What do you do to save $$$ on grocery/shopping bills? (Concord: rentals, buying)

[nicolem]

Originally Posted by buck naked

I have never had good luck with generic brands or store brands. They don't even compare for the most part.

I will buy generic flour and sugar, band-aids, but that's about it.

Me too. I have tried several generic products but I was disappointed many times. Some generics are ok and save me money-but at least for me- they are not the answer everytime.

Also sometimes there is only a 10 cents difference for the same size. Now I know if you do it a lot it can add up, but if the difference in price is small and the difference in quality is big-then I will go with the brand name-especially when a coupon or sale can make it cost less than the generic.

Nicolem

[GypsySoul22]

I have to agree that you hardly get any decent coupons in the paper up here. In NY I had a lot more coupons I could use. However, in general, all I ever see are buy 2 coupons and they are useless.

We spend the most of our budget on food. I wonder how 3 people can eat so much but I guess it adds up because we get a lot of cheese and dairy (yogurt), soy milk. I buy some natural/organic stuff because my husband and son are vegetarians. We mainly drink soy milk or use half and half. My husband eats a lot of cheese which has gone up. My son uses drink boxes for school (2 a day). They are expensive (I only get him 100% juice, not Koolaid or Capri Sun or whatever).

We hardly eat out. We used to have more $ for fun but since moving up here only my husband has worked steady. I am currently doing a temp job but that will not last forever.

Our food bill has also gone up now we have a puppy. She eats quality dog food. It's not worth buying her cheap food so she gets sick.

I have to say I do not save $ on food. I get a few things I can at the dollar store ('Swifter cloths' for example). Food is our one luxury. (and we don't eat fancy).

[DareToDream]

We've never really disliked any of the generic or 'store brands' we've had. If something seems to be lacking, we just doctor it up with spices. I will say, though that we do like the brand name spices better than the store brands or really cheap ones.

Hubby takes his lunch to work. I work from home, so usually eat something that was left over from the night before or just have a salad.

We have a dog and cat and don't buy store brands for them, either. We get a name brand, but buy a BIG bag of it, which is usually cheaper. Like Gypsy, when we tried a cheaper brand or store brand, it didn't set well with either of their tummies.

Hubby is a meat eater, no way around that, so we buy most of it when it's on sale....if we can find a farm up here that sells it, I would prefer to do that over buying in the store, but we have gotten good deals on meats.

I remember a few years ago, my sister gave me a really simple pasta recipe - pasta, olive oil, garlic, spinach and walnuts - you would have thought I was trying to poison my husband - he ate it, but hated it...he sounded like the lady in those old commercials, "Where's the MEAT????"

In a way, we're lucky, in that with me working from home, I can take a break during the day to do the food prepping and cooking, etc. We're not tempted by "convenience" meals. If we're in the mood for pizza, we usually have that on the weekend when hubby is home - he makes an awesome pizza!

We eat dinner out about once a month and breakfast or lunch maybe twice a month.

[WannaComeHome]

Originally Posted by daniellefort

I just work more. No really, I use coupons too but even they are not helping much anymore. Seems the coupons have reduced their amounts. 10 or 15 cents off doesn't cut it anymore and half the time i have coupons to use but end up buying a cheaper brand that costs less than if i used a coupon for the other brand.

so it's not just around here that the coupons are useless! Ithought maybe it was me. I used to go through all the inserts and check all the coupons and clip out the ones for things we buy.. and used them. But not for a long time now. Most of the time the coupons are for items or brands we don't buy (they're still more expensive even with the coupon!), or they are for multiples.

ok, maybe one time we might buy 2 boxes of cereal. But then the next coupon (do you all have check-out coupons from the register?) is for 3 boxes. And if for some reason we have the space and maybe the cereal is on sale as well as the measly coupon we might get 3 boxes.. and of course the next coupon is for 4! I won't play that game. There's only so much space to put things.

We will sometimes buy generic - but we read the labels. If the active ingredients are the same (and we check for the percentage if it's given), then we have no problem buying the cheaper version. And we've not had any trouble with it. I have found that my Norwegian Forest Cats (like a Maine Coon, but a little smaller) do not do well with the store brand cat food - although my rescue cats are just fine with it. go figure. toiletries? we just check the label.

[SkiChick]

Some store brands will work for us but like D2D, I spice up it up a bit. Just last night our Wegman's brand pasta sauce was on sale ... saved .50 per jar so we bought 6 and saved $3. We don't think the flavor is the best so I toss in spices and ground up venison for hubby. Hubby hunts, so the only meat in the freezer is venison. And I'm a vegetarian, so where we save in other groceries, I spend on specialty foods such as the vegiballs that I throw in my sauce. Cooking is truly a chore because of me and my one daughter who has taken the veggie side of life. .15 and .20 coupons don't really make it worth the time to look for and cut out so I just take advantage of the store sales. Funny, while out shopping last night, hubby was going to buy m&m's for his physics class and went directly to the bulk section thinking it would be cheaper than the bags of them. After scouting out both options we actually found that the small and medium sized bags were the cheapest way to go by a long shot!!! Don't understand that. Guess they must get a lot of people who don't compare but just assume bulk is the cheapest way. You really need to be aware of those catches! We buy the biggest packages possible in laundry detergent, olive oil, basically anything that stores well in the cupboards and only if it's cheaper than the smaller packages. I bake a lot ... homemade pizza is a huge $$$ saver plus I make every ones pizza just the way they like it ... makes happy kids. A lot of the food I buy is organic, inc. the milk (very expensive), so I can't wait to be tilling my own soil once again to grow my own veggies. Between baking, the garden, and hubby's harvested venison, during the summer, grocery bills lower dramatically. And like Countrylv mentioned, using a list helps to buy only what is needed.

[nicolem]

Originally Posted by SkiChick

Some store brands will work for us but like D2D, I spice up it up a bit. Just last night our Wegman's brand pasta sauce was on sale ... saved .50 per jar so we bought 6 and saved $3. We don't think the flavor is the best so I toss in spices and ground up venison for hubby. Hubby hunts, so the only meat in the freezer is venison. And I'm a vegetarian, so where we save in other groceries, I spend on specialty foods such as the vegiballs that I throw in my sauce. Cooking is truly a chore because of me and my one daughter who has taken the veggie side of life. .15 and .20 coupons don't really make it worth the time to look for and cut out so I just take advantage of the store sales. Funny, while out shopping last night, hubby was going to buy m&m's for his physics class and went directly to the bulk section thinking it would be cheaper than the bags of them. After scouting out both options we actually found that the small and medium sized bags were the cheapest way to go by a long shot!!! Don't understand that. Guess they must get a lot of people who don't compare but just assume bulk is the cheapest way. You really need to be aware of those catches! We buy the biggest packages possible in laundry detergent, olive oil, basically anything that stores well in the cupboards and only if it's cheaper than the smaller packages. I bake a lot ... homemade pizza is a huge $$$ saver plus I make every ones pizza just the way they like it ... makes happy kids. A lot of the food I buy is organic, inc. the milk (very expensive), so I can't wait to be tilling my own soil once again to grow my own veggies. Between baking, the garden, and hubby's harvested venison, during the summer, grocery bills lower dramatically. And like Countrylv mentioned, using a list helps to buy only what is needed.

Wegman! I love Wegmans. I miss them from when we lived in NJ. Actually when we go back we always stock up on stuff-their generic stuff is pretty good. If we had a Wegmans here I would probably use more generics.

Nicolem

[dzmjp]

Wow! I'm sorry to hear that the coupons in NH are not so useful! just wrote a post in this thread how useful coupons are, and I guess that is not the case there... I'm sorry!! I'm currently out in WA state and our local paper always has very useful coupons in it .. as well as our local grocery stores with their super coupons or once a month 12 hour sales! I still can't wait for our move there!

[NH2008]

Not in NH yet but for what it's worth this is what we do...

Good food is really important to me. I grew up eating almost everything (not bread, but salad dressing, pasta sauce, brownies etc) from scratch, and boxed and canned stuff just doesn't taste good to me. Without getting into a debate about it, I do like to feed my family organic food whenever possible, particularly my young children. We're not going into debt to do it (although I am careful about what I buy so we don't spend a fortune) and I find that organic or organic style meat (free-range, no antibiotics or artificial hormones, etc) tastes better and I feel better about it. So for me saving money is more about finding the best deal on the best quality products than the absolute lowest price.

- We shop at Trader Joe's a lot to stock up on healthy stuff at good prices - .99 for 1 lb of whole wheat pasta for example, which would be 50% more at a regular grocery. Almost everything they sell is store-brand and really high quality.

- We have a tiny yard that would be a postage stamp in NH but we grow our own herbs and have fresh parsley, dill, basil, etc all year long (not in NH!) for less than it would cost to buy 1 bunch at the store. Tomatoes have been a dismal failure but we also grow strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and lemons. I also love that my kids can see where food comes from! (We're a little short on actual nature here...

- We shop at Costco for the diapers, paper towels etc. I buy canned food there and would buy more if we had anywhere to store it. They carry canned organic tomatoes, kidney beans, peanut butter, good chocolate bars for DH, and this freeze-dried organic fruit that my kids love when we're snacking on the road. We don't have much room in our freezer but when possible I'll also buy organic meat in bulk and freeze it in family size portions. If I have to send someone a gift basket or wedding gift or whatever, I order it from their website - shipping is included in the price and we've saved well over the cost of membership.

- We're trying to eat out less

- I've been planning a week's menu at a time and we're saving a lot that way. Fewer impulse purchases at the store, less need to just say, "there's nothing to eat, let's order a pizza," and we're eating healthier too. I shop twice a week so we always have fresh produce.

- Our farmers' market is year-round and although the organic produce still isn't cheap, it's all super fresh and local and tastes amazing, and it gets my kids to eat a lot more fruit and veg! I try to plan my meals around whatever's on sale and in season and we save a lot that way - instead of buying out of season raspberries flown in from Chile, we're buying local citrus that costs 90% less. (This is one of the few things I will miss about northern CA when we move...)

- Both for health and for budget, I've cut back on meat. That way, we can have top-quality meat when we do eat it, and the vegetarian meals are super cheap. We eat a lot of "breakfast for dinner," (eggs or whole wheat pancakes), tofu stir fries, pasta, bean chili, etc. When we do eat meat, I often stretch it by making stir-fries with a lot of veggies, etc.

- I've gotten better about not wasting by planning on leftovers for lunch.

- Like a lot of other people, we bake all our own sweets. I think it probably costs MORE than regular grocery cookies and cakes, but the ingredients are much better-quality (real butter instead of shortening, etc) so it's marginally healthier and it tastes better (to me at least.) It's certainly much cheaper than buying a comparable dessert at a good bakery. We make our own salad dressings (again, probably not a bargain but better).

- When we have roast chicken, we throw the carcass into the crockpot immediately with some vegetables and the next day we have broth to freeze. Or we freeze the bones and make a huge pot of soup when we have enough. Extra tomatoes get made into sauce and frozen. Leftover chicken meat gets made into creamed chicken, enchiladas or pot pie, leftover lamb gets made into middle-eastern stuffed peppers, etc...

Off topic but a huge savings for us had been canceling cable. Now we get Netflix. They get all the HBO series in addition to movies. We never watch commercials, we only pay for what we actually enjoy, and we save a fortune!

[SkiChick]

Originally Posted by NH2008

I find that organic or organic style meat (free-range, no antibiotics or artificial hormones, etc) tastes better and I feel better about it.

That reminds me of a couple years back when my daughters had a friend sleep over and I served her organic milk. She asked for seconds and thirds saying over and over how good it tasted. Never thought much about it, but her mother said her daughter wouldn't stop talking about the milk. Thought it was funny so decided to share the story.

[buck naked]

"Off topic but a huge savings for us had been canceling cable. Now we get Netflix. They get all the HBO series in addition to movies. We never watch commercials, we only pay for what we actually enjoy, and we save a fortune"

don't know about this service - are you able to get news stations as well or is it only movies? since moving up north, I have not been able to get TV without cable.