Thursday, March 13, 2008

Watch your staples! (part 2)

Since my previous post I have been watching out for purchases I regularly make without a second thought. It’s needed stuff, that isn’t in question. Just whether or not there are cheaper alternatives.

I found a few items I feel are worth mentioning. My favorite find was vitamins for the kids. I have been buying the gummy bear kind from Costco. They are $10 for 220 vitamins, which is only 73 servings, because my daughter gets two and my son gets one. Since I was paying attention I saw some chewable vitamins that are $10 for 300. The problem is my two year old can't have them since he is only supposed to get half a vitamin. Cutting them in half proved unsuccessful. So I got my daughter the cheaper vitamins and my son the gummy bear kind. It works out to be a savings of $21.24 a year.

I also found a recipe for marinara sauce that costs a dollar less to make than the jarred marinara sauce I’ve been buying. I buy that about twice a month, which is a savings of $24 dollars a year. Plus it tastes better!

I looked at my cream cheese options and found that buying it by the bar is cheaper than buying it in the tub. While we like the tub better it’s not worth the savings of $24 a year. We took the cream cheese out of the cardboard pack and put it into a small Tupperware container. It’s satisfying our need to have it in the tub.

And, of course, the bread. I found some bread that is just as good quality wise for 80 cents less per loaf. No one even noticed the switch. This is a savings of $48 a year, assuming we eat 5 loaves a month.

So one week of paying attention to my staples has saved me $117.24 a year. Pretty cool!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that's OK... but keep in mind quality of life... don't stress yourself to save a buck. It's not worth it.

But these items seemed like they weren't too big of a change for you to make... how will you keep track of your savings though? Will you put what you would've spent extra in a jar after each trip to the store for one of these purchases?

"Future Millionaire" said...

What's your marinara recipe. I'm a bit of a foodie myself and love making all different kind of sauces from scratch so I'd love to have the recipe, especially since its a frugal one.

Gypsy at Heart said...

Great tips and sound advice. I do the cream cheese in a small tupperware myself.

Anonymous said...

I like the essence but striving that hard to save $20 a year?!? Your energy is well spent on getting a better paying job than thinking a million times to spend a $1