just for that. Plus drinks and cooking fuel.

Subway - 4 footlongs for $20 and a $3.00 bag of chips plus drinks...... No cooking charges or extras needed.

So that's what I mean.

Sure, occasionally we do buy turkeys and eat for a few days, but that requires preplanning and , frankly, not minding the same leftovers all the time.

And I like beans....my wife says too much.....LOL.....but making them a daily staple, I would get tired of them...add to that that the otehr three folks in the house do not care for them all that much and...well......LOL

I love real eggs.....but cant eat them everyday (high cholesterol) so we get the egg beaters, in store brand........I love potatoes too...but again, they are high in carbs and while I could eat them every day, I try not to.

I think we are pretty frugal when it comes to shopping (brands, deals, etc) and we still find it tough to save any more.

The only thing I can see working would be to stop eating...LOL....my waist line could deal with that, but it is not practical

I do agree that using bulk purchases probably saves in the long run, we have tried it and we end up tossing more than we consume.....and cooking from scratch versus packaged foods is a great concept, except we both work (well, usually) and between dealing with work, the kids, all the household tasks we do ourselves to save mnoney, we do not have enough time to plan and execute cheap meals most of the time....

We do tend to shop every other day, which I think hurts us.

Sometimes, though, it just seems like there is barely time to eat and we are beat.

I will look into buying the beef quarter, as we do have a freezer that we try and use, but I think more food has gotten wasted trying to use the freezer than not. That dang freezer is like the black hole of groceries.....and then when we remember we have something, it has gone bad from freezer burn. I guess that is just bad habits on our end......

[SwordGuy]

Ok, I'm no meal planning expert, but even I can see ways to improve this:

>>4 people, we buy just under2 pounds of ground meat - 85% lean.
That's 1/2lb of meat apiece.   Cut back your portion sizes, particularly if your family (like me) is overweight.  You can also chop up an onion into small pieces and mix it in with the ground meat.  It reduces the cost of the expensive meat, tastes great, and is filling.

>>Runs about $4.50 a pound here unless you buy it in bulk.
Do you eat a lot of it?  If so, consider buying in bulk.  What store do you buy in?  Some groceries are way more expensive than others.

>>The obligatory frozen fires, store brand - $3.00

Or get a couple of potatoes for a fraction of that cost and - you guessed it! - take a couple of minutes and cut them into French-fry shapes.  It's not hard!  Much cheaper.

>> 2 adults drink decaf sugar free ice tea bought in gallons for $2.75/gal...app  $1.25 for the meal

Water and tea leaves/bags are cheap.  Brew your own sweet tea.  I've seen pretty cheap sweet tea brewing machines at Walmart in case the old fashioned way isn't workable for you.

If you are heating up pre-cooked, pre-packaged food it won't be cheaper.  You need to work from inexpensive raw ingredients.

There are lots of free recipes for dishes that have ground beef in them that rely on other, less expensive ingredients to fill people up.  And many of them are delicious!

If you start with bulk potatoes, onions, carrots, rice, beans, lentils, etc. as the basis for your meals, you can really drive down food costs.

How much do you spend a month on food, split into dining in and dining out categories?

[horsepoor]

The egg/cholesterol thing has been debunked recently.

You're eating frozen french fries and hamburger buns, but good old potatoes are "too high in carbs?"  There's lots of processed stuff on your list.  That will cost you.

A turkey doesn't have to seem like redundant leftovers all week.  If it's turkey dinner on Sunday, then turkey soup on Tuesday, maybe curry with stirfried vegetables on Wednesday with steamed rice.

If you're willing to pay for the convenience and variety, that's fine, but just realize that there are ways to trim that food budget by quite a bit.

[jba302]

$160 a month jeeeezus. Can't you stream shows? We are pretty up to date on TV and only have internet.

Also +1 for bulk and cook in bulk. Our prep meals are usually 5+ pounds so we have some leftovers. We just finished making 9 pounds of chili. And we buy cow sections, I'm learning to butcher and dry age at home to save a little more money and up the quality.

[geekette]

Spaghetti is cheap right? Couple bucks a box for noodles , but add $6.00 or so for sauce, $4 for garlic bread, add $5 or so if you want meat in it. $15 just for that. Plus drinks and cooking fuel.

...............

I will look into buying the beef quarter, as we do have a freezer that we try and use, but I think more food has gotten wasted trying to use the freezer than not. That dang freezer is like the black hole of groceries.....and then when we remember we have something, it has gone bad from freezer burn. I guess that is just bad habits on our end......

I hope you're just overestimating food prices there a bit, or maybe prices are just that much higher there?  I bought a pound of spaghetti last night for $.69 (usually $1).  We use 1/4 of that for 2 people, so that's .50 for four.  A jar of Prego is about $2 and we use half so you'd probably use the whole thing plus a $4 pound of hamburger maybe (I don't pay that much but I do shop the sales).  I use up leftover hamburger buns, a bit of butter and some garlic powder for garlic bread.  Water and milk.  To me, that seems like well under $10 easy. 

As for the freezer, I use a foodsaver vac.  Portion things up, freeze, pack.  Nothing gets wasted.  There's a challenge on here somewhere to "Use ALL the food in your house" - maybe you should try to eat what you have and rebuild from there. 

Bulk cooking is a help on busy nights, as is pre-planning.  I don't make one casserole, I make two.  Freeze the extra in a pan, pop it out and into a foodsaver bag and vacuum seal.  The day before I want to reheat it, I'll take it out of the bag and put it back in the pan to thaw.