hunting and gathering…food

Lots of money can be saved or even made by buying your food with some simple tips.

• Discount.
  • like anything else don’t accept full price for food. meanwhile, balance this with “you get what you paid for” I’d rather spend $1.99 per pound on organic chicken on sale, than $0.99/lb non-organic chicken loaded with antibiotics and hormones.
  • when something amazing goes on sale, stock up if it’s not perishable or if it’s freezable.
  • ask the cashier for a rain check. get the sales price again next time! e.g. my partner loves drinking kambucha, which normally costs $3.79/bottle retail, $2.59/bottle wholesale. But when it goes on sale, the price may be as low as $0.99/pop. He refuses to buy at the full price, but clears the shelf (30+ bottles) when it goes on sale. He then gets a raincheck, lock in that awesome sales price, and buy more NEXT time @ this awesome low price.
• Freezer!
  • meats and cheeses, especially the Organic, cage-free, grass fed (low in pro-inflammatory oils such as omega-6, high in omega-3) versions, are pricey. but they are quite amenable to freezing.
  • we buy meats and cheeses on sale whenever they are available.
  • freeze them. then we get to enjoy rotating through wild salmon, wild shrimp, baby back rib, country style rib, steak, ground beef, chicken wings/things/breast/drumsticks @ a steep discount!
  • since i’m a chef of total spontaneity, i enjoy having all these at my finger tips.
• Wholesale.
  • Have you ever noticed that organic string cheese at costco or sams club is WAY WAY cheaper than what you can get at wholefoods/ sprouts/ or Trader Joe’s?
  • So buy your meats/ diary/ eggs wholesale, especially the organic version. You will enjoy more than twice the savings whole sale. e.g. 12 organic eggs at sprouts cost $5.5, 24 organic eggs at costco costs about $7.
• Cash back.
  • Flex your credit! find a good cash back card and buy ALL your grocery with it.
  • Cards like Chase freedom allows you to choose the category of spending which you want the highest cash back %. You can get as high as 5% CASH back for just buying foods you eat daily. Then of course, if you just open the card, you may even enjoy riding 0% interest for 12-18 months and free up some extra short term cash flow for investment or other financial goals.
  • Important thing is to be honest and careful with your spending, and know for sure that you will pay off the ENTIRE balance as soon as the interest is no longer 0%.
• Store loyalty.
  • We took advantage of this for the first time last November. We learned 11/01 of every year is the ONLY day, where you can buy Sprouts gift cards at $.90 on the dollar. So we bought $2,000 worth of Sprouts gift cards for $1,800 on 11/01/14. Not only did we save $200 dollars instantly, got $20 in credit card cash back, borrowed the $1,800 interest free for 15 months. We had our grocery paid for nearly 6 months.
  • So guess what, come 11/01/15 I’m buying  $4,000 worth of Sprouts gift cards for $3,600. This will pay for nearly all of our family’s retail grocery purchase for the following year, give us cash back, free up cash flow from my paycheck, AND commit us to getting grocery rather than buying extraneous stuff.
  • (hint) We did the same thing with our electric bill. We paid $2,000 in advance, made some 1099 cash back and paid for our bills way in advance with interest-free money!
• Seasonal/local
  • this is just common sense. don’t be high maintenance. eat whats available, easily; not out of season, or imported from far away!
• Grow/raise your own.
  • our next home project is to start an organic garden of herbs, veggies, fruits and nuts. to do this right, it will probably cost us $1,000-1,500. But it will be worth it.
  • there are many creative and cheaper ways of starting a small garden, even hydroponic ones for herbs, etc. look into this if you are a green-thumb and enjoy the amazing aroma of home made pesto from freshly-picked basil. (we did this in our prior residence. best pesto ever.)
• Share.
  • Sharing is caring and thriving together.
  • how about getting a few friends together. each person take turn cooking for the others and bring lunch for all. if you get 5 people to do this. Every day there’s delicious home-made food for lunch, which saves each individual at least $50 for the week as opposed to eating out, AND long term savings on medical bills can be big too.
  • share a wholesale store membership card. go shopping together and split the plunder. this way you ensure retail variety and freshness AND the whole sale prices. Get a friend to add you on her Sam’s Club membership; you add her on your Costco membership. You can do this with family too, even remotely sometimes.

So this post provided some tips on saving/making money in the process of hunting and gathering food.  Next I will share about food prep/planning 🙂