A Little Household Frugal Tip

Posted By Paul

A nice little household frugal tip that I read on the Dollar Stretcher:
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Whenever you open a can of fruit, instead of pouring the liquid/juice down the drain, save it in a salad dressing type container. Then add some balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, and spices to your liking to make a delicious salad dressing.

I also use it for braising meat, such as pork or chicken, and it makes the meat so much more flavorful. The store bought fruit flavored salad dressing can run about $4. You can make your own for a fraction of that. Enjoy your own gourmet salad dressing!
Krys in WA
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I thought this was a cool idea since our little one has taken a liking to canned fruit so we've been buying quite a bit recently. Seems like a good idea to use the juice for something instead of just pouring it down the drain.

Bulk Up On Savings!

Posted By Paul

If you've read my post:

Financial Choices: Good Vs. Better

Then you know that I don't make saving pennies here and there a big priority.

However, I recently discovered a grocery store that sells items in bulk, and I couldn't help noticing how much money we were able to save.

I noticed that many of the items that I keep at work for snacking can be purchased in bulk at the grocery store. For example, I like to keep a stash of breakfast bars in my desk for when I get hungry at work and I discovered they that actually sold them individually wrapped in the bulk food section of my local grocery store. The price of the bulk brand was about half of the price you would get if you bought the normal box of 6 a few aisles up.

Spaghetti, granola, rice, trail mix, and all kinds of things can be purchased in bulk for pretty decent savings. We're actually experimenting now with buying cereal in bulk since we found a bulk cereal that we like.

I know buying foods in bulk to save money isn't exactly a secret, but those half price breakfast bars really drove the point home to me.

How much are you spending on compost?

Posted by Matt

Back when I was a bachelor, I very rarely purchased vegetables. I tried for awhile, but found that I was throwing far too much of it out. I guess I was not alone: My wife recently found an article online that indicates that the average American household annually throws away about $300 worth of produce that spoiled before it was eaten.

To reduce this waste, the article has several tips for getting the most life out of your fruits and vegetables; for example, not storing bananas in the refrigerator. I used to refrigerate bananas because I found that, even though the banana peel turned brown faster in the fridge, the insides lasted much longer. They never tasted as good, though, and maybe that supports the article's contention that the cold interferes with ripening. These days, my wife keeps the bananas on the counter and we just try to remember to eat them quickly. There's no getting around the fact that you have to eat produce fairly soon after purchasing it, but you can extend your window of opportunity by buying according to the suggestions (and excellent photo examples) in the article.
I think it would be humorous if someone followed all the tips, threw out hardly any produce, and then went out and spent the money they saved on compost for their yard.

Where in the world does your grocery spending rate?

Posted by Matt

Check out Time magazine's amazing photo essay about what the world eats. I'm sure my mother would have loved to show me these photos when I was a bratty kid refusing to eat my rice.


The weekly spending ranges from $1.23 to over $500. It was interesting to go through this and see what kinds of things might be considered staples in various countries (the US families had comparatively few vegetables) and what might be driving up the bill (in Germany, maybe the beverages and/or meat.)