CHANGE DIET: SAVE MONEY AND MAYBE LOOSE WEIGHT

There are several ways that minor changes in diet can help you cut your calories and also increase your savings. However, no one should make any drastic changes to their diet without consulting their doctor. What is suggested in this blog are just a few ways you can save money on your grocery bill while at the same time cutting back on some general items which might help fight the “battle of the bulge”. These ideas are ones that I and people I know have tried in order to increase savings and decrease spending.

Cutting back on portions and substituting food items are the two main ways of saving money. Starting with breakfast it is easy to see where grocery bills could be brought down. Perhaps instead of eating two eggs, two slices of toast and, two slices of bacon you might try having just one egg, one slice of toast and one slice of bacon. The same goes for your consumption of coffee or other beverage. Perhaps eating dry toast once in a while or poached instead of fried eggs might be a way of cutting back on fat consumption which in turn cuts back on what you spend at the grocery store. Dry toast does not have to plain toast since you can try a bit of cinnamon on it for flavor. If you’re a cereal eater try eating a bowl of oat meal once in a while in the place of a perhaps very sugary and costly cereal.

For a snack break you might try eating some crackers with jelly or jam on them. I have found this to be a good way of curbing the mid-morning desire for a pastry. The crackers I liked to use when I worked out were just plain saltines and the jam was homemade and the fruit came from my garden or my fruit trees. The saltines and jam snacks cost just a fraction of a deep fried jelly or creamed filled doughnut and I would say the calories, at least the ones from fat were much less. Crackers with cheese or crackers with peanut butter might be another way to go if you don’t like jelly.

Taking your lunch to work really will save you at least a small fortune over time. I liked peanut butter and/or jelly but certainly tuna, chicken, ham and other meats and vegetables always made for a nice meal at work. You can also eat much leaner meats and in proper portions by making your own sandwich and taking it to work. Usually, restaurant and deli sandwiches have huge buns stacked with some very fatty meats. You might also try bringing in some fresh veggies or fruit to spice up your lunch. Soup or homemade chili from home might be just the type of lunch that keeps your calories low, your food cost low and, maybe you might just be getting food with a bit more nutrition in it.

I remember for years that my mom would carve up the turkey, chicken or, roast beef from our traditional Sunday dinner and make up sandwiches for my dads lunch. She would freeze the sandwiches so they would keep for at least the next week. My dad would usually get some vegetable or fruit in his lunch which would come out of the garden or off the fruit trees.

Supper is the last meal of the day and can be one where you find a great deal of savings simply by cutting back the portions you eat. My sister and brother-in-law lost a tremendous amount of weight simply by eating foods in portions which are recommended. Every recipe and every frozen food will have suggested serving sizes. Unfortunately, for most of us we ignore the suggested serving sizes and simply eat until our stomachs can hold no more. For myself I know that overeating at supper time was a way of finding comfort from a very stressful day at work. Most of us should go for a walk to get rid of stress rather than overeating.

Well, my sister battled the temptation of overeating at supper time by fixing up dinners in plastic containers which contained foods in their proper proportions. By having foods measured out in their proper proportions it is harder to overeat the main course and then skip out on the very nutritional courses of fruits and vegetables. The main course is usually a meat and with the fantastic prices of meat today it can save a lot of money by not filling up on it and skipping the rest of your meal.

Finally, you have night time snacks to deal with. You can try serving your favorite snack in small bowls, bags or, sacks. Like with supper, serving corn chips, potato chips and other snacks in proportions that are closer to serving and nutritional size might be a way to curb consumption. Curbing consumption curbs costs, calories and all the other nasty things like fats and salts. Also, try substituting popcorn for fatty snacks. Everyone wants butter and salt on their popcorn but, at least if you pop the popcorn the old fashioned way you can curb the intakes of the bad stuff. I’d suggest substituting vegetables from the garden for snacks when you can but, most people want high carbohydrate snacks at night so, popcorn or perhaps cheese and crackers might be cheaper and healthier than any kind of deep fried snack.

Remember, the above a re just suggestions and you should consult your doctor before you make any drastic changes to your diet however, eating healthier while eating foods that are more wallet friendly will save you a fortune over time.

SAVE A FORTUNE WITH HOMEMADE FROZEN DINNERS

Make up your own frozen dinners and save a fortune. The price of prepackaged individual meals has been increasing steadily over the years in response to the ever increasing demand for quick dinners for working, on the go people. However, eating out every meal can be both time consuming and very expensive for the consumer so, finding ways to save money and get quick food is a priority for most people.

One way to getting a nutritious meal of foods that you like is to make up your own frozen dinners and entrées and freeze them for future meals. You can find reusable, microwavable dishes in most discount and dollar stores. You can also reuse microwavable dishes from previous TV or entrée meals that you have bought in the past. If your dishes do not have a top then you should cover them with plastic freezer wrap. Remember that when cooking in a microwave you must always make a hole in the wrap to allow air to escape. Expanding gasses inside any dish will build up and cause an explosion in your microwave and could even damage your machine as well as destroying your meal.

One great advantage with making up your own meals versus purchasing already made-up meals is that you can include in them only the types of foods you like to eat in the proportions you want. If you want to keep calories and/or fats low than making up your own frozen meals can help you maintain your diet. You will need a scale and calorie counting book if you really want to know exactly what you are consuming in terms of calories. A book on nutrition can help you know if you are packaging your desired levels of nutrients in your meals.

I like to use leftovers from large meals to make up TV dinners. Sometimes if you had a big turkey dinner for instance, you might not want to eat turkey and fixings for the next several days. Again, TV dinners help to save all that food, (freezing keeps food from spoiling), without making you sick of eating the same thing night after night.

Once you have started making up your own frozen dinners and entrees you will wonder why you never did it in the past. If you have a busy schedule you might want to designate a day and time to make up TV dinners for the entire week. Sunday night after having a large dinner was always a favorite time for TV dinner making in my house. I do have one warning about dinner making and that is that not all foods cook at the same time at the same temperature. This is true of store purchased dinners as well. However, over time you will get the knack of cooking the dinners. As long as you use only precooked foods in your dinners then, mainly you will be just defrosting and heating the meals.

PICK A COIN AND SAVE A SMALL FORTUNE

You can save a small fortune by starting really small. Saving money can begin coin by coin. So just pick a particular coin and start saving that coin out of your change on a daily basis. If you’re tight with your finances maybe pennies or nickels could be your savings vehicles. If you have a little more money to spare then dimes and quarters will help you build up your own personal stash of treasure at a much faster rate.

A trip to any store shows just how little a hand full of coins in your pocket will buy. If you can buy a small candy bar with the change you carry around then you should consider yourself lucky. However, just saving on average ten quarters each week out of your change will build up to a whopping $130.00 in just one year. Over a ten year period this can add up a tidy sum of $1,300 which could be a nice little bit of money to help out a struggling college student or to make a mortgage payment should you be caught short some month. Setting a goal for what you want to spend your savings on will help to keep you saving coins religiously out of your change and act as a deterrent should you decide you wanted to run down to the nearest ice cream stand and buy a large ice cream cone double dipped in chocolate.

Now saving $1,300 might seem like just a small stash to save but remember you saved this money out of coins that by themselves would not buy anything in most stores. So, saving that change is a painless way to build up some savings. Saving ten quarters out of your change each week amounts to only $2.50 out of (literally) your pocket. And, since you are saving just a single type of coin out of your change you will still have plenty of other loose coins to give to a clerk so you don’t have to break a bill. Having no change in my pockets would be psychologically devastating for me since I would cringe having to break dollar bills all the time because I saved all my change and brought none with me to the store.

There are a few things you should consider as far as managing your little treasure. First of all you should put them in a clear container. Physically watching your treasure grow over time will inspire you to hunt down every single coin in your home just to get your pile of coins to grow another half an inch. Taking pride in watching your treasure grow will make it less likely that you will raid your savings for a pizza or to visit the local Casino. Of course having another type of coin that you save for junkets to the local pizza parlor or casino is alright and actually a good idea. Having a separate savings for impulse spending is like an insurance policy against thieving from your main treasure.

Remember, the most important thing in saving money is to actually save it. Simply putting money in a jar when you get home from a store one day and then raiding that jar for money to go shopping with the next day is not really saving money. Instead, you are really just storing the money overnight. In order to save your stash of coins you must adopt the mindset of a leprechaun guarding his gold and guard your coins against anyone who covets your treasure. Of course the worst coveter of your coins will be yourself. Marking on your coin container what exactly you hope to save the money for might help keep you from filching from your treasure. If you have a clear container with a screw on top then gluing or taping the top onto the container and just leaving a slit open to deposit coins will at least make you think a little bit before raiding your savings.