Things I Skimp On Instead Of Buying Cheap Food

My local paper ran a story today about how unemployment is higher in our county than it's been since 1990. On paper, the economy is improving, but most of us are still broke. Times are tough all over, and I pretty commonly get asked "How can I afford to eat low carb?" Part of the answer, of course, is eat chicken leg-and-thigh quarters, chuck steak, hamburger, pork steaks, eggs, cabbage, block cheese, and other reliably cheap but low carb and nutritious food. (Also that food that makes you tired, fat, sick and hungry wouldn't be cheap if they were giving it away.) We do all this. I do buy some more expensive food stuffs when working on recipes, but for the most part we live on inexpensive but nutritious food.

Too, I buy what I can in bulk when it's on sale; that's why we have more than one deep freeze. I've been known to buy 50 pounds or more of chicken when legs and thighs drop to 39c/pound. A freezer is one of the best investments you can make.

But the other answer is, quite honestly, that we cut corners pretty ruthlessly on a lot of other things. We live in a big, nice house in a good neighborhood, but other than that? It's Tightwad City around here. Here in no particular order are fourteen things we scrimp on to be able to afford to feed ourselves well:

1) Heating and cooling. In the winter my house is at 68 degrees during the day and 62 at night; in the summer we set the A/C at 78; mostly use it to get the humidity out of the air. Reduces our carbon footprint, too, but mostly we do it because we'd rather put on or take off a layer of clothing rather than spend more money on climate control.

2) Vacations. We don't take many, and when we do we mostly camp. We have gone on the low carb cruise the past two years, but that's a business expense, even though I won't deny having a ridiculous amount of fun. Yeah, we have to pay for it, but at least it's deductible.

3) Plane tickets. If it's within 1000 miles, we generally drive. This also has to do with hating commercial air travel only slightly less than a case of the shingles, but even with overnight lodging (at Super 8) it's also cheaper, not only by saving on airfare, but on a rental car when we get where we're going. We often also take along a cooler full of low carb provisions, so we can eat some of our meals inexpensively on the road. On a nice day I'd rather eat outside at a picnic table in a rest area than in a fast-food place anyway.

4) Eating out. Just not something we do much. Frankly, I miss it sometimes, but it's just not in the budget. I do go out with my Toastmasters friends on Thursday nights, but I try to eat something at home before the meeting, so I won't be tempted to order food, just a glass or two of wine while I socialize. That Nice Boy I Married virtually never goes out for lunch from work. He either eats a big breakfast before he goes, or takes lunch with him (today he has a can of sardines and some grapes), or walks over to the health food store or the grocery store across from work and grabs some peanut butter to eat at his desk, or some Little Smokies to warm up in the office microwave.

5) Clothes. We both like clothes and care about how we dress, so I haunt the local Goodwill. As a result, we both have wardrobes of far nicer clothes than we could have afforded to buy new, at prices well below those we would have found at WalMart. As I write this, I'm wearing an Ann Taylor Loft shirt, a Fossil watch, some cute crops, all from the Goodwill. Even my underpants came from the Goodwill! (Stop making that face, they were new.) Got an adorable Jones New York jacket yesterday, for $7. I'm currently carrying a Relic purse I got new from the Goodwill for $3. (This bargain shopping doubles as a hobby.) It's gotten to the point where I get sticker shock even at Target!

6) Other stuff we buy used -- like the huge freezer we just bought. Twenty three cubic feet; we paid $125. It will let us save on grass-fed beef, 'cause now we can buy it by the side. Around here a side of grass-fed beef runs in the $2.50-3/pound range. That's a little high for ground chuck, but ridiculously cheap for T-bones and prime rib, no? Our television, $100 from a student who was leaving town after graduation. Our microwave, $15, ditto. Most of the furniture we didn't inherit, and most of our lamps. The flooring in our kitchen -- really nice stone-look vinyl -- we bought through Craigs List for 50c/square foot.

7) Pleasure reading. Mostly we borrow books from the library, though I occasionally pick up something by a favorite author at the Goodwill. Not only can I read the latest mystery novels for free, I don't have to store them when I'm done.

8) Movies, video, cable. We go out to the movies just a few times per year, always to a cheap show. Mostly I borrow videos from the library, which has a terrific selection. We do keep the lowest level Netflix membership, the one that lets you have one video at a time, and no more than three per month. I do it because I like really old movies (I have a serious thing for Boris Karloff), and Netflix has more old and out of the way movies than anywhere else. We only buy basic cable, and we're seriously considering doing away with that, and just watching Hulu and the like. We have occasionally watched free on-demand, but have never actually paid for an on-demand movie.

9) Cell Phones and Service. We have cell phones, but they only make phone calls and text; we don't have 3G or 4G phones. Yes, I can see that they're useful. I can also see that they're hideously expensive, not only up front, but on a monthly basis. We both work in front of a computer much of the day; we'll be content with that for the time being.

10) Toiletries, makeup, etc. We use Tresemme shampoo and conditioner; I use a few different body lotions, including Suave Firming Lotion, Palmer's Cocoa Butter Lotion (which makes me smell like a Hershey bar all day), and Lubriderm's Advanced Therapy with AHAs, which is the cheapest glycolic body lotion I've found. I bought a bottle of 35% glycolic acid through Amazon.com for $16, and do my own skin peels. I use drug store makeup, including the super-cheap Wet And Wild. I've been known to buy hair dye at the Goodwill -- yes, the Goodwill. Hey, it was the right color.

11) Cleaning supplies. I can't think of any more boring way to spend money than cleaning supplies! I buy my laundry detergent at Aldi; I'm convinced their Tandil is Tide in a different bottle; it works great and it's super-cheap. (I've used other cheap laundry detergents that, quite frankly, sucked. Left spots in my clothes, which is no saving. But Tandil actually works.) I use their Reeva hand dish soap and automatic dishwasher detergent, too. As for spray cleaner -- you know, the Formula 409 sort of thing -- I make my own: 2 tablespoons ammonia, 2 tablespoons white vinegar, 2 tablespoons drugstore peroxide in a spray-trigger bottle which I then fill up with water. (My bottle is smaller than a 409 bottle; if you recycle a commercial bottle you might want to double the cleaning ingredients.) Works great and costs pennies. I cut up old, stained, holey tee shirts for rags to use in place of paper towels; I can make a roll of paper towels last more than a month.

12) Vitamins. Okay, we actually spend a lot on vitamins; we consider them an investment. But we shop hard for them and buy them as cheaply as possible. This time of year, Puritans Pride (a company I very much wish I could get as a sponsor for this blog, since I've been buying stuff from them for over 25 years) runs their best sale of the year -- buy one, get two free. We buy most of our vitamins in bulk during the sale, and stash 'em in the cellar. Saves us hundreds of dollars over the course of a year. The other place we order from is Vitacost -- I run the calculations as to which is cheaper on a given item, Puritan's Pride or Vitacost.

13) Fitness. We don't have gym memberships. We walk -- it's a great neighborhood for it. And I own a lot of exercise equipment and videos, the vast majority of which I bought used. And That Nice Boy I Married gets a fair amount of exercise mowing our huge lawn and doing yard work.

14) Beverages: I'm thirsty all the time, and always want to have a beverage with me in the car. Do I buy something at the mini-mart or fast food drive-thru? Are you nuts? $2 for an iced tea? A few times a season, when it's unavoidable, yeah, I'll do this. Then I keep the big plastic cup/lid/straw, and refill it with iced tea made with instant at home for a few cents a glass. In the winter I take a thermal carafe of hot tea in the car, along with a car cup. That Nice Boy I Married takes a thermos of coffee (usually Aldi's house brand) to work every morning -- it boggles me to think how much money Americans spend on coffee by the cup. Of course, taking his own coffee also lets him use real cream, rather than being at the mercy of whatever they have at the mini-mart. Another benefit of taking our own is that we can blend decaf and regular, to get just the level of speed we want.

We also buy Milwaukee's Best Light beer, about the cheapest really light beer you can get; for my money it's indistinguishable from the pricier Miller Lite. It's rare that we buy a bottle of wine that costs more than $10; most of the wine we drink is $4 or less for 750 ml. Takes some tasting to find the ones in that price range that are reasonably drinkable, but it's worth doing. Most often we drink Vendange Cabernet, which usually runs about $7.50 for a 1.5 liter bottle -- when it goes on sale at CVS, I stock up; if I buy 6 at a time (a dozen of the 750 ml size) I get another 10% off the sale price.

Our only big splurge on beverages is La Croix sparkling water, and if the local groceries ever start carrying store-brand sparkling water in cans we'll buy that instead.

In short, we prioritize our spending. Decent, real food is a serious priority, above just about anything else but the mortgage.

Of course, all of this also reduces our medical expenses. We are fortunate enough to have health insurance, despite That Nice Boy I Married having been on less than full-time hours for a year and a half now. (Ouch.) But of course we have co-pays and deductibles and all that stuff. Prioritizing our spending for excellent nutrition keeps our medical costs at rock-bottom.

I know many of you have expenses we do not; in particular we have no kids. I am not in any way suggesting that all of our budget choices should be your budget choices. I just thought I'd share the fact that, Best Selling Arthur that I am, I still have to be careful with money, I still have to make choices, sometimes hard choices. If any of my ways of stretching the budget help you, I'm a happy girl.