I haven’t completely abandoned the original theme of this blog, and that is living cheaply. One of the things that always annoyed me about some blogs is that they seem to assume that you are being frugal because you want to, not because you have no money. How can you take advantage of sales and bulk shopping when you just barely have enough to buy the necessities?
Here is what I do that really helps. I pick one thing a week to spend a little extra on. I buy an extra large jar of peanut butter, or a big bottle of dish soap. Doing that means I don’t have to spend money on it for a while, and that leaves more to spend the next week. There were still weeks I can’t do that, of course, but it does help.
Another tip is to find a good butcher. I found a place that makes most of its money selling to restaurants, but also has a retail counter. Luckily we have a chest freezer from our pre-poor days, and have room for bulk buys. We get a very small amount of food stamp money, and we almost always spend it at the butcher shop so that we will get plenty of protein in our diet. My husband and I are both Type 2 diabetics, so we can’t do the rice and beans cheap eating that we would be doing otherwise. But even without a chest freezer, we could save money there. Their meat prices are equal or lower than Walmart, and buying things like hamburger or pork chops at ten pounds or more quantities is dirt cheap. Hunt around in your city and see what you can find.
This was originally posted on my old blog, Middle Class Poor.