What Are You Saving For?

What Are You Saving For?

I’ve learned some pretty horrific statistics in the last three months, two of those will forever be burnt into my brain.

Did you know that if you have shelter, running water and transportation (even if it’s public transportation, ie. the bus) that you are in the top 10% of the worlds wealth? The top 10%. This is a mind blowing concept to me. I know people who generate 100+ k a year and still struggle to get by. The top 10%. There have been times, especially in this year, where I’ve struggled to feed my family, yet I am still in that top 10%. Imagine for a second the other 90%…

Every single day, before my head hits my pillow, 26,000 children on this planet die from starvation and preventable disease. 26,000. That’s almost 7 1/2 times the population of our fair town of Bluffton. I have two children under the age of 10. My oldest son almost lost his life twice before he was 3 months old and was then on chemotherapy until his 2nd birthday. I’m incredibly familiar with fear so severe that it literally makes you feel like vomiting while looking into your little precious treasure of a child’s face wondering if he’ll be there, still, tomorrow. What I can’t imagine, however, is experiencing the same feeling shrouded in the guilt of knowing that I could do something to fix it. I could feed my child. I could give them a simple antibiotic that we pay less than $4 for most of the time. Holding him, looking into his eyes and watching him pass from life to death knowing that it truly didn’t have to be this way- this causes me to sit here and cry even as I write these words.

I’m big on saving as much money as I can, wherever I can. I’m a single mom and its truly more of a necessity than a luxury. I’m proud of the fact that I can budget my groceries down to practically nothing and have none of us hungry. But, what am I saving for?

Allow me to introduce you to Lizeth. Lizeth lives in the mountainous region of Peru. She lives with her mother and father and three siblings. She is 9 years old. Her favorite food is beans and she loves to play with dolls. Her family lives in an adobe home with dirt floors, mud walls and no heat. Today, the low temp in Lizeth’s hometown was 35 degrees. Lizeth means “God’s Promise.” When I look at Lizeth’s picture, I see a face of a gorgeous 9 year old girl who clearly doesn’t know that she is God’s promise. I see the face of a burdened little girl who feels worthless and forgotten without that flicker of joy in her eyes that my boys possess.

Lizeth is a part of our family. Some of the money that I save each month I use to sponsor Lizeth through Compassion International. It is $38 a month, and less than the cost of one dinner out with my kids. I think a majority of us would agree that $38 is pocket change in our lives. Most of us spend twice that a month on coffee. That $38 gives Lizeth the opportunity to learn and break free from the chains of poverty, in addition she receives nutritious meals, gets regular health screenings and medical care when necessary. She also learns that she is loved by God, and us, and that she has immeasurable value.

My family and I save for a life. You can too. Check out my Compassion International link or call or email me anytime with any questions you might have. I currently have two child packets in my possession that need sponsors by December 16th.

Emily Britton
Child Advocate
Compassion International
419-792-0073
houseofbritton@gmail.com
I can speak at your church or group!

Lizeth- “God’s Promise”

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder-10 -for-10

I apologize for my lingering absence as of late. I’ve had many, many life changes and some very difficult circumstances to sort through. I am bouncing back, however, because I am a overcomer. Now, I am ready to lead you, once again, in a charge to redeem your grocery budget.

10-for-10

I have a serious fondness for 10-for-10 deals. They are pretty eye-catching. The thought of spending a buck on something is what lures us all to dollar stores and thrift shops, so when food contains that appeal, it’s irresistible! We have to have food, we don’t necessarily need what we purchase at dollar stores and thrift shops.

When you are looking at 10-for-10 deals in the super market circulars on Sunday, be sure to analyze, honestly, if it’s something that you can really use. For instance, we use a lot of ketchup, so when it’s 10-for-10, I stock up. Also, be aware if you can mix-and-match 10-for-10 deals, then you can actually get more bang for your buck, avoiding purchasing unnecessary items just for the discount.

Some stores offer 10-for-10 and the 11th free, keep a look out for that. I believe that Meijer does this from time-to-time, and it’s worth the discount if you find somethings you can really use. If you are a coupon clipper (and why wouldn’t you be!?) keep an eye out for coupons for the products in question. This doesn’t happen often. You may notice that most 10-for-10 products are a store or off-brand, but this isn’t always the case.

But, the most valuable advice I have for you when shopping for 10-for-10 deals is to plan. Look into the products, determine what you want or need, look for coupons, decide the quantity and then compare with other stores. You will be amazed at just how much you can save.

Happy shopping!

Emily Britton is Nutrition Coach; Lifestyle/Weight Management Specialist at Well-Nourished, in Bluffton. You can reach her for her services at 419-792-0073, or you can email her at houseofbritton@gmail.com .

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10 Basic Steps to Cut Your Grocery Bill

This is the nitty-gritty. All guts, no frills. There are so many websites out there; So many ideas and philosophies to saving money. It’s not really as hard as people make it out to be. If you want to save HUGE then, it takes a lot more than this. What you really want is to buy groceries with as little fuss as possible. Get in, get out, get eating. I feel you.

So, here are the Top 10 Ways to Cut Your Grocery Bill… and I suddenly feel like David Letterman.

10.     Make a list. We’ve talked about this before when we talked about menu planning and all that. It’s simple. Write down everything that you need before you leave. Never go to the grocery store without a list. It is detrimental.

9.     Clip coupons. I just talked about this recently. I do it, every Sunday. It only takes a little while. After you write your list, check to see if you have any coupons to use. If you keep them organized this only takes a few minutes.

8. Eat leftovers. I’ve talked about this before, too. Utilize what you have left over and try to throw out as little as possible. Make your food serve you the amount of servings it’s supposed to, and eat leftovers!

7. Use what you have before you go to the store. Do you always have stuff leftover in your pantry when you decide to go to the grocery? Use that first. It may take some creativity, but you bought if for a reason, right?

6. Grow your own. I know, may not sound like fun. If you eat a ton of tomatoes, it may be well worth it to you to plant a tomato plant and have them at your disposal. They taste better too.

5. Eat before you shop. I’m sure you’ve heard this before. We all have. Never shop on an empty stomach. I can tell you from experience this is truth, if you shop on an empty stomach you are doomed. Not only will you likely spend twice as much, but you’ll get things that look appealing, which may not be what you need.

4. Buy in bulk. Stick with items you know that your family uses a lot of. Things like toothpaste, shampoo, razor blades and such can all account for a lot of savings if you hit Sam’s and buy a huge package. Do it wisely, and you can save quite a bit.

3. Buy store brands. Some people really hate it when I bring this one up. There are a few things that I absolutely won’t budge on (cheese) and I’m sure you are the same way. I’ve used just about every store and generic brand out there, and most of the stuff is seriously the same. The bonus is, if you get something and you don’t like it, most store brands (Aldi’s) have a guarantee that you will like it, or they give you your money back (Aldi’s gives you double).

2. Eat veggies. I’m a meat and potatoes kind of girl and I struggle with this one. Veggies are simply cheaper. Try starting with one meat-free day a week and take it from there.

1. Set a firm budget. I know, it stinks. The only way to know how much you spend on groceries a month is to set a limit. Mine is $100 a week. Your’s may be twice that or more. But set it and stick with it, no matter what!

I think that if you start slowly putting these things into practice and compare what you spent in a year, you’ll be surprised by the savings. I was. My family saves $100 a month compared to what we spent last year, and we are still full and happy.

Soda is of the Devil

I know that’s probably a bit harsh, but to me, it’s total truth. Chris Rock says, “Actually, I think all addiction starts with soda. Every junkie did soda first. But no one counts that. Maybe they should. The soda connection is clear. Why isn’t a presidential commission looking into this? Or at least some guys from the National Carbonation Council.” Now, I’m not one to look to Chris Rock for advice, but I think he may have a point there.

Changing my lifestyle to one that’s more healthy, soda is a stumbling block for me. When I drink a soda, I don’t want to drink water. In comparison, water is just a bland wetness to soda’s sweet fizzy smoothness. When I just drink water, no soda, then water is lovely and refreshing and quenches my thirst. Once I have a soda, water just doesn’t do the job.

At this point I have to admit that I have a certain addiction to Frostop Root Beer. You can often find me at Greg’s with my boys getting one out of the cooler in front after I let my little guys pick out a treat from the candy aisle. It’s the best root beer I’ve ever tasted and am still impressed by its inexplicable smoothness (and it’s only 99¢!). But this isn’t a commercial for root beer. I do, however, believe in everything in moderation. Ijust have trouble with the follow through, but I digress…

You can buy a 24 pack of Coca Cola for around $10. You can buy a 20 pack of cigarette’s for around $6. No comparison, you say? Depends…

There are some people, many that I’m related to, that would go without food before they would go without soda or cigarettes. That speaks volumes if you ask me.

Ok, so off my kick there. Soda is not good for you. It makes me feel like crap. I’ve tried to switch to just about everything just because I wanted to continue to drink soda. They ALL made me feel like crap, including my wonderful Frostop Root Beer. So, in my household, we switched to drinking, for the most part, only water. Soda is a treat and is treated as such. In cutting soda from our diets, we also cut $20 from our grocery budget a week. $20! That’s one fifth of my current grocery budget. That’s crazy!

Do you hate your tap water? No big, we do too. Our water has so much sulfur in it, even with treatment, that I almost can’t stand brushing my teeth with the stuff. Our solution was to get a water cooler and have water delivered to our house once a month. Does this cost? Yes, it does. The cost of our water per month is $40, which is half of what we spent on soda. So we still have $40 in our pocket a month.

Sounds like another purse in my future!

 

Please check out my new articles on budget grocery shopping at Examiner.com. And don’t forget to find me at The Bluffton Icon!

Today is Special to Me

Unrelated to food, shopping or saving, I feel the need to share with you all what today means to me. Today is Rare Disease Day.

My son, Paul, suffers from a rare blood disorder, Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis. He was diagnosed at 1 1/2 months old and was on chemotherapy for 21 months immediately following. After more hospital stays than I can count, multiple surgeries, enough radiation exposure from testing to put him at risk for other cancers and hundreds of needle pokes, my little guys has been in remission for 5 1/2 years. We are blessed and incredibly thankful!

Rare diseases are a tough cookie. First of all they are difficult to diagnose. Luckily for us, we were close to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus and they are fantastic. It’s also a bummer because a “Rare Disease” is also called an orphan disease. This means that less 1 in 200,000 are affected. It also means that the government doesn’t support research.

Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis is one of 6 life threatening histiocytic diseases, all rare, out there. They are primarily found in children. I have seen many little ones pass on each month in the years since Paul’s diagnosis. It’s terribly heart breaking. We are blessed and God touched our little guy.

Please visit Rare Disease Day USA to learn more about what Rare Disease Day is all about. You can also visit the Histiocytosis Association of America who is out to raise money for research for these horrible diseases. Please check out Liam’s Lighthouse Foundation, created by a mom who lost her little guy to this horrible disease to create awareness and to support research.

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How Much Do You Pay Yourself?

I’m a huge deal-seeker, as I believe most people I know are. Looking for a deal can be time-consuming at times. There was once a time when I thought it was stupid to spend so much time looking to save a few bucks. With a little twist in perspective, I changed this opinion.

I’ve always heard that time is money. Some people really believe this. I don’t, but for the sake of argument, let’s say I do.

What do you do to save money on your purchases? There are lots of options, more than I knew about when I first broached this idea, that perhaps my initial thinking was wrong. You can clip coupons. You can clip coupons in excess and purchase only what you have coupons for in huge quantities. You can do electronic coupons on your cell phone. You can search high and low on the internet. You can go to individual stores and scour clearance items. It doesn’t matter which of these or combination of these you chose, they take time. You’re busy, I get it. I am too.

I went to Kmart on Friday. We wandered there looking for something specific, I have no recollection of what that something was, and we walked out an hour later having spent $11 on clothes for my boys that would’ve cost $56. I saved $45 bucks. So I really paid myself $45 an hour for that hour to purchase the best price. Because it is money that stays in your wallet, so you did ACTUALLY pay yourself. Cool, right?

So, hypothetically, if I was able to achieve the same level of savings on all of my smaller purchases, for all the work I put into it, I’m paying myself $45 an hour. I bet you’d be more likely to clip coupons if someone offered to pay you that. Heck, I’d clip coupons for $5 an hour, I find it incredibly therapeutic.

My point, if you’re busy, are you too busy to make $45 an hour? Never underestimate the power of seeking out savings. I don’t know about you, but my $45 an hour will be spent on a purse. Shhhh…. Don’t tell Lyle!

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The Laundry List, of Groceries

After a week (LONG week) of sick kids, emergency room visits and doctors appointments I face an empty cupboard. Having spent almost my entire weeks grocery budget on two bottles of children’s Tylenol, two bottles of children’s ibuprophen and two prescriptions I have come to the conclusion that I am in the wrong line of work and that pharmaceuticals must be a promising pay out. But I digress…

The no food thing doesn’t happen often around here. I’m constantly in the kitchen creating and cooking up something. Someone is always hungry, no matter when the last meal was. It’s something that continues to stump me, considering there are only four people in this house. It seems like I cook for an army of little men. More than once I have pondered how my great-grandmother ever managed with her 16 children. That poor woman must have done nothing but give birth and bake bread.

Since my cupboards need some serious attention, I figured now would be an excellent time to consider forming a grocery list out of the menu plan we made last week. Decide, first, how often you intend to hit the grocery. I go once a week, whether I really need to or not, because it’s a habit and because I don’t like my week interrupted with impromptu needs or wants. My budget is the same every week, with a little jiggle room, and so my trip(s) remain the same. Consistency helps me a lot, especially in keeping excess money out of my cupboards and in my wallet.

With your menu plan in hand and the date of your next trip in mind, let us begin. Since I go to the grocery once a week, we will use this as an example. First things first, make a list of all the ingredients that you need to make those menu items for the week, and I do mean all. If you need garlic powder, even if you know you have it, write it down. When your list is prepared, start crossing off what you have. Sometimes it’s good to double-check that you do really have these things and in the amount that you need, you don’t want to have to make an unnecessary trip later in the week. After you’ve eliminated all that you already have, compile your final list. This will be comprised of what you have left on your menu list, plus some staples that you know you will need. For instance, in my house, every week I get eggs, butter and milk, whether I need it or not, because I always will.

That wasn’t too hard, was it? OK, the next part may be a little more difficult. Go to the grocery store and get what’s on your list. Nothing else. I mean it. Unless you already have a budget in place, don’t worry about it right now. Just get what you need and get out. Frozen pizza on sale two for $5? If it’s not on your list, tough! Get out!

We will work on a budget in a few days. I’ll give you some guidelines and tips that I use and follow. They work for me and I hope they work for you. Until then, just work on sticking to your menu and list. It’s a tough thing to get into the habit of. Some nights, you come home and feel nothing like cooking dinner.  Some days, you don’t prepare adequately for lunch. Stick to the menu. Stick to the list. YOU CAN DO IT!

You can now catch The Kitchen Economist at The Bluffton Icon! Yay!

Men(U) at Work

Our goal? Plan full menus for three weeks worth of meals, which includes breakfast, lunch and dinner (and snack if you wish). Today we are going to put our 21 meal and side dish list as well as our pantry inventory to use.

First: The Concept
It’s a lot of work, but if you do it right, it can require little (to possibly no) work later. We are going to effectively cut out the guess-work in the kitchen! Excited! Me too! Woo hoo!

Second: The Plan
We need to plan three weeks, as I said before. This brings into play our 21 meals list. Our three weeks will encompass this list.

3 weeks = 21 days

Take your 21 meals list, and transfer those entrée and sides to your menu. Mix them up, put them wherever you want (it’s your kitchen!). You can create a rotation, like a night for pasta, a night for chicken and so on, or you can just throw them in all willy-nilly. The point is, plan them out. Make some sense of it. From there, plan your breakfasts and lunches where necessary. It’s not that big of a deal to repeat these items more frequently, so your arsenal doesn’t have to be anything fantastic. This is the perfect opportunity to put your pantry inventory into use.

That’s it. It may take some time to get it all pulled together, but when it’s done, it’s done. You can take those three weeks worth of a menu and never touch them again and just rotate them around so things stay fresh, but it requires no more from you.

You can put your menu on blank calendar pages, list it or you can download the weekly and monthly menu planners from ListPlanIt (which is what I use). I have mine in a binder in my kitchen, within easy reach, just in case my brain quits working (I explain more about the children that eat my brains in “Lets Get Planning!”).

There are times when I start making something new, that we really enjoy, and I want to put it into rotation. There are two options in this instance.  You can either swap the new recipe with an old one, or (what I do) start a new week. When the new week is finished, throw it in with the rest. It will make the dishes further and further apart!

Now, don’t get overwhelmed! Take it one step at a time, be patient and your hard work will reward you for as long as you let it. Not to mention the fact that you will look like a genius in the kitchen!

 

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Mom, There’s Nothing to Eat!

Menu planning sounds simple, right? Write down what you want to cook, buy the stuff and… ta daaaaa! Not so much in my world.

For day one, we are going to do a little inventory. There is so much in your pantry that you could use, somehow, that we just push aside and don’t even acknowledge, simply because it may take some thinking-sometimes very creative thinking-to find a place for it in our meals. Seriously, how do we end up with cans of salmon with the skin on in the first place? But I digress…

There is an inventory at ListPlanIt or you can just make on yourself. Get everything in order, because one way to save money is to use the things you already have! It may take some serious thought, but it’s not really that hard. One of my tricks is to take said ingredient and google recipes with that in it (ex. recipe, canned salmon).

Tomorrow we are going to do two things, plan a menu for a week and talk about a monthly menu. Have your 21 meal list and your list of meals you can make with your pantry inventory. It’s going to be fun! I promise

On a separate note, my blog is going to start being featured in the Bluffton Icon! Yay!

Let the Planning Begin!

When I decided to try to cut back in the kitchen, I knew that I had to plan better. Diligently, I would sit at my desk for hours, trying to come up with something for a week. For hours! What good is it to save money if I’m wasting all that time? Organization is essential, though, and it must be done. Brainstorming for a few weeks and searching on the internet for a solution, I found a wonderful website!

I don’t know about you, but I LOVE lists. I love to have a list for everything. This is mostly due to the fact that I forget just about everything almost immediately (I blame my kids for that). When I stumbled upon ListPlanIt, I thought I had just won the lottery! They have a list there for just about everything: clothes inventories, blog planners, but most importantly, menu planners. One list in particular that has helped me tons is the “My 21 Meals.”

“My 21 Meals” is just a plan list, nothing fancy about it, with three columns, one for the entrée, one for the side and one for where to find the recipes. Coming up with 21 different entrée’s and side dishes turned out to be much more difficult than I had originally anticipated. I may be alone in this, but I have a tendency to forget what it is that I cook (see note about about kids eating my brain). This is where the genius of the “My 21 Meals” list comes into play.

Today, my challenge to you is to sit down and make your own 21 meals list, or download one from ListPlanIt. Tomorrow, we trudge into a land unknown to most American households today, complete menu planning, and your 21 meals list will make things so much easier for you. Happy listing!