Frugal SBD

[Jaylah]

While there are some exceptions involving salted, dried, or sealed foods, it usually doesn't speak well of a food that even the bacteria and fungi stay away from it.

Reading this immediately brought Twinkies to my mind. Left in a cupboard (not even the fridge) they will eventually turn hard as bricks. Seriously. I think you could probably even pave a new patio in your back lawn with them. Which might be kinda pretty. But they will never develop a speck of mold.

[Magna]

I'm considering doing another $21/week "budget challenge." If you don't know what this is, have a look at the first post of this discussion. I don't know when I might start, but anyone is welcome to try it. (And of course, you can do it any time you want.)

[Chris55]

You're pretty brave to try that again. I think I've been spending more than $21/week on vegetables, but then I'm feeding 4 people! I just had some fun re-reading the thread, especially the part about having a cheap turkey in the freezer. It just so happens that this morning I decided to start defrosting my 49cent/lb. turkey that I bought at Thanksgiving. I'll make it Saturday, my son's last night before going back to college for the spring semester. I'll pack him up some leftovers for a home-cooked meal later in the week, and my husband and oldest son will have leftovers while I'm away this weekend driving my youngest back to school and visiting family.

Magna, are you going to do a separate journal thread for your $21 challenge?

[Magna]

If I do the budget challenge again, I'll do a separate thread. I'm not sure if the rules should be the same - I might change them or increase the amount. Or, I might more actively look for coupons.

[Chris55]

Good luck finding coupons for SB friendly food. They don't seem to have coupons for meat or vegetables, although you might be able to find some for Birds Eye that you can use on plain frozen veggies. One of our supermarkets does a 4/$20 sale sometimes where you get 4 family sized packages of meat for $20, but that would wipe out your budget if you're only buying for yourself.

[Magna]

I signed up for electronic in-store coupons with my local Safeway affiliate. The coupons are automatically applied to my purchase when I use my frequent shopper card. There are some store-brand frozen vegetables on sale now, which I'll consider buying.

It's also possible to find coupons for brand-name foods you might use on SBD, like rice, pasta sauce, or canned goods. If they happen to be on sale or even in the clearance area, the item can be incredibly cheap.

[Chris55]

There is one chain grocery store here that's not in my town, but they frequently have a section in the produce dept with a multi-shelf cart that has produce that's past it's prime and cheap. I've bought peppers, grape tomatoes, summer squash, and mushrooms occasionally. A box of grape tomatoes is about $1, regular tomatoes are pretty cheap, too. They're fine for oven roasting or throwing in soups and stews. I don't shop there often because I'm not fond of the store in general, but if I'm in the area and need to pick up a few things, I'll swing by and see what I can find for under $1/lb. I know other stores must do this, too, but my local ones only happen to do it with very brown bananas for some reason. You would think that with all the people living on very strict budgets right now that more stores would be selling past-prime produce at a discount.

[Magna]

Fwiw, a number of dollar stores have bagged produce, and apparently it sells well. I've seen bags of bananas, mini peppers, melons, broccoli, carrots, etc. The ones I've seen are unrefrigerated. I've never had the nerve to try it myself and I wouldn't drop by those stores if I were looking for produce. But it's an option people seem to be going for.

[Southern_Charm]

Hi.

I thought Id post this in P1 because this is where most people start out with the SBD, though it might be helpful on all phases. Im currently in my first week of p2. We are doing well on it. Ive lost a total of thirteen pounds in two and a half weeks. I probably like many of you have had concerns about the affordability of doing this diet. To be honest, Ive probably spent near 4-5 hundred dollars in just a few weeks time. Alot of that has been start up where we pretty much start up. Before we started the diet we used up most all of our "bad" groceries until time to shop again. We purged the rest of our bad items and pretty well started from scratch. So some of that cost was for things that would last many weeks or months like alot of spices etc to have on hand to flavor our new foods. But I do find Im making frequent trips to the store. I think the cost is beginning to level out some now. But, I still have that concern. We are doing so well on the diet and its clearly working with great results. And , I can tell a real difference in the way I feel. But, I get concerned about how long we could keep this up.. not to mention I have a possible job lay off comming this summer thats been this hovering black cloud to worry with that could cut into our income. But, I have found some ideas thats helped cut some areas and I thought Id share them.

1)We drank alot of store bought bottled water before doing the SBD. We've always done well with drinking water. But, after doing SBD we made cut backs in our other beverages that werent so diet friendly and so we've been buying an over abundance of bottled water. We dont care for our local tap water. So, what we have done to cut down on the beverages cost in our household was to purchase a pur water filter that attatches to the faucet. It was simple to install just 3 or 4 steps. And, it was pretty affordable, we found them for 20-25 dollars at walmart. We now just use our "bottled" water for quick grab and go drinks to take on the road. OR, simply get a refillable bottle and fill it from the tap. This is starting to save us tons on buying up water by the cases where we drink it soo much now on the SBD. Also, we used to drink alot of tea and would buy the store bought teas by the jugs. Since on the SBD you need to stay away from the sugars in these drinks, instead of buying store bought jugs, we've been making our own drinks for home by buying the spring water in jugs for a dollar or less and making up our own sugar free drinks buy buying the add in drink mixes. (which there are a huge variety of sugar free flavors to choose from). So we buy the jugs for a few cents and make up SB friendly drinks by the jub at home which is even cheaper than the store bought drinks and teas by the jub. But back to the pur water filter idea, you can even refill your jugs from the tap with the pur filter and save even more on buying the water by the jugs.


2) Also, this Im sure is a no brainer for us all. But, Ive noticed that my biggest trips to the store are for the fresh produces. My advice to anyone trying to do this diet and trying to do it affordably is buy as much of the foods that you can enjoy from you canned goods and the frozen veggies.... They seem to be much cheaper than the fresh produce. Unfortanately for us, we dont have that great of a selection of frozen veggies in our local stores. We can get some things, but then others are all with the added sauces. So, buy what you can in canned and frozen. Also, I think our purchases of produce in P1 was soo much because it was ALL about veggies. So you are buying all of your food pretty much of veggies. So, take comfort that when you move on to p2 when you get to add in the things like cereals , breads , rice and pastas and the forbidden veggies and fruit in back into your diet, so you should get some relief in your produce when you can move on to p2. To us, its been a relief to be able to grap that piece of fruit as your "snack" rather than having to prepare and cut up tons of produce for grab and go snacks . You can buy a bunch of banannas or a bag of apples or oranges (by the bag ,cheaper than individual) but its much cheaper when it comes to snacks to buy up for a few dollars a bag of oranges, that will last for several days worth of snacks, verses like we were doing in p1 and buying up lots of cucumbers , celery, lettuces for wraps etc....you could drop 3 bucks easy on cukes that when sliced up for snacks dont go very far versus that bag of oranges that will last all week or so...
So, perhaps like with us you will get some more relief in p2 when you get a few more options and dont have to have tons and tons of fresh produces.

3) Last thing I thought might be a good tip. Of course we know we can grow gardens but not all of us have the space. Im sure we will frequent more farmers markets and roadside produce stands this year. Surely they are slightly cheaper than the stores maybe? Surely your produce bill will get more relief in summer than these winter months when things are out of season. But here's another thought we are banking on. As Ive mentioned in other posts we live in a rural small town. Check with your local schools maybe. Ours, has the aggriculture classes and the FFA clubs. (Future Farmers of America) I think they grow things like flowers and produce in the schools . I believe the produce gets harvested and sold and the money I believe goes back into the FFA clubs. I know our local school we're told they harvest it and take it to flea markets and sell the produce and the money goes back into the clubs. SO, maybe check with your local schools and the aggriculture departments. You may be able to find good deals on locally grown produce that might be better deals than store bought and, you are helping your local schools to boot by being a big customer. :O)

But hang in there, I think the cost lightens up in P2, or so it seems for us. And thought Id share some of our cost saving tips and ideas we had!

Good Luck!

[DCLissa17]

A few things to add:

Tap water is good. Buy a faucet filter or a filtered pitcher if you're worried, but in general, city-supplied water goes through extensive filters and quality control to get to you.

In P2 you are still eating a lot of veggies. If in P1 you were eating way more than the 4.5c minimum then yes, in P2 you will probably start substituting some of those extra veggies with fruits/starches. But if you were just eating the 4.5c minimum, you should STILL keep eating that so your cost won't really drop that much.

Farmer's markets often have higher quality, locally sourced veggies but they are likely not going to be cheaper than shopping sales in the major grocery chains.

Learn what is in season (and therefore on sale) and buy (and cook!) accordingly. Apples in the winter, berries in the summer. Broccoli/cauli/carrots in the winter, etc.

Look at the sales flyers for your local grocery stores each week and shop by the sales, not by rigid meal plans. Plan your meals around what's on sale.

Get into couponing! Yes, you CAN coupon for SB-friendly foods! Yes, there ARE coupons for meat, dairy, fresh produce, whole grain items, etc. I am a crazy couponer and while it is easy to go off the deep end so to speak, you can save ridiculous amounts of money on good stuff too. Also, the most massive savings with coupon shopping is on toiletries/home goods so you can save signifcant amounts on those items, freeing more budget money for good meat and fresh produce. I like to use http://www.forthemommas.com and [url]couponconnectionsnw.com[/url] to help me find coupon matchups for some major grocery stores. They take a lot of the work out of it!

I am a single woman and my entire grocery/household item/pet food budget is ~$150/mo (or less) This includes a pretty good amount of fresh fruits and veggies. SB can be done affordably without sacrificing taste or quality!

[Southern_Charm]

Yeah you dont "have" to get a faucet filter like the pur. Many tap waters are quite fine andtaste great right out of the tap and they do go through their own filtration before they get to you. But in the instance that it has too high of a chlorine sent or taste its might not always be the most pleasant thing to want to use. lol :O) We live in a rural area and the water quality here isnt too great. It either is soo strong of chemicals , sometimes has a cloudy ness to it, and the water tests that are done on a regular basis dont always come out too well..... so we buy lots of bottled spring water and for us, this pur facaucet attatchment to filter even more is working great for us and we can greatly cut back on buying bottled water by the cases.

As far as the veggies on p1, yes you still need to make p1 your food base in all phases. Still need the half cup of veggies or veggie juice at B fast and the two cups and lunch and dinner. BUT, now that we are in p2, I read that snacks arent "required" for p2. However your welcome to still have them during the day long as you are snacking on the right things.
But in p1 we were having tons of fresh produced bought so that we had plenty of lettuce for snack wraps for snacks, to buy things like cucumbers and zuchinni and fresh squash and cauliflower to feed several meals or snacks for two people throughout the week was starting to get pricey. But in P2 you can have more things in your diet so although yes you do need the half cup of veggies a bfast and still 2 cups at lunch and dinner, Im finding you get to scale back on some of the fesh produce that you might want for snacks and you can incorporate you fruit allowances as snacks.

[Kimboroni]

Yeah, fruit is great at snacks! But it's still produce, and I haven't noticed that it's significantly cheaper than vegetables. That may have to do with the region, season, or specific choices that you're making.

[Southern_Charm]

True. Fruit can be pricey too. As we shopped last weekend for our p2 additions my husband wanted to try blue berries that were expensive almost four bucks.. and they were only enough for a serving and a half of blue berries per the sbd suggestions. Versus, a bunch of bananas or the apples and oranges by the bags for the same price with enough in it to do a whole week or so of snacks for two people. Ive noticed the produce like apples and oranges in the bags are smaller than the individual loose ones you buy buy the pound. Which the food list suggest "small" ones I believe. So that helps. Though the individual loose ones are great, Ive noticed the serving sizes are right on for the bags and they are soo much cheaper.

For cost saving purposes I told my hubby that to save we can use the apples , oranges, tangelos and the cheaper by the bag items for our "staples" and enjoy the occasional extras of blue berries, strawberries and all the other fruits that tend to be higher and doesnt go as far......

Just what seems to work the best for us. Also, trying to brace for what might be a lay off this summer..... :O( (Hopefully not, but quite possible and likely.)

[Kimboroni]

That's good planning! I hear you on the blueberries I think they're imported from Chile this time of year.

During the summer, Costco tends to have a good sized package of blueberries for not much money, and they're great quality, too. I don't know if that's an option for you.

[Southern_Charm]

unfortunately not. I dont have a clue where the nearest one would be...probably a couple hours away. lol When I say rural, I mean we are rural. The nearest super center walmart is an hours drive, you make a day trip out of shopping here when you have to go to the bigger retailers. It does make a challenge sometimes to find certain things at local grocery stores. can be quite frusterating but there are charms and the positives at times of living away from the chaos and craziness of big major cities. If we only had a shorter drive to shopping, it would be great!