It is not what you buy as much as.....

It is not as much what you buy as it is when and where you buy it. 

I was thinking about the 29.00 challenge and the fact that buying your groceries hand to mouth a week at a time doesn’t work to get the optimum prices on your food.  It is true that at least one week of the month—*the week retailers know that they have you .  You have nothing left in the pantry and you just got paid.   That is the week that real bargains are in very short supply. Kinda like the day before Christmas when the jewelers  mark everything up.  The trick is not to be in that position.  They take advantage of your fight or flight mode.   It’s also a time when one would be tempted to buy a whole lot of snack food.  You have already been eking out meals and feel deprived.  

Change your mindset, and  change your life.   A few lifestyle changes can reduce stress, and change your perspective on life.  It has been shown that living with no food in the house reduces your life expectancy.  

Que replentish grocery shopping.  

Once you have set yourself up to buy what’s on sale and replentish your food on a need to basis, you can just pretty much skip that week and buy bare necessities.   

Most dairy has a month out pull date.   Buy a stash of dry milk powder for a back up.   It lasts forever and is a good thing to have on case of an emergency.  Keep a two week supply of eggs on a rotation basis,  this heads off the two dollar a dozen price hike that is inevitable in the winter.  

Meat can be purchased on a good sale and rotated on a four to six week cycle.   Most regular refrigerator freezers can hold a normal family’s month worth of meat.  

Shelf stable items can be purchased at  rock bottom prices.   The difference between rock bottom prices and regular prices afford you to stock some ahead.   This is not HOARDING.  Buying a closet full of pop is hoarding.  Buying a four to six week supply of basic food is being prepared for an emergency and using your food budget wisely.

Now, what you have to buy is fresh fruits and veggies.  Buy what is a good processor.  I try for a dollar limit.  Some things are a bit more, but never more than two.  Three dollar cauliflower doesn’t cut the mustard.

This is all believable and it works.   You can eat well on less than four dollars a day.  I didn’t set out to do that.  I just started using every trick I could find to lower food costs.  It became a game,  when I started this blog, it was to help people. With that in mind, I branched out and kept trying new things.

Thank you for stopping  by.  Please share and follow.   I can’t help people, if people don’t know where I am.  LOL

If we can make it with some of the highest cost of groceries in the nation, others can too.  Seattle has double the cost of vegetables this week than the mid west states.  Ohio has sweet potatoes for .39, ours are .99.  And that was just the beginning of a mirage of prices many of which were half or less than our prices.   How about .27 a pound turkey.  Now, we know that Seattle has also got higher wages, but that doesn’t help the people on fixed incomes.