Money Saving Tips

I've been hearing on the news lately how much food prices are going up in the States. Maybe living over here will serve as good preparation for when we finally move back to the U.S. They don't use coupons here, but I've discovered a few other things that work for us to save money on food, and I thought I'd share my tips. Forgive me if they seem obvious; cooking is a relatively new thing to me and it doesn't take much to amaze me ;) I'd love to hear your tips as well! (Proofreading this has shown me how few ideas I really have... so please share yours!)

We can't find Mexican foods here unless we go to a store that carries imported items, and then the prices are extremely high. For example, a package of 12 flour tortillas is over $5, and one package of taco seasoning is almost $2. Since our family loves Mexican food, I've learned to make it from scratch. I've discovered how ridiculously easy it is to make your own taco seasoning. Go here and you can find many different recipes to choose from. For as often as we use it, this alone saves us lots of money. I've also learned to make my own flour and corn tortillas. I'm not very good at it, and honestly, if I could find them cheaper at the store I would just buy them, but for this situation we're enjoying having them at all.

BEANS! This is another big money saver. We eat a lot of beans, but the canned variety can get very pricey. Here they're close to $2 a can, and they're not much better in the States from what I remember. On the other hand, you can purchase a 1 pound bag of dried beans for around $1, and you get about 3-4 cans' worth of beans (about 6-8 cups). I cook one or two bags of beans at a time and then freeze what I'm not using right away for later use. Just separate portion sizes into zip-top bags and throw them in the freezer. Saves time and money; a great combination.

Milk. We pay about $6 a gallon for it here. Milk is one of those things that I'm not going to stop using just because it's expensive, but I have found ways to cut back on its use. Powdered milk. The thought of powdered milk almost makes you want to cringe, but hear me out. I'm not suggesting that you use it on your cereal, or drink a tall glass of it, but you can replace reconstituted powdered milk in almost any recipe and you'll never know the difference. I've even used it in recipes that call for heavy cream. I just added a little bit of butter with the powdered milk. My husband is a tough food critic, and even he said it tasted good.

This one will probably only apply to us, but I wanted to mention it anyway. The tomato sauce/paste, etc. that we get here is really bad. It's edible, but the flavor is not what we're used to and it makes the whole dish off-putting. So, I order tomato sauce from Netgrocer.com. And yes, I end up paying a small fortune for it. Shipping cans gets expensive. When we were grocery shopping this week we saw a great sale. Tomatoes were 49 agorot a kilogram, or about 8 cents a pound!! I don't care where you live... that's cheap! My husband suggested that we stock up on tomatoes and attempt making our own sauce. I was very intimidated by this thought since I had never done anything like it, but my desire to save money won out. We bought 4 pounds of tomatoes (that's under 30 cents!) and decided to make one batch before we bought the rest of what the store had. The cooking process took some time, but the sauce turned out great! We now have tomato sauce in the freezer and we will be adding more to our supply very soon.

Free surgery.... okay, this one isn't really a tip, but it did save us money so I thought I'd tell you about it. I had a mole on my cheek for several years. Last month my husband asked if I'd talk to my dermatologist about getting it removed. We weren't worried about it being cancerous or anything; it was just really ugly. Since this would be considered purely cosmetic our insurance would most likely not pay for it, but I guess my husband hated the thing enough to make it worth the cost :) My doctor suggested that I wait until the winter to have it removed; something about skin healing better. I went home resigned to wait until then. The next day I noticed that the mole started to look very dry and it felt like it was coming up around the edges. By the next week, the whole thing had completely fallen off... all on its own! Now you can't even tell that it was ever there. I'm not sure what caused this to happen after years of being the same. I want to hesitate to attribute it to God, since it's such an insignificant, unimportant thing. But, why not? He's Lord of the big and the small. He knows how to give good gifts to his children. And what a great gift.... no waiting, no money, no shots, no healing time and scarring.... I couldn't have asked for more!

What do you do to save money?