Need tips on how to tighten our belts

curls

Tue, Jan 03 2012, 2:12 pm

I agree it gets easier with time, as budgeting becomes part of your routine. $800/month should come down too. Meal planning works well for some (you plan what you are going to make ahead of time - weekly or monthly) and then look for when the products you need are on sale and stock up. I also find shopping at a large supermarket (I.e. ShopRite, Stop&Shop) much cheaper than your local kosher store (in Brooklyn). For ex., your local store may have cereal for $3.50 and call it a sale, but at the large supermarket same cereal is on sale for $2-$2.50 and if you have a coupon you can pay $1-1.50.

There are great blogs out there (some even geared toward kosher consumer) that can help with budgeting, meal planning, etc.

Dolly Welsh

Tue, Jan 03 2012, 11:54 pm

OOTBubby wrote:

And remember, that the less processed the items are the cheaper they usually are. The ingredients to bake your cake from scratch are a lot less than buying a cake mix and a cake mix is a lot cheaper than buying a ready made cake.

This, this.

With a stand mixer, you can have a sheet cake in less than an hour, and cookies in half an hour. I just checkerboard the cookie dough with a knife, no cutting into rounds or shapes. The mixer is worth buying. Mom's home-made - such a luxury - making a virtue out of necessity. Memories are made of this. The savings are huge.

There are 5, and 10 pound bags of rice, and that's a good buy. And a programmable electric rice cooker is worth buying. Rinse the rice before cooking, but don't soak. Two waters, or two and a half maybe, to one rice, if you are using a normal pot. Put a little oil and salt in. Or garlic and onion powder if you are limiting salt.

A pressure cooker will save money and time. Daunting vegetables come out of it docile, in a few minutes.

Perhaps you are not into baking, as you work. But - if you bake your own bread, it saves a lot of money and is easy. The mixer will knead for you. There are also no-knead breads. There are breads "in five minutes a day" - googling will find you the how-to videos about these. A loaf of bread from the store costs as much as a bag of flour that yields five or six loaves, approximately. Yeast comes in bulk too. Water and salt you had already. Bread freezes well.

A crock pot, or slow cooker will save money - you are putting rinsed dried beans into it, very cheap, with commercial tomato sauce and some basic raw vegetables. No cutting rosettes, just chuck them in unpeeled. Carrots, celery, potatoes. OK, peel the onion. Soak the beans, any and all kinds, a half hour, or an hour is enough, rinse again. Put this up in the morning, takes fifteen minutes, you will come home to dinner all made.

If you cook dried chick peas that way, they will go into your food processor and come out hummus. With some oil, garlic powder, bottled lemon juice. Some put in tahini. Some put in organic peanut butter which is a lot like tahini.

The food processor is worth buying. A cheap red or green cabbage will go through the slicing blade and come out salad. Apple sauce is just boiled apples and sugar, if you have twenty minutes, or two minutes, in the pressure cooker. If you put the apples through the shredding blade, you don't have to peel them, just core. Faster, and you get the fiber.

Soda can be seen as a special treat, not as what we always drink. We can drink water. With ice, to make it groovy. In summer, with some bottled lemon juice in it. We refill water bottles in the sink and carry them around, instead of buying a soda. Many juices are just lollipops in a glass, unless you are squeezing oranges yourself. Well, maybe you are. Read labels and ask yourself what you are buying.

We are allergic to all bank fees and credit card interest.

And I like my synthetic sheitels, for instance.

If you can spring for Lands End or LL Bean wrinkle resistant no-iron dress shirts for DH - the laundry people will never see you again. And you won't be ironing, either. They last well. Spot-spray the collar when they come off. Many styles come in plain white. Here are some,
http://www.landsend.com/ix/Men.....ze=24

Last edited by Dolly Welsh on Wed, Jan 04 2012, 2:56 am; edited 1 time in total

Seraph

Wed, Jan 04 2012, 2:24 am

Here's a link to a post I wrote about cutting the cost of ground meat in recipes- it might help you out. http://www.pennilessparenting.......html

What types of fleishigs do you make? Can you switch to a cheaper type of meat? Sometimes things that may seem more expensive can end up being cheaper, and the things that look cheap, more expensive.
Here's a post I wrote that'll help you figure out what meats are cheapest where you live-
http://www.pennilessparenting.......html

For example, chicken gizzards, necks, wings, whole chickens, and chicken breasts are cheapest where I live (in that order). Chicken thighs and drumsticks are the most expensive chicken, and ground meat is actually more expensive than non ground cheap meat, like brisket.

Seraph

Wed, Jan 04 2012, 2:35 am

And as for salads and vegetable dishes- if you want to cut costs, be creative, explore different cooking options, and don't just make the "standard veggie dishes".
I rarely ever get anything pre-checked/gush katif or bodek stuff. If the food needs to be pre-checked or grown bug free or whatever, it'll likely be 5 or 6 times the price of other veggies that don't need that pre-checking. Salad doesn't need to mean lettuce (prechecked or gush katif) or spinach (prechecked or gush katuf)- you can make salads that are:
Tomatoes, cucumbers, and maybe green peppers- Israeli salad
Carrot salad- either shredded and raw with a lemon juice/orange juice and sweetener (sugar/honey) sauce, or raw with a sfardi style dressing, like lemon, garlic, cumin, etc... or cooked in a moroccan carrot salad style. http://www.pennilessparenting.......html
Cabbage salad- doesn't need to be prechecked/shredded- ask a rav how to check it, most hold its very easy to check and you just need to check the outer leaves if it is a tight head. Then you can make it with a soy sauce/sugar/lemon/oil dressing, or with mayo, sugar, and lemon in coleslaw, or with oil, salt, and pepper.
Cucumber salad- just lemon, sugar, oil, salt.
Beet salad- raw beets with lemon juice and sugar, or orange juice and herbs like thyme, or cooked beets in a sfardic style beet salad with cumin, paprika, lemon, salt, and garlic, or cooked with a sugar/lemon dressing...

Basically, you can eat lots of fresh salads without relying on those prechecked bags of lettuce.

I pretty much never, ever, ever make stuff with frozen bodek broccoli, or spinach. They're not worth the money; use veggies that are in season that aren't requiring bodek or special checking...

And try to buy the whole veggies, not prechopped or peeled or whatever.

When it comes to cooking, try to substitute cheaper ingredients.
http://www.pennilessparenting.......html

Hope these ideas help.

neveralone

Tue, Jan 10 2012, 10:11 pm

just saw this question, hope youll see this. if you live in boro park try checking out rosners (there are two in bp). they often have realy amazing specials and thier regular prices are for most things cheaper than most groceries. they dont have meat so thats a bit of a pain if you want to buy everything at once. for meat and chicken it usualy comes out cheaper to buy the "value pack" / family size. even if its more than you can use for one supper you can repack it into bags in apropriate portions. or cook it all and freeze part of it for a FFF (Fresh From Freezer) supper!! also if your family eats fish try buying it frozen (breaded or unbreaded fillets) youll be amazed at the price difference!! hatzlocha Very Happy

Honesty

Tue, Jan 10 2012, 10:26 pm

spring13 wrote:

When you see something nonperishable that your family uses a lot on sale, stock up. I only buy whole-grain pasta, which costs more than regular, so when Ronzoni has a 10/$10 sale (which they do a couple of times a year!), I buy loads.

Look for generic brand juice and soda, if that's something you buy often - my toddler doesn't know the difference between supermarket OJ and Tropicana. Same with store brand cheerios instead of the real thing. If you buy bottled water, get a Brita and a stainless steel water bottle instead.

Another thing, if you have school-age kids - if you buy them snacks that come individually wrapped (like packets of cookies, pretzels, whatever), you'll end up spending more than if you buy a big box of whatever and divide it up. When you bring your enormous box of whatever it is home, take a few minutes to pack a week's worth of snack bags so they'll be easy to grab and no one will accidentally take too much.

Do you have a Costco nearby, or another wholesale club? Those can be helpful as well.

Thanks for all the ideas...I just bought a Brita in an effort to save money---what is the stainless steel water bottle you mentioned?