You can save a great deal of money while eating healthy, delicious food. This can be achieved through a variety of strategies. Some of the most obvious money saving activities are avoiding waste, preparing meals at home, and buying foods when they are in season and on sale. Other helpful ideas are planning, freezer meals, making water your beverage of choice, and vegetable gardening. Utilizing all of these methods will provide the greatest savings, but even using a few strategies can eliminate some big budget busters.
Avoid Waste
According to the USDA, as reported by CNN, about one quarter of the food purchased in the U.S. is thrown in the garbage each year. Some researchers believe the amount wasted is much higher. A good way to stop wasting food is to start keeping track of how much food your family throws away each week. Just by being aware of the situations that result in wasted food, you may learn what causes you to waste food and make the necessary changes to reduce the waste. Perhaps you are in the habit of overbuying perishable items that go bad before they can be eaten. Leftovers have a way of migrating to the back of the refrigerator where they are forgotten. Freezing leftovers and reheating for a leftover buffet dinner is a good way to avoid throwing food away.
Prepare Meals at Home
The dollar menu at your favorite fast food restaurant may seem like a good deal, but by now I think we all know that cheeseburgers and fries really aren't good for us. Many people choose fast food more out habit than because they actually like the food. Habits can be hard to break and food habits especially so. It may seem like a time saver to pick up lunch or dinner at the drive through, but you may be saving less time than you think. Preparing simple meals doesn't actually take that much time, especially when family members work together. And the time spent together in the kitchen is just so much more satisfying than time spent in the car waiting in line at the drive through.
Sales and Eating in Season
Eat produce that is in season. The quality will be better, and the prices will be lower. Some produce, like carrots and apples, last a long time in the refrigerator, so stock up when they are on sale. Other items, like broccoli, don't keep as well. So only buy what you intend to consume within one week, or stock up by blanching for a minute in boiling water and then freezing.
Meats should be purchased in bulk when on sale. They can be divided into meal-size portions and frozen. Regularly used non-perishables, like condiments, canned goods, flour and sugar should also be purchased when on sale.
Planning
Planning ahead can save a great deal of money. Planning meals to utilize the items you've purchased on sale can be the difference between having a meal ready to eat at home and having to get take-out. Planning at least a week's worth of meals allows you to make sure the necessary items are defrosted and that you have all the ingredients on hand. A few minutes of preparation in the evening, a plan for who will be performing which tasks, and having everything you need available will make meal preparation so much easier.
Freezer Meals
Once a Month Cooking is a popular method of meal preparation that involves preparing large batches of seven to 10 meals that are then packaged into meal sized portions and frozen for use throughout the month. The cooking session takes an entire day, but then there are main dishes in the freezer ready to heat and eat for the entire month. A variation of this method is to do a half day cooking session every two weeks. Another way to do freezer meals is simply to make double or triple batches when preparing dinner. The extra meals go into the freezer for those nights when you have too little time or energy to cook.
Drink Water
Eliminating soft drinks can save a bundle of cash, and drinking water is healthier anyway. A water filter can make tap water taste as good as bottled water, and can be purchased for less than the cost of bottled water and soft drinks. Carrying washable water bottles filled at home will eliminate the need to stop for a soda when away from home. Delicious iced tea and iced coffee can be brewed at home for pennies a glass. Making your morning coffee at home instead of stopping for coffee on the way to work is a painless way to save a significant amount of money.
Vegetable gardening
Growing some of your own vegetables at home can be more cost effective than purchasing vegetables at the grocery store or farmer's market. This will depend on how much you need to spend to start the garden. With a few packets of seeds, a sunny patch of fairly good soil, and a few basic garden tools, you can grow an amazing amount of vegetables over the course of the season. If your natural soil needs amendments, as many do, this can get expensive. A frugal way to handle this is to work grass clippings and dried leaves into the soil in the fall for a garden the following year. Garden tools can frequently be purchased for little cash at yard sales.
Using all of these strategies to save money can result in tremendous annual savings, but can be overwhelming to jump into all at once. Start by implementing one or two strategies, adding more as you are able. In very little time, you will be saving money while eating healthy foods.