by Jeannette Payne

Created on: February 23, 2011   Last Updated: March 02, 2011

Tips to Cut Household Expenses

There are millions of people looking to cut household expenses these days because of the rough economy. While it might seem difficult to cut these expenses, there are virtually endless ways of doing so - it is just a matter of finding these methods and implementing them. Here are some tips to cut these expenses at the same time as not making life too difficult.

Groceries

Cook from Scratch: Prepackaged foods might be convenient but they cost you a lot more money than cooking from scratch. A small pack of precooked lasagna can cost upwards to $8. Buying the noodles, sauce and meat on sale costs less than $5. That’s just one meal and you saved $3 plus you have leftovers.

Buy In House Brands: Many supermarkets have their own brands of food and sometimes they are half of the price as the major brands. These different brands are often made from the same ingredients and sometimes even at the same factory making the foods taste basically the same. When you buy the store brand, you can still get quality but you get to keep a lot of your money.

Buy in Bulk: A high percentage of the time, groceries bought in bulk are cheaper. You can find these bulk packages such as cereals at the supermarket for lower prices. There are also stores like Costco and Tesco that sell larger containers or cases of items for much less than buying the items individually at the supermarket.

Use Coupons: Coupons that only offer 30 cents off an item might not seem very much, but the savings add up. If you use one of these a week, you save almost $16. You can actually save hundreds of dollars a year just by using these coupons and you can find them by looking through various magazines, flyers, and websites.

Some websites you can check out include smartcanucks.ca, save.ca, brandsaver.ca (Canada); coolsavings.com, clickmycoupon.com (United States); couponcraze.com (Canada, United States and United Kingdom).

Shop at the Dollar Store: The dollar store holds brand named food items such as soups, sauces, cookies, breads, and many other items and they sell for between $1 and $2. This can save you up to 25% or more on your grocery bill if you eat these types of foods.

Clothing

Find the Sales: There are always seasonal sales going on at retail stores for the the end of the season because they want to clear stock for the newest items. You can find good quality pieces at times for only a few dollars each. This includes clothes for both men and women.

Buy In house brands:

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