I was talking to my wife last night about the things in our life that saves us the most money day-to-day. She thought about it for a minute and came up with a great post idea for me! I am going to give you our biggest household money saver and give the reasons why. Then I would love to hear your biggest household money saver.
Our Deep Freezer
About 5 years ago we purchased a Kirkland brand chest freezer from Costco for around $150 that we keep in the corner of our garage. It is not a huge freezer, but it is the perfect size for us. What a great purchase for our family! Here is how it saves us a lot of money every month.
1. Frozen Meals. Once a month, my wife will get together with a girlfriend and crank out 7 or 8 delicious meals that can be frozen for later. There is no way we could do this with a standard size refrigerator freezer. By doing this, it guarantees a healthy meal for our kids even on the busiest of nights.
2. Leftovers. My wife and I will purposely cook more than one meal of a particular dish and freeze the leftovers for another meal. Saves us time and money.
3. Convenience and Time Saved. We don’t have to shop nearly as often because we can stock up and store entire meals, meats, bread, and frozen veggies and fruit in the freezer.
4. Easy Way to Take Advantage of Sales. When bread, beef, chicken, and turkey go on sale, we can now stock up and freeze it. Then we just take out what we are going to eat for dinner in the morning and let it defrost on the kitchen counter. Greatly lowers our monthly grocery bill because we can buy more stuff when it is on sale.
Please chime in with the biggest money saver in your life. Perhaps a bread maker or some cool do-hinkie I have never heard of. I look forward to reading your comments!
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{ 8 comments }
This is a great idea and I’ve been on both sides. I’ve been at home more and been able to utilize a freezer and I’ve been away from home to much to be organized and things were wasted. And I did a lot of work to freeze the items but they were freezer burned before I could get to them. Important to have a list outside the freezer of items in it and date it was put in. A freezer can be a great asset or it can be a money drain. Do what you can when you can to save money. 🙂
Great points Rita.
Important to not bury stuff at the bottom and keep it organized. We have never wasted any of the food in our freezer and a would say it is semi-organized. We do write dates on the meat that we put in it to make sure we use it all up before it gets freezer burnt.
I agree, the freezer’s a huge money saver for us, too. I stockpiled tons of blueberries this summer when the fresh local ones went on sale for amazingly cheap!
Hmmm, I’d have to say that overall our biggest money saver is choosing to own one car rather than two, which saves us thousands of dollars every year. Plus I’m sure we get much more exercise as we walk and bike a lot of places 🙂
We put in a garden this year.It has saved us a lot of money we would have spent buying it from the supermarket.It produced more than we could eat.So we gave our extras to our neighbors.It is something we will continue.I think we spent $11.50 for all the plants.What we got out of it had to be in the hundreds of dollars.
I love my freezer, and for the most part it saves me money.
What saves my family the most money has been buying used clothing. (We don’t have a lot of clothes, either) Between being minimal in our purchases and buying them used we have saved a lot of money. Enough saved that I am always shocked to look at prices of new clothes in the stores– I am so out of touch with that!
We buy shoes new, but everyone is limited to one pair of sneakers and one pair of sandals. (DH has one pair of boots for his work uniform).
Oooh, I’ve been wanting a chest freezer forever! I didn’t think I could justify it for just one person, but the bulk cooking and planned leftovers would make sense for a household of any size. Especially the point about having healthy meals ready to go all the time.
I would point out that it’s very dangerous to thaw frozen meat products at room temperature. Either let them thaw out in the fridge, or under cold running water. It’ll save a lot of money on stomach medication. 🙂
If I had room in my little flat I would LOVE a deep freeze.
In the meantime, the thing that saves me the most money is planning our meals (& leftovers for lunch) for the whole week, and doing one big shop. It avoids waste, as well as stops those impulse purchases.
My price book has saved me the most. I made a list of the “consumer” items I use — not only food, but cleaning supplies, bath soap, aluminum foil, make-up, etc. and I kept track of prices until I knew what the rock bottom price was on each item. When that price hits, I buy a lot and store it in my apartment. (Yes, I have a freezer — it lives on the balcony of my small apartment). In this way, whatever I use is purchased for the least amount possible. I’ve also bought brand-new, sealed Brita water filters at garage sales for a dime apiece, and almost-full boxes of aluminum foil at estate sales for a quarter. NEVER paying retail and buying only at the lowest possible price has saved me the most.