Frugal Shopping & Eating

We all feel it. The price of gas has skyrocketed, food prices are ridiculous, and the quest that I have been on my whole married life is finally paying off. Since Nathan and I were first married, I have made it my own personal game to see how cheap I can get my monthly grocery bill. I will admit that the years that I was working outside of the home were not my best frugal times, but I am back at it and better than ever. The rules of my game are simple:

1. Feed my family nutritious, filling, delicious meals
2. Spend as little as possible
3. Build up a storage of food in the pantry to build self-reliance in times of financial hardship, disaster, or food shortages. (This has saved us at least three times in our years of marriage.)
4. Use coupons, sales, discounts, anything legal to save money and stretch our food dollars
5. Share my good deals with other families so that they can play my little game too!

In moving I have had to buy all new condiments and other things that one takes for granted. I cannot tell you the eye-opening "sticker shock" that I experienced when I had to buy a big bottle of Ranch dressing recently. I remember going to Sam's and being able to buy that bottle for around $3 something. This last week I had to buy it at a local grocery store, Smith's, and it was $8.29. It just goes to show that when you purchase these items separately along with your normal groceries you don't watch as closely, but I have already began my quest to make that cheaper without sacrificing the taste and quality. I will keep you posted to the dressing challenge!

Now that the girls are getting older and taking more regular naps and I HAVE A DISHWASHER!! I will have more time to share on the blog the good deals and awesome finds that I am adding to the Clark Cupboard.

Deal-of-the Day!!!

Smith's has bottled 1 Gallon jugs on sale for $1.00 but if you buy 10, you get $5 back. That is is 50 cents! Now I am not a big bottled water fan, I think all that plastic is really crappy for the environment. However, I believe in having two weeks worth of water for every person in the family in case of water contamination, disaster, etc. Don't scoff, it happens a couple times a year in a community, you always hear about it on the news, "such-n-such community has detected blah-blah in the water, residents are being asked to boil", or "the ____ city water main broke today leaving the residents with no water for at least 3 days." Don't tell me that you would be able to find a drop of water in the stores after about 5 minutes of that news break. It saves money to be prepared. We should also have at least 1-2 gallons in the trunk of each of our cars for various reasons.