203 Money Saving Ways to Put Cash Back in your Pocket By Looking At Food and Household Habits

203 Money Saving Ways to Put Cash Back in your Pocket By Looking At Food and Household Habits

Read About the Other 203 Budget Tips Here:

• Budgeting (15)
• Car, Driving and Travel (27)
• Food (30) & Household (48)
• Heat/Air Conditioning (8) & Lights/Electricity (29)
• Inside (16) & Outside (19)
• Money (6) & Work (5)

Save Money With Food and Household Items:

Save Money On Food:  30 Tips

1. Experiment with growing herbs out of your own kitchen window.
2. Check on local community gardens and grow your own fruits and vegetables.
3. Buy less processed food and more ‘certified organic,’ products instead – The health benefits are obvious and healthier means less sick time.
4. Look for organic fairs and farmers markets to buy at – lower prices and better options.
5. Re-use and recycle plastic bags – and avoid buying disposable products to reduce plastic waste.
6. Buy groceries in bulk, or share the bigger size with a friend or neighbor and split the cost.
7. Cut up your own fruit and save!
8. Learn the popular size of a product because it may be your best buy (often 18oz jars of peanut butter are the best deal).
9. Plan meals for the weeks of the month, one month ahead of time – before going to the grocery store.
10. Make a shopping list you stick to.  If you run out of something before your next scheduled grocery store trip – live without it and substitute.
11. Buy store brand foods instead of national name brands.  If you ever worked in a cannery, you know that the beans with your grocery store label are the same beans that the name brands have – except for THE LABEL!  that is because they only switch label, not food, when they run the food items trough a cannery.
12. Use coupons.  We love COUPONS!  Save Money. Print Free Coupons Anytime.
13. Shop on double or triple coupon days.
14. Shop for groceries on a full stomach.  Shopping hungry is like going to a watering hole buffet after you finished a marathon.
15. Learn to cook – Not all food comes in frozen dinner trays or prepared ahead of time.
16. Drink water instead of bottled beverages like Pepsi.
17. Bring a grocery bag with you and don’t pay for one at the store.
18. Use refillable water bottles
19. Buy milk with a lower cream content – For instance, buy 2% instead of homogenized, or 1% instead of 2% milk.
20. Make leftovers and freeze what you can’t eat or finish.
21. Pull out everything in your refrigerator and rearrange it according to “oldest in front,” so you waste less and use more.  Rotate food too – so that you are most likely to use it.
22. Use electric kettles to heat water with instead heating a pot of water on the stove – 50% savings.
23. When cooking cookies, or roasting vegetables turn off the oven a few minutes before the recipe tells you to.  your oven stays hot long enough to finish cooking.  You can allow up to 15 minutes for casseroles and roasts.
24. Skip preheating when you cook food in your oven longer than 45 minutes.  This does not apply to cookies and breads that require a hot oven to cook thoroughly in.
25. Get a toaster oven to reduce oven energy use by a fraction of the amount.
26. Use a pressure cooker to save up to 70% of a stovetop.
27. Warm food cools off a freezer, so let food sit for half an hour before freezing to bring it closer to room temperature.
28. Clean your produce by scrubbing it in a large bowl of water instead of running it under the faucet with continually running water.
29. Learn about food recalls fast at http://www.foodsafety.gov/recalls so you aren’t wasting your time and money (or health) on products being recalled.
30. Take a picture of your ass butt rear-end and tape it to your refrigerator door.

Save Money In Your Household:  48 Tips

1. Match your long distance company with your calling habits. If most of your calling is done in the evenings, get a plan that gives you unlimited evening and weekend calling.
2. Turn off the water while you brush your teeth, or shave.
3. Check on prescription drugs to make sure using your health plan saves you money.
4. Only have one extra set of sheets for each bed size in the house. This helps in terms of getting your clutter organized also.
5. Sell your used clothes at a kids consignment shop and buy there too.  Sell all your clothes at a consignment store instead of giving them away.
6. If you have a young son moving out of children’s clothing and into young men’s clothes, don’t buy his clothes ahead of time because boys can essentially skip sizes (more than just one, too!).  Working in a men’s department store proved this to me many times over.  Wait until they actually start school before you buy.  One set of parents was so furious by December that their son had outgrown the $500 they spent on clothing in August that they blamed me for his growth spurt.  If they had not been so serious and angry I may have actually laughed out loud for being blamed for something I had no control over.
7. Borrow books from the library (and check out all the other neat stuff you’ll find there too).
8. Find out about and go to the free community concerts.
9. Volunteer to usher at your local performing arts center so you see the shows for free.
10. Make frugal choices you can live with so you don’t feel like you are suffering for your healthy choices to save money.  Savings = Your Mental Health!
11. See matinees instead of weekend night movies, or check out the $1.50 theaters and movie rentals.
12. Investigate what kind of savings you can get from Netflix and movie rentals versus cable TV.
13. Basic cable – cut back on TV – The BOOB Tube – and invest in family board games instead.
14. Buy clothes when they wear out – Not when they go out of style.
15. Agree that Christmas will not be a-nother ridiculous credit card buying frenzy.  Set limits and agree that less is more!
16. keep an eye on the local classifieds for sale and for free sections
17. Buy quality for lasting power!
18. Make homemade gifts – Jelly, jam, jars of cookie recipes, paint boxes, make scrapbooks . . .
19. Wear jeans and sweaters a couple of times before you throw them in the wash.
20. Can’t stand being frugal a day longer – Grab a handful of fashion magazines, and pretend to order everything you want from them.  Tell yourself your goodies, “Will be here in one month.”  Now forget about it – Wasn’t that Fun!  you can, “go shopping,” once a week this way if you want to! That’s how I paid off our family debt to zero (YES, ZERO!) and bought a brand new ski boat!  The important thing is that you are only PRETENDING to buy things – You don’t actually buy a single thing.  NOT ONE SINGLE THING!  NOTHING – YOU BUY NOTHING!  But you are only PRETENDING to buy everything you want.
21. Use term insurance instead of universal life or Whole Life Insurance
22. Challenge your property taxes – go online to see what the people around you are paying first.
23. Skip service contracts – Extended warranties are often a waste because products normally break down the first year and are covered by a manufacturer’s warranty anyway.
24. Re-think vacations and consider “staycations” and “homestay” programs instead.  Be a tourist in your own city or nearby town.  Tell people you will ,”Be Gone out of town,” during that time.
25. Plan your own vacation tour instead of hiring an escorted tour.  For example, an 8-day tour to the Grand Canyon – Day 1 – visit parks, Day 2 – visit the local cities, Day 3 – Explore the grand canyon, Day 4 – Explore the local Culture in museums and architecture, and lakes, Day 5 – Go on a jeep tour to the largest lake and rent a canoe, Day 6 – See the local talent and amphitheatre, Day 7 – Tour the local zoo and park, Day 8 – Sightsee what you missed.  Planning is everything!
26. Set up automatic payments with your online banking so you don’t forget to make payments and you don’t incur late penalties or fees.
27. Apply for rebates
28. Use customer Rewards
29. Get your music streamed – For Example use spotify instead of Pandora.
30. Get rid of a landline and use VOIP or Skype instead.
31. Cancel subscriptions and get eBooks instea
32. Ask your bank to waive fees – some will do it once a year.
33. Rent or borrow instead of buying new, but if you borrow, take the time to return what you borrowed in better condition than you borrowed it in and if you break it – Consider it your responsibility to replace, or repair it BEFORE you return it – Give back things you borrow – Don’t be an Ass.
34. Wrap gifts green – Use hand towels to wrap with, or baskets, recycled paper or luggage.  Bonus – two gifts in one and they won’t clutter the landfills or cost extra, because you were getting a gift anyway.  Newspaper and magazine pages makes great looking wrap if it’s done creatively!
35. Send ecards instead of paper greeting cards.
36. Set up a home gym and cancel your gym membership – $360.00 minimum yearly savings.
37. Give everyone a bathroom towel hook and wash towels only one time a week.
38. Fake your manicure and get friends together once a month for pedicures and manicures – A Pamper Party with friends.
39. Use simple bleach or borax with scented oil mixed in for household cleaners.
40. Share a pet – and costs associated with pet ownership – with a neighbor, friend, or relative.  This is especially great for people on a fixed income or in nursing homes.
41. Save leftover bath soap bits and re-mold them into another bar (or ball) of soap – These make gifts too!  Just steam a pot of boiling water and  put the soap bits into the boiling water.  Once they are soft you can squeeze them together and mold them into another bar.
42. Need a makeover – Head to the cosmetic counter and get the free makeup demonstration.
43. Instead of buying your kids treats and toys every time you are out with them – DO something with them instead – An activity.
44. To clean stains from your glass stovetop, mix baking soda and liquid dish soap into a paste to gently wipe off  dirt.  This works on oven stains that haven’t had a chance to get too baked into your oven, too.
45. Rent your next evening gown instead of buying it.
46. Give personal gift certificates as gifts – rake the lawn for a week, vacuum the house for a week, . . .
47. Fun up practical gifts like socks and underwear with low cost gifts like puzzles, board games, wind-up toys, . . .
48. Do ALL your holiday shopping in ONE day.  You’ll use less gas, participate in less impulse shopping, and be less likely to forget what you bought earlier.  For online shoppers, shop in your pajamas for your ONE day of shopping.  Check out deals and sales without the hassle of fighting crowds.