Found marked down milk?

Do you ever run across marked down milk, but pass it by because you don't think you would be able to use it up before it expires? The other day Fred Meyer had gallons of Organic Valley milk marked down from $5.48 to $2.79, plus I had a $2 off 2 coupon with me. I bought 2 and got them for $1.79 each!

I've found that although defrosted milk looks a little weird (it separates and there are chunks in it), it works great when used in baking. Here's how I save it for later use.

First, identify the amounts you use most in baking. For me, it's 1 and 1 1/2 cup amounts. Since I don't have enough tupperware containers to save it all in, I use ziplock bags.

1. Label the bag with the amount and what's inside (easier to do before it's filled).
2. Measure out the milk and fill the bag.
3. Store in a tupperware container (just in case the bag leaks) and freeze. Once it's frozen, you can stack the bags in the freezer without the tupperware containers.
   

All ready to go in the freezer. Each tupperware container has two bags of milk each.

Defrost the milk on the counter or in the fridge, making sure to have it in a container to catch any defrosting mess!

Erika

Saving Money on Spices

I've always thought that spices are surprisingly expensive, especially the ones in the little glass jars. I hate paying $4 - 5 on such a small amount. Back in the day when I did the majority of my grocery shopping at Winco, I would buy them in the bulk foods section.......but who knows how old those spices are (not to mention the quality)!

Anyways, for your money saving tip of the day........Buy your spices in the bulk/natural foods section at Fred Meyers (or New Seasons, although their prices may be a little higher). The majority of the spices are organic and incredibly fragrant.

FYI: Don't let the price per pound scare you off (they were up to $25/lb., but think about how much it would take to get a whole lb.). I had a list of 7 spices that I was out of and needed to stock up on. I was able to enough of each to fill a spice container for around $5 TOTAL! Now that's a cheap way to stock your spice cabinet.

Erika

Series II: Top Ten Ways We Have Saved Money

If you missed last weeks post on the first 5 ways I've saved money over the last year, you can read them here. We have worked at finding ways to save money without sacrificing our lifestyle. Unfortunately, it took the economy change to push us there, but we hope to at least learn from our past mistakes! I hope that this will give you encouragement in your finances even if the ideas aren't new.

6. Get a beater car for commuting. Okay, so this idea won't work for everyone, but it is one of the ways we have saved thousands over this past year (you can see the picture of the one my husband drives above). I have a smaller SUV and my husband has a truck. When gas prices were crazy last year, my husband got the Geo to do all his random driving. He needs a truck to pull his boat and for hauling things occasionally, not to mention meeting with clients, but most of the time he drives the Geo. Even to this day! We have estimated that between maintenance and gas we have saved $4,000+!

7. Find another way to generate more income. I hadn't worked for 2 1/2 years. When we started getting serious about saving and paying off debt, one of the ways we decided to increase our income was for me to go back to work one day a week. In my career, working one day a week is worth it money wise, my mom watches my kids for me when I work so we don't have to pay for child care, and my husband is able to fill in when she isn't able to.

8. Do car and house repairs yourself. My husband is pretty handy at most things, but hates to do things like oil changes, brake repair and house repairs. Before this year, he would just take the cars to the shop or hire someone to do maintenance. He now does those things himself and saves us money every time he does them!

9. Take advantage of the rebate programs out there. Before I started on this money saving journey, I had no idea there were so many ways to get things free or at low cost using rebates. Sometimes the things that are free after rebate are kind of random, but I've been surprised at how many times they have come in handy for us. The ones I have used most are Rite Aid, Walgreens and e-bates.

10. Get creative and make your stockpile work for you. I had my husband build me some shelves in our storage area under the house, and that is where I keep the majority of my stockpile. Here are a few ways I get creative with it...I use it to build creative bridal and baby shower gifts. For bridal showers, I often get a nice basket and fill it with random household cleaning products. I have been amazed at how much people love such a practical gift. The same goes for baby showers. Who doesn't love to get diapers? I mentioned earlier about selling it in a garage sale. It also gives me a ready supply of items to donate or fill a food box (like at Christmas), and any time I have family or friends stop by unplanned, I have plenty of food to whip something up for dinner :)

Erika

Top Ten Ways We Have Saved Money: Series I

I thought I'd start a Friday series on the Top 10 Ways We Have Saved Money over the last year.

I will start it out with our story. I enjoy hearing other people's stories and my hope is that our story and ways we have found to save can be an encouragement to you and where you are in your journey.

My husband and I married young and ambitious. We were lucky to have been raised with good money saving habits, and did not start out with any debt (of course, not too many 19 year olds have much debt!). The three cars we owned between us were all old but paid off. Within months of getting married my husband started his own construction business, we bought our first house and upgraded to an almost brand new car. We had lots of goals and were not about to wait around to accomplish them!

While we did not incur credit card debt early on, we certainly lived up to or a little beyond our means. We adopted the American lifestyle mindset that a certain amount of debt was normal and even good. It could be a tax write off! Because we were young and naive, we were pretty reckless with our money. We didn't save much. At 23, we put thousands into buying a sub shop because my husband was getting bored with contracting and he figured it would be fun. Unfortunately, we knew nothing of that kind of business and it failed rapidly.

We used credit cards to help cash flow the business. A job would go bad, a customer wouldn't pay, a job would go over budget, and we began to build a build a balance on the credit cards. We worked hard to keep it down, but over the years it grew to around $15k. We weren't worried though. We felt it was a cost of doing business and that it would get paid off eventually.

Over the years, our lifestyle grew rapidly as well. Never being ones to ease into anything, we would always stretch ourselves to the limit. We bought into the image of the big house, fancy cars, nice vacations, etc. We paid for all our personal expenditures in cash, but never saved anything. About the time that we had our first child, things began to turn and get tight for us. I went from working full time to one day a week. My husband worked harder, started to diversify what he was doing and things were stressful, but we managed.

A couple years later, one of my husband's businesses went from providing a steady monthly income to zero. We had used that monthly income for a couple years as our main monthly source of income. At first we thought it was going to be just a temporary interruption and we continued to spend as we had before. Within months we realized that this was not temporary but permanent. Unfortunately, we had racked up about $5000 in personal credit card debt before we came to the realization.

I found out about using coupons a little over a year ago and started with that mostly as a hobby. It was weirdly entertaining to me to walk out of the store getting things for free or paying very little for a cart full of food. Plus, I was able to upgrade my normal stores from Winco to Safeway and Albertsons! About August or September 2008, I began to realize that the real estate market was not going to bounce back like we thought it would. We began to see the start of the bank failures and bail outs, and really began to see clearly how important it was for us to start working on getting a savings together and paying off debt. We started brainstorming, and that is when I decided to go back to work one day a week, we put ourselves on a budget and started making financial goals.

We have grown up a lot when it comes to our finances and have found many ways to save without sacrificing our whole lifestyle.

Here are 5 out of the Top Ten Ways We Have Saved Money over the last year:

1. Shop your insurance. I shopped our car insurance and was able to save $60 a month by switching to Geico. Yes, I really did!

2. Switch to using cash for grocery, eating out and household item type expenses. Up until November 2008, we had used our credit cards exclusively for all purchases. We had felt like cash just disappeared way too fast with nothing to show for it. I decided to try out the cash system and found that if I limited myself to the cash only, I was much more careful about how I spent it because I knew it had to last. We still make some purchases on credit cards, but it's very few and far between and mostly for things that are hard to budget for like boat expenses.

3. Put your monthly and yearly financial goals down in writing. There's something about writing them down that keeps you accountable and better on track towards meeting your goals.

4. Have a garage sale. I had my first garage sale ever the last week in September 2008. I made $760 in one and a half days! For those of you who live in the Pacific NW, you know that the beginning of September is usually the end of garage sale season and I was quite a bit past that.

I was pretty amazed and most of what I sold was items I had stockpiled through couponing.

5. Go through your house and see what you have that you are no longer using that you can sell. We had been storing a large hot tub that we had taken from one of our rental homes. Our plan had been to use it ourselves and sell the hot tub that we already had. As our mindset changed towards saving money, we realized that it would be better to sell it. We listed it on craisgslist and sold it for $800 which we put towards our car savings. Other things we have sold are light fixtures (when we changed them out for new ones), motorcycle helmets & gear, snowboards, etc. Be creative!

Next Friday I'll have the last of the Top 10 Ways We Have Saved Money.

Feel free to leave comments on ways you have found to save money. I think we can all use more ideas and encouragement in this area!

Erika