The the single best way I’ve found to cut food costs is to make a menu.  The problem I always seem to have is actually sitting down to *make* the menu, not to mention that both I and the spouse aren’t exactly thrilled with dinner decisions or the cooking.  But I’ve found a solution to both, and it’s made dinner time so much easier.

Here’s my menu system.  It may seem obvious, but I’m amazed at how few people do this:

1. Think of everything you can make yourself.  Write it down on a list. This sounds easy, but I don’t just want you to throw down a few items here.  This isn’t your weekly list, this is *everything* you have cooked and want to cook again.  If you’re married, get the spouse involved.  If you have kids, get them involved.  I found that my kids were better at remembering meals than I was and were eager to point out the meals they really liked.  We put a star by those items.
2. Ingredients.  As you go, write down the list of ingredients next to each recipe item.  Not “3/4 cup flour,” but “flour” will do fine.  It’s meant for you to use when you shop, not cook.  That way, you’ll be prompted to check and restock as needed.
3. Pull menu items for a week.  Just grab the items you’ll use that week.  Take the list shopping with you and you’ll have everything you need for a week’s food and not buy more than you need.
4. Stretch your list.  Only have 5 meals you can cook?  Challenge yourself to add just one new item a week and your list can grow by 52.

That’s it.  No step 5, filing system, software or other gizmos.  It’s also a system that I really use.  Now there’s no conversation about what we’re having for dinner, we either have a menu already, or just grab something from the list that we like and have the ingredients for.

Need a new recipe to get started?  Here’s my quick, cheap chili:

1 pound ground beef
1/2 onion chopped
1 tbsp. chili powder
1/2 tbsp cumin
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can dark red kidney beans
1 can chili beans (pre-seasoned pinto beans)

Brown the beef and drain.  Saute the chopped onions (I usually do this in the big pot I’ll mix the chili in) and add the beef.  Add the rest of the ingredients, bring to a boil, then let simmer for 20 minutes.    Serves about 4.

I usually double the recipe and bring the rest to work as leftovers.  Buy the beef on sale and get store-brand beans and tomatoes. It doesn’t get much cheaper than that.  You can add cheese to top your servings (we do) and make some cornbread on the side.

Got and menu systems or great recipes?  Share them in the comments below…

When trying to save money, it’s way to easy to fall into the cheap food trap.  You know, the discount foods that often are over-processed, high in fat and low in fiber.  They’re almost as bad as all those heavily-hyped health foods that offer little benefit at a high price.  High-end health food stores offer healthy foods, but at a price that people on a budget can’t handle.  So what can you eat without going broke?

The good news is that if you’re willing to cook a little bit, there are plenty of choices.  Here’s my top five from my own experience:

1. Oatmeal - I eat this nearly every day.  It’s long been reported to be good for you and comes in at about 12 cents a serving.  I get the store brand of 1-minute oats, boil it up according to the instructions and add just a touch of brown sugar.  Oats not your thing?  Try grits, or maybe Cream of Wheat.
2. Brown Rice – Much like oats, this is another whole grain that cooks easily and is widely recommended as a healthy food.  Rice shortages hit back in 2008, but those are over, and brown rice isn’t exactly high in demand.  It takes longer to cook that white rice, but tastes great.
3. Beans - These come canned or dried and can be used in a ton of meals.  I’ll post my super-easy chili recipe next week when I discuss menus.  It uses red beans, which the Mayo Clinic recommends.
4. Sweet Potatoes – Much like regular potatoes, but super-powered.  As long as you don’t make them into a Thanksgiving-esque sweet potato casserole, they’re also low in calories.  Can’t stand sweet potatoes?  Try regular potatoes, they’re pretty good for you as long as they’re not in “fry” or “chip” form.
5. Fruits and Vegetables (in season) -  It’s the “in season” here that’s the important part.  You aren’t going to find good deals when veggies are out of season, but they are often.

I’ve eat all of these fairly regularly now.  What’s best is that I find I skip the vending machine more often, saving money on there and I’ve lost about 15 pounds since getting more serious about it.

What frugal fit foods have you found?  Let me know in the comments below…

We’re all guilty of paying too much for something at one time or another.  But just are there are overpriced gourmet lattes out there, there’s also kopi luwak, setting one back over 100 bucks a pound.  Here’s a couple more examples of the ridiculously overpriced for your entertainment.

The $20,000 TV

Here’s the Sony 70-Inch LCD HDTV, which has a picture of Peyton Manning on the front, presumably to imply that you need to have a paycheck as big as an NFL star to afford it.  It will set you back a hefty 20 grand — which could buy you about 2,000 movie tickets (popcorn not included).

Much more reasonable alternative: Sure, it’s 12 inches smaller, and plasma instead of LCD (I honestly can’t tell the difference), but the Panasonic 58-Inch  Plasma HDTV is also almost 1/10th the cost. Unless you’re building a home theater that also has a concession stand and sells tickets, this is probably big enough.

Crazy cheaper alternative: Read how I got an HDTV for under $400 with a year’s warranty to boot. Smaller? Yes, it’s like 1/4 the screen area of the biggest one, but it’s also less than 1/50th the price.

The $64,000 Turntable

Grandmaster Flash would be in heaven with this 4-armed turntable. of course he’d need two of them and a mixer, setting him back over 128k.  It featured a magnetic drive for the platter, plus 4 arms, so you can switch between up to four different cartridges easily.  It also plays disks made of vinyl, called “records” which apparently were all the rage in the middle to late 20th century.  Retro and ridiculously expensive all at the same time.

Cheaper alternatives:  Oh gee, I don’t know. What can you buy that costs WAY less than that, plays digital-quality sound and holds lots of songs.  Oh, it plays movies, too.  Of course, if you’re anti-Apple, there’s ton’s of choices out there.

Sure, there are people who claim that old-school vinyl sounds better than that fancy digital stuff.  Maybe it does, but I’m pretty sure the people who can tell the difference are as rare as those who can afford spending over 60 grand on a turntable.

The Point (and I do have one)

The point here, besides a momentary fascination with the crazy expensive, is to make one think what items we buy that might be just a tad overpriced.  We all do it, if it’s that $5 Latte, or gizmo we really don’t need.  We don’t need the “latest” thing out there, or the biggest.  It’s a trap that keeps us in debt and keeps us from our financial goals.

In short: Don’t buy stuff you can’t afford.  OK, I’ll get off the soapbox now.

Got an example of something crazy-expensive?  Share it in the comments below…

If you had millions of dollars, what would you buy?  For some of us, the best answer might be “nothing.”

Sure, almost everyone has wondered what they’d do if they won the lottery.  I imagine a beach house, a large boat and probably a couple of cars would be coming my way if I won.  Of course I’d have to play the lottery, but you get the idea.  But on further inspection, winning the lottery doesn’t always work out.

Consider the story of a man who sold his company for 22 million.  What would he do with all that loot?  Not much, or quite a bit, depending on how one looks at it.  He sang the joys of owning nothing and decided to pass not only on the iPhone, but just about any other ownership.  He’s not alone, when one looks at the lifestyle of billionaires, they may own some nice things, but they don’t always live as large as their bank accounts.

But what’s so bad about owning stuff?  Here are a few downides I could think of:

• Hidden Costs: I wrote about the real costs of car ownership before, and some of the ideas fall over into everything.   There’s maintenance, storage, monthly fees, input (fuel in the case of a car, games in the case of an xBox, DVDs for your player, food for a pet, etc.), insurance and more.
• Immobilization: To paraphrase George Carlin, the more stuff you have, the bigger the place you need to store it.  If you favor a mobile lifesytle, excessive ownership can make life difficlut.   Home ownership can be great, but just try to relocate these days, and you might find the home is an anchor (for better or worse) to a certain city.
• Time Drain: There’s more to the hidden costs than just money.  Somebody’s got to manage all that stuff.  It takes time and can steer us away from what matters.

Then again, people do get real satisfaction from ownership.  Like I said, home ownership can be great.  Car ownership can actually provide freedom and mobility and cars don’t have to cost you a ton and repaired fairly cheap if done right.  But I’m going to try and err on the side of frugality more and see what happens.  

In the mean time I’m working on selling my excess stuff.  I’ll get some money back, clear out some of the clutter in my life and be in a better position to move in the future.

What have you enjoyed not owning?  Any ownership nightmares?  Let me know in the comments below.