Tag: Grocery shopping

Do Some Meal Prep & Keep More of Your Money!

Remember how I’ve talked about the money-saving magic of your kitchen?

Well, I’ve upped my game. You see, I really hate grocery-shopping. It’s a recessive gene. I know this because both my mother and my brother love grocery shopping, and even my father didn’t mind doing it. My mother loves it so much that one time she complained that I went through the store too fast. “It was like you were on roller-skates! I didn’t get a chance to look around!”

Look around?!?!! It’s a grocery store! You’re here every week – sometimes twice. Exactly what is there to see that you didn’t see 48 hours ago?

Anyhow, I’ve had to adjust my perspective over the past year…

Step 1 – Saving Money While Grocery Shopping

We all know that inflation has impacted the prices we pay for food. As a result, I’ve cut back on dining out. Instead of it being a casual, spontaneous thing, I’m far more meticulous about planning my restaurant visits. Dining out is now a treat, rather than a weekly staple. That said, I still get hungry with alarming regularity. Going to the grocery store is no longer optional. Meal prep is now mandatory in my home. My belly demands satisfaction!

Currently, my credit card of choice is issued by PC Financial. This card allows me to accrue points that can be used to pay for groceries and it doesn’t have an annual fee. I pay the balance in full every month so I never pay interest. If you’re the sort who carries a balance, then stop using your credit cards and pay cash for everything until you’re out of credit card debt.

Accruing points to pay for groceries is one way to lower my grocery bill each month. At a minimum, I earn 10 points for every $1 that I spend on the card. Every time I accumulate 10,000 points, I get $10 in free groceries. By running nearly all of my expenses through my card, I earn a substantial number of points every month. There’s something especially sweet about leaving the store with several bags of groceries and only paying $5.76 for them!

Getting the groceries is only half the battle. The next step is figuring out how to create tasty things for myself.

Step 2 – Cooking at Home Way More Often

Finding recipes I love isn’t that hard. I’m a fan of TikTok and YouTube. My favourite creators are the ones who cook and bake. I’ve discovered some really fantastic things to eat just by watching videos then finding the recipes online. Now that I’m back in the office several days a week, I’m doing a lot more meal prep on Sundays. A couple of hours in the kitchen results in a several meals at the ready during the week – lunches, dinners, snacks, even dessert! One small change to my weekend routine allows me to take my lunch to work instead of spending $20 or more each time I go into the office.

I’ve even taken to making my own muffins for snack breaks. The coffee shop in our building makes delicious food, but their menu isn’t set. Sadly, there’s no way to know in advance if the carrot loaf with cream cheese that I love ever so much will be available from one day to the next. So I’ve started making my snacks. Right now, I’m quite happy with the morning glory muffins from Baker by Nature. They’re so damn delicious! They’re easy to make and I only need one bowl to make the batter. (By the way, Damn Delicious is the name of another fantastic recipe blog that you may want to check out!)

I love chicken and am always looking for new ways to prepare it. A few weeks ago, I discovered how easy it is to make cajun chicken pasta. Like all of my favorite recipes, this one is simple & straightforward. It takes maybe 10 minutes to prepare the chicken before it’s left to marinate in the spices. After a little bit of time in the oven, I pair it with whatever I want if pasta’s not calling to me that day. And so long as I don’t adjust the recipe, there’s always leftovers so I need not cook every single day. Meal prep for the win!!!

Is is my turn to host book club? Then let’s head to the World Wide Web for some appetizer ideas? Surely there’s one or two recipes out there to make finger food that is suitable to please my guests. How about some buffalo chicken pinwheels from Cooking for Keeps?

Same principle applies to sporting events. As a guest, I don’t like to show up with my hands swinging. A few minutes in the kitchen means I always have something to bring. Grey Cup parties & Superbowl Sunday are perfect opportunities to share my favourite appetizer cheeseball from Natasha’s Kitchen.

Even when it’s my turn to bring dessert, I find that there’s no reason to hit up a bakery. I can make something delicious in the comfort of my own home. Whether it’s a marble cake, a bumbleberry pie, or a cookies, I’m ready to spend some time in the kitchen with my handy-dandy KitchenAid stand mixer. In the past year, I’ve overcome my fear of making mini cheesecakes. This recipe for mini pecan pie cheesecakes, also from Baker by Nature is one of the best things I have ever made! If you like pecan pie and you also like cheesecake, then this dessert will make you very happy.

Everyone needs to eat. And we all enjoy eating delicious foods. Don’t let inflation stop you from doing so! Meal prep is an effective tool to minimize inflation’s impact on your wallet. Sure – you might have to spend a little more time at the grocery store and in the kitchen. Big deal! Trust me – you will not regret improving your culinary skills and expanding your repertoire of recipes. Doing so means eating very well while still keeping more of your money in your pocket. And who can complain about that?

Inflation is the Non-Stop Money-Eater

Today, I read a Twitter thread about inflation and its impact on money. So many people feel that their paycheques are not going as far as they did before. Their net income is going to shelter, groceries, and utilities. Yet, they feel that it’s harder and harder to survive from one paycheque to the next. Costs are going up while their pay remains the same. They are caught in the grip of inflation, which I like to call the Non-Stop Money-Eater.

I’ve noticed it too. The bulk package of chicken breast at my local grocery store was $27 this time last year. When I went to buy the same package 6 weeks ago, I paid $42. That’s a price jump of $15 in 12 months, or an increase of 55%. That’s inflation at work. My $27 won’t buy me as much chicken today as it did last year. And I’m a Single Person. Every time I leave the grocery store, I wonder how people with families afford their grocery bills. (As a matter of fact, I asked a friend of mine how much their 6-person family spends on groceries in a month. The answer was $2,000. Even accounting for cleaning supplies and personal care products, that’s a huge grocery bill!)

Inflation is a serious problem, for everyone. The lower your income, the more severe its impacts on your household finances. If you’re fortunate enough to have extra money in your budget, then you can better absorb the increased prices. However, your paycheque or investment returns have to continuously outpace inflation. If they don’t, you will eventually reach a point where your income is not enough to cover the higher costs resulting from inflation’s impact on everything.

Inflation Erodes Purchasing Power

Simply put – the Non-Stop Money-Eater will decimate your finances, if given enough time. You can only tighten your belt so much. Even if you got a second or third job, there are only so many hours in a day. You were not put on this Earth to simply work and pay bills. There should be more to life than scrimping from one payday to the next.

At the time of this post, inflation in Canada was at 4.2%. This is the macro number used by the government. Your personal inflation rate might be higher, or lower, depending on your personal expenses. Whether a large number or a small one, the result is the same. Your income is not buying you as much today as it did yesterday. It will take more money to buy the same amount. That means you have less money for everything else. So unless you want to live off your credit cards, or lines of credit, and pay interest to do so, you will have to eliminate something from your budget. Fewer streaming services? A cheaper place to live? Giving up your car?

Again, your life should be more than the daily grind of working, getting paid, paying bills, then working some more. You should be able to breathe without financial anxieties. We can’t all own private jets, third houses, and a stable of Arabian horses. However, you should be able to find your happy medium between barely scraping by and a life of unfathomable extravagance.

For those of you whose incomes are still growing, congrats! You may not have to alter your lifestyle since your purchasing power is keeping up with inflation.

A Few Suggestions

What is the answer to fighting inflation on a personal level? I honestly don’t have a perfect answer that will work well for everyone. I’m not an expert about such things. What I will do is share my opinion on how to dull inflation’s impact if you’re fortunate enough to have some extra money in your budget after you’ve paid for the necessities.

My first suggestion is make good use of your kitchen. I’ve written before about how financially prudent it is to cook the majority of your food at home. A hamburger with fries at restaurants around me will run you atleast $17, and the bottomless soft drink is another $3.50. After tax and tip, the bill is atleast $26. The same money spent at the grocery store combined with 30 minutes in your kitchen will result in far more than 1 hamburger with a side of fries.

Don’t let lack of cooking skills stop you. Thanks to YouTube, you can learn to cook just about anything by watching a few videos and paying attention. Start small then work your way up to the more complicated meals. Maybe you start making your own muffins and cookies so that you don’t have to buy them each day. Then you move on to making simple breakfasts and tasty lunches. Afterwards, you tackle dinner and turn your attention to batch cooking. Your freezer and pantry become your happy places, since they are key to making your tummy and wallet happy too. Much like piano playing and walking, cooking skills get much better with repeated practice. You’ll figure out what you like to eat, and then you’ll master those dishes. Cooking for yourself should be your default choice when you start to feel hungry.

And it’s not too early to start planning for next year. One of my favorite personal finance bloggers has a vegetable garden. Each year, he plants vegetables and harvests them as they ripen. You better believe that his veggie garden saves him a good chunk of money each year. We’re well into autumn and winter’s just around the corner so now’s the time to start thinking about planting next spring. Do you have the room for your own garden? Is there a community garden nearby? Do you have a balcony that can hold a few planters? If you’ve never planted a garden before and you want to, use your downtime in winter to watch and to learn from some gardening videos on YouTube.

My second suggestion is to use your freezer and to stock up on things when they’re on sale. Low-sodium bacon was on sale last week. My mother, my aunts, and I all made sure to get some for our respective freezers. In my corner of the world, bacon is now $1/slice! That was unheard of last year but I doubt the price will fall back to its former level any time soon. My mother and her sisters are all ladies in their 70s & 80s, so they use an old-fashioned app called “a telephone” to share the great prices that they find at the grocery store.

I’m willing to be that you, Dear Reader, have a cell phone. I’ll go out on a limb and assume that you’ll probably want to use apps on your phone to find good prices when you are grocery shopping. Never forget that coupons are your friend. I have an app on my phone that sends me weekly offers on things that I buy most often. When I buy those things, I get points and those points translate to dollars off my grocery total. It’s fantastic to have a bill of $110.77 and only have to pay $0.77 because my points-into-dollars covered the rest.

It should go with out saying that price-matching is an essential tool in your arsenal. Some grocery stores will match a competitor’s price on the same item. This is another way to save money without going to several grocery stores in order to buy the same product at the lowest price. You need to eat, but you don’t have to pay more than necessary to do so.

My third suggestion is to continue investing for the long-term. The capitalist system is not designed to make employees rich. Read that sentence a few more times, and let it sink in until you’ve memorized it better than the alphabet.

Employees’ salaries are a cost of doing business. Every business has a profit-motive. This means that every business benefits by lowering its costs. Lower costs translate into higher profits. Your employer has little, if any, incentive to pay you more money to do your job.

In sharp contrast, there is a built-in incentive to align the interests of investors with the interests of business owners. The corporations need shareholders’ money, or else they wouldn’t sell stock in their company. By investing in low-cost equity exchange-traded funds, you will increase your chances of creating a cash flow that can sustain you. By all means, keep your job if you need it to survive. What I’m telling you is to wear two hats. Be an employee and an investor. If all goes according to plan, then you’ll be doubling your sources of income. Should inflation erode the income from your job, you’ll have your investment income available if you absolutely need it to survive.

No Easy Answers For Everyone

In my humble and inexpert opinion, inflation is not going away any time soon. The cost of necessities will continue to rise, which is not going to be fun. You will need to sit down and figure out how you are going to deal with Non-Stop Money-Eater. What will it take for you to limit its impact on your finances?

Guilty Pleasure – Big Haul Grocery Videos

Yes… it’s true. I’m a Single Person who loves to watch YouTube videos about people – almost always women – who do huge grocery shops and create videos about it.

Since the Pandemic, and before I found these videos, I thought I was buying lots of food when I went to Costco. I’d buy two packages of chicken thighs and one package of chicken breast. Then I would head to the Real Canadian Superstore and buy a bulk size package of extra lean ground beef. Being a Single Person, I’d round out my shopping with a trip to Sobeys for bread, vegetables and fruits. I’d pat myself on the back for buying an extra loaf of bread, or maybe 2 packages of soft Kaiser buns, to put in the freezer. And let’s not forget about those 6 cans of sliced peaches!

Yes, indeed – job well done – way to go, Blue Lobster!

I was pretty proud of myself… until I found The Queens Cabinet on YouTube. This woman knows how to shop! From what I’ve gathered so far, Shelby and her husband Ken live on a farm and are raising 4 sons. When theywere younger, they had to budget their money and lived quite frugally. As a result, they chose to stock up on the things that they always use so that they always have food in their pantry.

Big deal, Blue Lobster – most everyone who can already does this!

Gentle Reader, I would suggest that few people stock up their pantry with a year’s worth of food the way that Shelby and Ken do. How many people do you know with 7 freezers? And how many people have their own baking centre, yet alone one that is so well-organized?

I’m not ashamed to admit it – a tour of her pantry made me wish that I had a slight touch of OCD just so I too would be motivated to take the time and organize my food storage space. In my world, a $3700 (or more!) grocery shop is still a very rare thing…even for those I know who go to Costco!

While a 4-figure grocery haul is not part of my life, I can see its benefits. You can stock up when things are on sale. This saves you from shelling out more when the price is higher. Secondly, meal planning is easier when what you need is already in your home. You can put the money-saving magic of your kitchen to work more easily when you have ingredients at your fingertips.

I’ve no doubt that Shelby still runs to the grocery store throughout the year for certain items. Fresh fruit and vegetables immediately come to mind. However, I would guess that she doesn’t have to waste money on condiments, meats, prepared drinks, and baking supplies throughout the year. She stocks up when it’s on sale, then it’s on hand when she needs it.

And if you subscribe to her channel, you’ll see that she’s a big fan of meal planning. I can’t say that I blame her! If I had her kitchen, I’d want to spend a lot of time in it too – cooking and baking things. Try to find the videos where she talks about her fridges – yes, more than one fridge in a kitchen!

Their Pantry is an Emergency Fund

What Shelby and Ken have done is to create an emergency fund of food. If their income stops for a period time, their monetary savings need not be used to feed their family. They have a cache of food already set aside so everyone will be able to eat while another source of income is found. Their cash-money doesn’t have to be spent on food, which means that it will last longer.

Take a look at your own budget. What percentage of your monthly income goes towards food? And if you lost your income tomorrow, how much longer would your emergency fund last if you didn’t have to use it to feed yourself?

But I don’t have the room for that much food, Blue Lobster!

I hear you. And trust me, I don’t have that much room either. However, I do have freezer in my basement and I have a freezer area in my fridge. That means I can freeze a much smaller, but no less important, amount of food. I have 6-8 packages of extra lean ground beef. Is that too much for a Single Person? No, not if I lose my job. A single package becomes 4-5 hamburgers, or a cookie sheet of meatballs, or a big pot of meat sauce. Whatever the final product, that’s a few meals that I don’t have to buy with money from my emergency fund.

The same principle to the chicken thighs that I’ve bought. A bulk package of chicken might have cost me $30. Yet, I can get 25-28 chicken thighs that I then divvy up into Ziplock bags of 4-5 pieces. It takes very little time to prepare a marinade, pour some into each bag with the chicken, and then freeze the bags for later use. I haven’t bought chicken in several months. I do the same thing with my pork.

I’ve started going back to my office, which means taking a lunch and taking snacks. My freezer allows me to baking a big batch of cookies, or muffins, then tuck them away for when I need them. If you’d rather have something else for snacks, then be my guest. My point is that it’s not a bad idea to have some extra food stored away. Save money now by buying things when they’re on sale. Save money later by not having to buy outside food unless the purchase has been planned in advance.

Use Your Pantry and Freezer Space

Do what you can with what you’ve got. Your pantry and your freezer space are tools that can help you save money. I’m not an expert. No one’s expecting you to be an expert either. That said, I learn a little bit more each time I watch videos about how other people do it. I can take a tidbit or two and incorporate it into my life. There are ways for me stretch my dollars.

Build up your own emergency fund by learning to buy a bit more when things are on sale so that you can stock your pantry and your freezer. Watch a few more cooking videos on YouTube so you can cook for yourself a little bit more. Figure out how to cook or bake what you like to eat, then do so. If you don’t already, learn to love leftovers.

You have to eat. Keep your pantry and your freezer well-stocked with foods that bring you joy. Then learn to cook & bake what you love in your own kitchen. Doing so is another way to insure that you’re using your money to create a life that maximizes your happiness and joy. And isn’t that one of the very best reasons to have money in the first place?

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Weekly Tip: Contribute to your Tax Free Savings Account every year. Invest your contributions in a broad-based equity exchange-traded fund or index fund for 2-3 decades. (You can select a mutual fund, if you wish. However, mutual funds have higher Management Expense Ratios than ETFs or index funds so it makes little sense to spend more money for the same product.) Let your money grow over the years and re-invest all the dividends. When you finally do withdraw your money from the TFSA, never pay any taxes on the principle or the growth.