Guest post - A new mom’s perspective: Puréed Baby Food

Cheap, cheaper and cheapest: Your options for affordable pizza

Love pizza?  Here are three affordable options.

Cheap…

Take Away

My favourite take away or delivery pizza place is Pizzaville.  They offer delicious pizzas and have great deals, such as a Large, 3-topping pizza for $10.99 - every night of the week.  You can’t get a deal like that anywhere else in this city.  The best way to cut down on costs when ordering pizza is to avoid delivery costs. Just pick it up yourself and you will avoid delivery fees and tips.

…Cheaper…

In the freezer

A homemade pizza with leftover Italian sausage, tomatoes and onions

I’ll be the first to admit that I actually buy the occasional frozen pizza.  Why?  Because as we all know, there are inevitably nights where you just don’t feel like cooking, and you order a pizza to save time and energy.  If you have a frozen pizza in your freezer, you can just slide one in to the oven for less than $5.

My favourites are Ristorante pizzas, because they have lots of veggies on them, and they are thin crust, so you don’t fill up on dough.  They cost anywhere between $4 and $6 depending on where you shop.  I look for them on sale and stock up.  I also subscribed to Ristorante’s e-newsletter list where they send coupons - you can find them here. Right now there is a coupon for $1.50 off when you buy 2, and 75¢ off Casa di Mama.

…Cheapest…

Homemade

If you are like me, you love quick and easy suppers.  One tip that I recently thought of is to make your own pizzas and then freeze them, so you have ‘em handy.  You can make your own pizza dough, buy pizza dough or pick up pizza kits with the dough ready made.

Save bucks by bartering

A couple of weeks ago, Oprah Winfrey did a show on Money Saving.  In case you missed it you can catch the straight goods at Oprah’s website. In fact, her website is loaded with money saving tips!

Unfortunately, most of the tips seem to be old news to those of us already enshrined in the money saving culture.  However, one great tip that stood out to me was the usefulness of bartering with friends.

On the show, Cassandra and Stacy shared with Oprah how they swapped couches, and swapped services with other friends.  For example, Stacy provides free dance lessons to her neighbors’ children, and in return, her family can eat at her neighbors’ restaurant for free.

Recently I watched a children’s film - the most popular children’s film in Japan, actually - called Kiki’s delivery service.  In the movie, a young witch named Kiki leaves home at age 13 and is able to find a place to stay and enough food to eat, and she starts her own delivery service.  She accomplishes all of this in part because she finds adults who are willing to barter with her - they provide food and rent while she takes care of their bakery part time.

It got me thinking why we don’t use this system more.  Why are we so focused on accumulating new stuff all the time?  There is enormous potential - we all have extra ’stuff’ that we don’t need or don’t use, and we all have skills that we could share.  Meanwhile, we spend our time shopping and the stuff we no longer need ends up in landfills.

So here’s an exercise: think about what you currently want and need, and see if you can trade something with your friends to get what you need.  Have a book you’d like to read, a movie you’d like to rent?  About to go shopping for fall clothes?  Need a babysitter? A plumber? Someone to help you fix your computer? Simply ask around and you might find exactly what you need - for free!

Save thousands on health care!

All of us - including us Canadians - have to contend with major health care costs that can make a big dent in our financial plans.  Gail Vaz-Oxlade  gives great advice about planning for emergencies, and she stresses the importance of having health, disability, and life insurance.  All of us are at risk to unforeseen illness and accidents - things that we have no control over.

But there is an additional way to save money on health care costs, and that is preventative maintenance.   I never thought of taking care of myself as a money saving tip, until I read “Your Money or Your Life” by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.  In the book, which includes lots of great money saving tips, they describe the important of preventative maintenance on your car, your home, and you!  

For example, taking good care of your teeth, flossing daily, eating well, exercising, quitting smoking and incorporating relaxation or meditation into your life regularly will significantly reduce your medical and dental bills.  It sounds basic - too good to be true, even.  But it really is that simple.

Luckily for you, money saving, looking after the environment, and taking care of your health all go together. For example, eating at home, walking or biking to work, eating more veggies and fruits, will improve all three. 

Healthy meals for 60¢ or less

One of the best tips to reduce you grocery bill is to simply make good use of what is affordable and plentiful.  Josh and I bought a chicken on sale several months ago for $4 and we stored it in the freezer.  We roasted it a couple of weeks ago and had a cheap and lovely meal together.  The leftovers made great sandwiches and chicken salad, and the bones are sitting in our freezer, waiting to be used as stock.

Upon returning to the store on the weekend, we hoped to cash in on another great deal, only to find that similar sized chickens were now being sold for $12!  

So this week, I am focusing on making mostly vegetarian meals.  I nearly laughed when I picked up a package of tofu for 99¢, thinking about how cheap tofu is in comparison to meat, not to mention its versatility and healthful benefits.  A single block of tofu will go far - in a single package there is probably about 4 meals worth (I count one meal as a single portion).

One great thing I always make when I am trying to be frugal with my grocery budget is a vegetarian chili.  You can pack it with beans, which are obviously full of protein.  I love adding a little cheddar cheese or sour cream to mine and lots of spices.  A big batch of vegetarian chili will feed you for days, keep well in the freezer, and you won’t spend more than $.60 per meal (per person).

 Another favourite in our household is homemade Indian food.  Josh makes a lentil dish by simmering red lentils with stewed tomatoes, onions, garlic, and spices.  He serves it over rice, and it’s great comfort food. This dish works out to cost about $1.75 for the entire dish, but it serves up at least 4 meals, making each dinner cost about 44¢.  For a cheap and tasty side dish, Josh whips up a chickpea salad with chickpeas, cucumbers and a dressing consisting of yogurt, garlic and lemon juice. This salad, which also makes at least 4 portions, will add approximately 60¢ to each person’s portion.

Tip: If you enjoy Indian food, learn how to make your own samosas, or buy them at an Indian grocery store.  Non-Indian stores mark up the prices. Shop there for other Indian food products as well.

Use beans, lentils and tofu (really just another bean product) reduce your intake of meat - you will simultaneously reduce your grocery budget substantially!  

Bean dishes, like vegetarian chili, are tasty, healthy and cheap

Pet smarts

I thought of one more tip for saving money on your pet that I would like to add to my commentary from last week.  We saved several hundred dollars just by price checking before we had Butternut neutered.  Since we had recently moved to the Beach in Toronto, we looked at a couple of vet clinics, both of whom quoted us between $500-$600 for the operation.  That seemed excessive, and one of my friends recently told me that just by driving to a clinic in London (a smaller city a couple of hours away) they saved about $400.  We called our former vet in the West end of Toronto, who agreed to waive the initial consultation since they had seen Butternut only a few months before, and gave us a rate that was somewhere around $250.  Shop around - and don’t worry, price does not necessarily dictate quality, so you won’t sacrifice good care.

Who let the cat out of the bag?

My point, that cats do not need expensive toys, is proven.

    *PS Don’t worry folks, that is a paper bag, not plastic, and I was keeping an eye on her the whole time.  I’m much better with the supervision than I am with the discipline.

My bread failure

So, I was planning on writing a blog about how lovely it is to bake your own bread and how ridiculous it is to buy a bread maker, and what a great money saving tip it would be to enjoy freshly baked bread in the house. Unfortunately the bread didn’t really come out as planned.  It was small and dense. Not inedible, but not exactly the kind of bread you look forward to eating, either. If anyone else has favourite bread recipes for me to try, I would appreciate it.  Otherwise, I think it’s back to Dempsters for me.

(Thankfully, I’m not the only one! Are there any other undomestic goddesses out there?)

   

Fast food coupon alert

Three more ways to get fast food on the cheap:

Go to Arby’s  for a Beef n Cheddar coupon.  Unfortunately this one is not available in Canada but since I have so many American readers I thought I’d let y’all know.

If you haven’t already done so, sign up with Wendy’s by doing a short survey (this one is for Canadians - if you’re American, head here).  I just got *another* coupon in my inbox today - this time for a double cheeseburger! Sweet deal.  Actually, it’s not a sweet deal, it’s a beefy deal. 

Next, if you’re Canadian, head to Shoppers Drugmart on Saturday or Sunday.  If you spend $50 you get a $10 free Subway gift card.  Of course $50 is quite a lot to spend, but if you want to stock up and missed out on last weeks 15x the points, head out this weekend.

7 ways I wasted money last week

From time to time we all make mistakes and do things that cost us money instead of save it. Here are my blunders for the past several 7 days:

Monday: Busy Blunder - Didn’t have enough time to go grocery shopping and our fridge was cleaned out before the long weekend.  Resulted in too many meals eaten out during the week.

Tip: Get the house stocked with groceries before you start a new work week.

Tuesday: Running Late Blunder: Grabbed coffee and muffin at McDonalds on the way to work.

Tip: Take coffee in a travel mug and bake your own muffins and other snacks.

Wednesday: Running Late Blunder #2:  Slept in and drove to work.

Tip: Take public transit and avoid gas and parking charges.

Thursday: Cutest Blunder - Found Butternut sleeping in a basket of clean, folded laundry that I had yet to put away!

Tip: Put clean laundry away immediately! (Especially if you have naughty pets around!)

Friday: Exhausted Blunder - went to a pub after work for beers and burgers after a long and tedious week!

Saturday: Grocery Store Blunder - I didn’t realize that I could use more than one coupon for the same product.  If I had realized this I would have stocked up on cereal sales and used a wad of coupons!  

Tip: You can use one coupon per product - but buy as many products as you like! (I learned this tip at Centisble Savings.)

Sunday: Most frustrating Blunder - I didn’t realize that I had an additional coupon for a FREE bag of Purina One Cat Chow.  I just found it today - but it expired last Tuesday!  

Tip: Buy a coupon organizer!

How have you wasted money? 

Tips for living well in your small apartment

A couple of weeks ago, I read this great post about living in a small apartment.  Since we (Josh, myself and Butternut) live in an apartment that is approximately 600 square feet, I have some experience with living in small spaces.  I thought I would share with you a few tips of my own:

1. Utilize every nook and cranny available to you.  Find under-the-bed storage boxes that are custom designed to fit under your bed.  We bought two - one to use under the bed and one under the couch.  You can also get shoe organizers that hook behind your door.  I use one for my shoes and another to store things like scarves and belts.  A cloth organizer is best, because it lasts longer.  

2. Avoid buying unitaskers.  Do not buy redundant, superfluous kitchen supplies that are, as Alton Brown says, “unitaskers.” In other words, kitchen equipment that does one thing and one thing only (besides take up space.)  You end up with a lot of appliances that fill up your cupboards and pantry.  All you really need is one large pot or stock pot, a medium sized pot a frying pan, and a good knife.  We also get a lot of use out of our Kitchen Aid mixer, blender, crock pot and food processor.  We leave the mixer and food pro out on the counter in order to increase our usage.  Avoid buying complicated sets of pots and pans, knifes, and unitasker appliances. A perfect example is the bread maker.  If you have a kitchen aid mixer, this is really all you need.

Buy multi-taskers, not unitaskers

Money Saving Tip:  Buy appliances from Ebay and save hundreds!

Money Saving Tip: Shop in China Town for good quality kitchen products at half to one-third the price! 

3. Get rid of stuff you don’t need.  This can be hard, but hanging on to products or clothes you no longer use will only weigh you down.  A good article on De-cluttering your closet can be found here.

4. Make use of small outdoor spaces.  My sister, for example, has a small condo in Toronto and is able to enjoy a small rooftop patio.

Shopping for a wok in china town

 She puts it to good use, growing vegetables, herbs and flowers.  If you don’t have a patio, but you do have a south facing window, you can enjoy flowers in a miniature greenhouse, or grow cacti.

5. Be thankful.  If you are living in an apartment, be thankful.  With the current economic environment, you don’t have to worry about your mortgage or about losing your home.  You probably do not have to worry about things like paying for lawn maintenance, renovations or even utilities either, so appreciate your simple living for now as it also means lower costs and lower stress.