http://www.itsfrugalbeinggreen.com/2009/05/30-quick-green-and-frugal-meal-planning.html

I agree with you in that there needs to be more information perhaps out there for those of use singles who don’t have large families, work full-time and thus have less time for planning,cooking,couponing.

One suggestion I have for you is to start just start experimenting with the tips and suggestions you find from the mommy blogs and other frugal websites. Then start your own blog and talk about the results! I’m in the middle of experimenting with coupon clipping right now and it’s tedious. I’m also trying meal-planning even though I hate to cook. Good luck!

There should always been a time vs. cost analysis when suggesting savings tips.

Some people love to find deals and some people really don’t care. For those that don’t care, learning about finding deals can help. However, they will rarely convert to a deal lover.

A single friend of mine prowls the aisles at set times each Monday evening and comes out loaded up with baked stuff at rock bottom prices. He has a large freezer, and essentially buys what he would buy anyway at about a fifth of the price.

Shopping in a local market really is cheaper too.

Which is cheaper in the long run, fresh or frozen vegetables?

What kinds of healthy recipes are the “cheapest” to make?

Are there reliable coupon sites, and where are they?

Where is the cheapest place to buy personal items like toothpaste, contact solution and deodorant — a grocery store, a box store or a drug store?

What stores treat their employees the best? Which stores have a poor record treating their personnel?

How do you purchase bulk meat (such as half a cow)?

Our grocery bill is our single biggest expense, and we spend about $500 a month now, after trimming down from $700-900/month for groceries/restaurants. I would love to figure out how to trim it further, but I’m not sure I can with a family of four. I also hate buying “coupon” food, which tends to be super-processed or canned, and in Arizona our produce has to be shipped in (even the CSA farms are about 100 miles from here) so produce is wickedly expensive when gas prices are high (I was paying $4.25 for a loaf of bread and $3 for a green pepper when gas was $4/gal). So, I would love more postings about grocery prices — provided the information was new.

Why not just meats?

Besides the more process is the food the less nutrients you will get from it.
So try to get basic food.

A) beans, lentils, chick peas and so on, I buy dry (you can buy them bulk, too, they keep for very long) rather than canned. It takes a bit longer since you need to soak the beans or peas overnight (the lentils are good to go, though), but the price difference is huge.
Compare the price per weight, and remember the beans and chick peas will likely weigh double once they’ve been soaked. The taste is also a lot better. It does require a bit of time to put them to soak before you go to bed (or to work) but then you don’t need to watch over them.

B) I went even further with bread. By buying the flour directly, I can get whole grain for half the price of white bread (here again, mileage may vary in your country).
I can’t bake well, but both tortillas and pitas can be cooked on the stove. It takes some time to prepare the dough, but then it keeps 3 days in the fridge, and you can freeze the tortillas/pitas.
If you buy white flour, I can imagine you’d save even more. And if you can bake (or have a bread machine that you do use) you can make your own bread and add whatever you want in it.

In both cases, it sums up to “buy less processed, and then do it yourself”. But in the case of A, I find the effort relatively small compared with the economy that results. (I do B mostly for taste reasons, although the saving is nice too).

I just don’t have that sort of time. It’s really not worth my time — I’ve tried it. It isn’t worth it. Maybe if you’re trying to feed a lot of people. Cooking for a single person, not really.

I also don’t have the time to go hunting down food bargains between 3-5 different stores, or schlepping off for a 10+ mile drive out to the suburbs to go to Costco.

I have a Safeway and a King Soopers within 1/2 mile of me. That is where I shop. Usually by dropping in after work around 8-9 pm when I’ve run down my current supplies. There are no Aldis or Trader Joes here.

I should also say — I’m not having any problems with my food budget. I’m fine with what I’m spending. I have zero interest in getting down to a $90/month grocery bill.

This whole issue is quality of life — squeezing your food budget to the last cent isn’t always practical. You can do it — but then you sacrifice time.

There is only me in my household — only me for food prep, for cooking, for consuming what is prepared, for cleaning up, for shopping, for planning.

I generally work from about 9 AM to about 7-8 PM Monday through Friday. I also work on average two weekends a month. On top of it I’m nursing along a fledgling home business. Time is precious.

Too bad. I like his company!

A number of studies have indicated that these grocery loyalty cards actually just return the price of goods to the baseline costs – those ‘discounts,’ on average, simply bring the cost down to what it is at stores that don’t use those cards.

Sometimes they are indeed used as loss leaders, but more often the resulting price is simply brought into line with what stores that don’t have these cards charge.

You don’t like it? So what! I hate to clean toilets but I’m not going to hire a maid or buy a new toilet every time mine gets gross.

I learned to cook better when I was just out of college – I like good food but I couldn’t afford to eat out without debt so I learned to cook. I too had roommates, shared fridge, little freezer space, but I just treated it like an engineering problem: These are the mission parameters, how do I succeed? (I’m channeling that scene from Apollo 13 right now.)

It’s your life, your time and your money – you get to choose how to spend it. I suspect that right now it’s more important to you to not cook than it is to save your cash. There’s nothing wrong with that unless it’s causing you to go into debt.

I spend more on wine than I can ever justify in a frugal budget, but I’ve never had a car payment and my wardrobe stinks (not literally, I do laundry, too, though I hate it). These are my choices and I make them happily. If you want to spend less on food, make the choices that make it possible. If you’re unwilling to make that choice, find another area to save and enjoy your meals out.

Another tactic is to shop in the last 15 minutes of the market. The vendors don’t want to cart any unsold items home and are often ready to deal. This saves me the most money, but my trade-off is that I can’t always get everything I want. I balance my budget against whether it’s important to me to make a particular recipe. Generally, when my budget is tight I’m willing to create meals from what’s available rather than insist on particular items.

In any given trip, I do think I spend more at the market than in a grocery store for an entirely different reason: I buy more produce because the overall quality is so much higher there.

I can be frugal in many places but I’m a horrible cook who hates cooking, hates leftovers and finds it hard to follow any of these tips when I share an apartment (AKA little freezer space which is shared) and I’m only at home 4-5 days of the week on a *good* week.

I need to find the blog for those of us without large freezers, cooking for one to two people and enjoy variety.

I think a decent segment of your audience falls into the same area I am. Recently graduated, tight budget and living in an apartment. I’d love to see more ideas for those of us just getting started!

Great blog and thanks for the guest article!

My wife and I work outside the home and find ourselves scrambling into the grocery store on our way home from work and grabbing the things we need without taking too much time. My wife in particular is a speed shopper out of necessity. I tend to wander in circles and am like a deer caught in the headlights when I notice how much things are costing. It’s not a pleasant experience. OK you know who does the grocery shopping most.

I think your suggestions are very good but like anything worthwhile, they take time and effort. So you need to put a value on your time and work out the cost benefit of the effort and time to see if it’s worthwhile.

Greg

We hit our local grocery store early (at opening) on Monday morning, which is the best time to get the meat markdowns from the weekend. This is especially true after a holiday weekend, like Memorial Day or Labor Day or Independence Day. Ask the personnel at the meat counter when the best time is to get those good deals. Often they will be happy to give you the scoop.

@beforewisdom: I tend to agree with you about non-meat sources of protein. they are usually healthier, too! However, I do like to eat a good cut of meat occasionally. Also to serve to guests and shopping the meat markdown section is the way I do it.

It takes some thought and a bit of imagination, but it isn’t too hard to save some money on groceries. One of the biggest things I find that helps is to only shop max once a week. We used to go every couple days and pick up odds and ends and not stick to the list, and it was EXPENSIVE.

If you haven’t educated yourself on how much things cost generally, when they’re in season, what a good deal really is, then you’re at the mercy of the store. The stores put things on sale in order to sell more or to draw you into the store, but you can’t trust the store to be thinking of your best interest. Only you can do that.