CT FM 009: Mistakes We Made Going Frugal

CT FM 009:

Mistakes We Made Going Frugal!

Brought To You By: RecipeThis.com

Introduction Welcome to our ninth Podcast from CT FM. For our 9th Podcast I wanted to talk about mistakes we made going frugal.

If you’ve been following our blog this month you’ll know that for the month of May of 2016 we are all about going frugal.

We are sharing our favourite frugal recipes with you (each of which can be made for less than $5 for a family of four) and they are all family recipes that we all know and love.

We have also completed our own two grocery challenge where we have eaten normally and then the week after knocked a minimum of 20% off our grocery bill.

We did it. It was fun and we got the results we wanted. Though I doubt our teenager was amused when we made him eat cheaper chocolate and told him to forget having anything but a salad when we took him out for dinner.

But he is a teenager and he will either get over it (eventually) or hold me responsible for it for the rest of his life!

I am sure it will interesting whatever it ends up being.

But now I have done it and now I have looked back at how it went, I can see a lot of errors made on my part and I reckon that if I had not made these mistakes that I could have actually dropped my groceries bill in half.

Grocery Bill Analysis

Well I will start by analysing what was actually on our shopping bill and the areas that I have deep regret for. Well deep regret is probably a bit strong but I believe I could have done better.

For example……

Number #1 Cauliflower can be expensive – well not in general but it was not on offer the week we went shopping and because we wanted some we bought it. What we should have done is leave it until a different week. We bought 2 large cauliflowers and it came to nearly a euro more than what we paid for our carrots, leeks, broccoli and courgette combined. This sounds really bad doesn’t it? And we have certainly learnt our lesson.

Number #2 Pineapple can be expensive too – We made the exact same mistake with a pineapple too. I was so in the zone of thinking how many meals I could make out of it, I had forgotten about how expensive it is when it is not on sale. This meant that we paid more than 40% extra than we would have done if it had been reduced.

Number #3 Teenage boys with midnight munchies – I wanted all food to be made into meals. So when I discover that one of my 75 cent cans of tuna has been lost to a hungry teenager I am less than pleased. I don’t mind him eating extra meals as he does a lot of exercise, is super skinny and burns a lot of calories.

BUT I would rather use a can of tuna in some pasta for him and it would go a lot further. Though I think what I said fell on deaf ears!

Number #4 Bulk up more, buy less – I look at what we buy and feel like we could bulk up meals a lot more and then spend a lot less. For example the amount of vegetables we buy and eat on their own (or the same could be said for meat) when in fact it should be getting mixed with rice, pasta or potatoes to make a much bigger meal.

Number #5 Pay more attention to bargains – By shopping around (like I used to do when I was broke) we would buy things from different places and save a small fortune. At the time we lived in England and we used to buy our fizzy cans of pop from Sainsburys, chicken breast from Morissons, freezer food from Iceland, canned food from Aldi and then do our main weekly grocery shop at Asda. It sounds like a lot more work, but it is not as bad as it sounds.

This brings us to this Podcasts Sponsor: For Podcast 9 of CT FM we wanted to bring to your attention our frugal category that we have put together on our blog for you this month. It is full of frugal recipes, frugal cooking tips and much more.

It is also where you can read about how we slashed our grocery bill and how we saved money on food and drink while still enjoying fresh salmon!

You can access it by going to recipethis.com/frugal.

If You Get Desperate Now this bit of advice comes from someone I met when I was 16. I was friends with a lady and she was living with her boyfriend. He was a fisherman so money was often coming in one week and then not coming in for several weeks.

She would swear by buying in bulk so that if there was a couple of weeks with no money coming in, then she had food to back her up. She would insist on having 6 of every can in her cupboard and 6 of everything in her freezer too.

I took her advice very seriously and always made sure I had a full pantry no matter where I lived.

In fact I still do this now and we have a big chest freezer to put up with my addiction. There are loads of whole chickens, pork shoulders, packs of ribs, spare sliced bread, sausages, minced pork and my freezer wouldn’t be the same without leftovers from when I have cooked too much.

On top of this I always seem to still bulk up to six in the cans department. With lots of tuna, coconut milk and tinned tomatoes in our cupboard.

So to safeguard yourself bulk up whenever you can so that if you go a week without being paid, or if you are paid late, then this is your backup plan.

Coupons can save you a week’s grocery shop I am not kidding with that statement. I know a lot of people in my local area here in Portugal that does EXACTLY that. They will have the

coupons they have got added to their supermarket card and then it will add up to a week’s grocery once a month and they will spend it then.

Actually, I better backtrack a little while I explain more. Basically we get a lot of deals in our supermarket every time we go shopping. It might mean 20% back on our card if we buy a certain product or 10% or even 25%. These products are often regular everyday products that we love.

For example during our frugal experiment we had these discounts on carrots, courgettes and leeks.

On top of this once a month they offer a 10% back on your card for everything you buy on a set week. So we will bulk up on food during this week, for food we would buy later in the month and this adds up to quite a bit.

As well as this they often have a collect coupon deal. For example we got a 15% voucher off our shopping just for adding stickers that we collected every time we went shopping over a month.

Obviously each country is different and all countries have deals, so use every voucher you can, buy things when they are on offer, treat the more expensive fruit and vegetables as luxury items that you only buy with coupons and use this type of shopping to save money.

Play your coupons right and you will have enough of them to make you a free weekly shop.

Round Up! Thanks for joining us in our Podcast and we look forward to sharing more of our cooking tips with you in the future.

Links & Resources Mentioned In This Podcast  Our Frugal Category

 Week 1 Of Going Frugal  Week 2 Of Going Frugal How To Get Involved In Our Podcasts

Our Podcasts are easily accessible no matter how you prefer to access them. You can download them as a PDF from our blog by going to recipe this dot com and visiting the Podcasts category. This is also very good for getting the links to recipes and other material that is mentioned in the Podcast.

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Thanks again for listening and best of luck with your cooking.

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