by Rosemarie Quintal

Created on: November 04, 2009   Last Updated: December 04, 2009

Everyone needs a budget for Thanksgiving which begins with forgiving yourself for shopping in the past, even when you shopped with a grocery list, but decided you could not pass up bargains or in-store specials. The frenzy of shopping trips int he past caused you to buy foods that did not blend well like a carton of eggnog for example and left your dinners with a heavy feeling after a great meal. Lessons learned.

Trusting guidelines for sizes of turkey, how many pounds will feed how many people, is the basic Thanksgiving purchase for most people. It is a Thanksgiving purchase that grocers may really discount or offer a bargain that really is not cost effect and causes you to lose money. where I live you can trade two s5 percent rewards cards for one 12-16 pound turkey. The typical weekly spending of $80.00, maybe $100.00 to include a Thanksgiving dinner, would decrease the total cost of your entire purchase of a 5 percent reward card by $4-5 dollars. A free turkey costing $3.97 cents for two reward cards causes you a loss of up to $6.00 or more in the long run.

Knowing how many people you will feed plus leaving yourself some leftovers to help you enjoy the holiday weekend, takes some planning and figuring for the best budget considerations. If you have a budget that does not look like past years and are used to more expensive holiday foods, consider cooking less, some as appetizers to save you cost but not skimp on the meal you love and look forward to every year. Newspaper ads really enable best food budgeting. If you do not have newspaper ads but have Internet access even at a Public Library taking the time to plan your shopping needs with the ads will save you major dollars. The next decision you make for wise food shopping and budget ability will be how do you shop at three or more different grocery stores. If your food ads last one week, buy those items you can freeze and are likely to run out of supply at your grocer's first. Before Thanksgiving you will be eating for the week, food will diminish in your refrigerator so you can go to other stores that items will probably not run out at a few days after the major holiday shopping.

*Shop wisely and plan your dinner around seasonal food harvests. For Thanksgiving those foods include pumpkin, squashes, yams and sweet potatoes, white potatoes, olives, cranberries, apples and corn. There are other traditional Thanksgiving foods that are not seasonal such as mushrooms you add to bread stuffing or lettuces

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