a thought about saving money and reducing spending

The ads in the paper all say they want you to save money.  Really, they want you to spend money, don't they...beware!

I walked into Safeway with the children yesterday, a store I usually never bother to enter because the prices aren't to my liking.  But they had a deal on brownies which made it impossible for me to ignore.  $.69 for betty crocker brownie mixes, which I am constantly using for school fundraisers.  I haven't seen that price for a coon's age, so we purchased 20 boxes of brownies. 

Across the aisle I noticed that the 5 pound bags of flour were also on sale.  So cute, so little---baby doll size, to us.  But when I calculated the price compared to the 50 pound bags I usually get at Cash & Carry, these little 5 pounders were actually cheaper than the big boys.  So I bought 40 lbs of flour, too, at Safeway, of all places.  And 5 lb bags are much easier to manouver than those big bags, so I am happy about my surprise bargain.

Anyway, back to my thoughts about learning to save money...walking through a new store made everything a dizzying array of price tags and "savings", items that are totally crying out for impulse buying. Actually, they are threatening your budget, trying to pull the money out of your wallet, away from your account.  It's a dangerous place, the grocery store!

I realized then that I really am more experienced than the average bear when it comes to ferreting out an actual bargain.  Don't be fooled by what seem to be such high prices in the stores.  You can find cheap prices and you can do it on a regular basis, no matter where you live.  It does take some thought, and a little bit of space to hold items until you need them. 

That is the idea of a pantry.  Right now my pantry has 40 extra pounds of flour, among other things.  I know I will use that flour in my 10 for 10 for 10 budget, so it does not qualify as an impulse buy, even though I hadn't planned to purchase it when I went into the store. 

Butter is on sale in almost every store this week, as well as sugar and other baking supplies.  The cheapest butter I have seen here is 99 cents a pound, a once a year price.  Since we don't eat any margarine, finding cheap butter is an exciting event at Boothieville.

Have you found any awesome Easter shopping bargains?  I'd love to find out about them.  I see that asparagus has a good price tag, and we may have asparagus for our Holiday dinner this weekend.

If you are a beginner in pricing, always look for the price per pound or price per ounce on the store labels.  What you find may surprise you.  Sometimes the larger sized containers are actually more per ounce than the small ones.  For instance, this week the 10 lb bags of sugar were more per ounce than the 5 lb bags.  Who would have thought it?

 For example, most cold cereals cost more per pound than chocolate.  Can you believe the prices on cold cereal that Americans have been suckered into?  If you have never looked at that before, it will raise your eyebrows!  Many cereals cost more than 4 dollars per pound.  New york steaks are on sale this week for $3.99.  That seems like a splurge, while cold cereal somehow seems like a necessity.  Successful advertising, that is all it is.

Cold cereal routinely goes on sale for 1.00 a box, and I always wait until a sale before I purchase any, and then I buy a lot of it.  Since we use a box a day,  we can travel through cereal at a rapid rate. 

One last thought about reducing spending.  This one is for us all.  Don't shop when you are hungry.  Don't make way for the flesh, if you like to think of it in a more spiritual way!  It is almost impossible to walk past a whole roasted chicken when you are starving!

 I was behind a young mother with 4 children at the checkout counter yesterday.  It was exactly meal time.  Those kids of hers were working her over something awful, begging for the candy, wearing her down.  She did not succomb, but I'm sure she was emotionally exhausted by the end of that shopping trip, because she had shopped when all the kids were hungry.  She didn't do herself any favors, that's for sure.  It stressed everybody in line behind her as well!

Saving money on food is not as easy as over-spending on food.  Prepared food makes for fast and simple eating.  It smoothes the way at the end of the day, no doubt about it.  We pay dearly for that ease, though. Prepared food is pricey.  Budget eating is not actually hard, and not all that time consuming, but I find that it does take thought and preparation. 

Thinking ahead is not the American Way, but I am reforming myself and learning to think ahead, and trying not to feel too much like a martyr while I am doing it...