Cheep, cheeper, cheepest: Three phases to the cheapest eggs, ever

There's just nothing better than free stuff, and that's how I got on this whole chicken kick that's taken over our homestead. In my search for cheap protein sources that weren't beans, I learned how complete the protein in eggs is, and how cheap it is per serving. I think for a dozen eggs at the store, when I caught them on sale, they were around 8 cents a piece. Even at regular price, 10 cents for 12 grams of complete protein is nothing to sneeze at. But, I also knew how OLD store eggs are by the time they get there, and I thought if we're doing the fresh-food thing, our eggs should be fresh and free-range, too. (No WAY was I paying $4 a dozen for organic, “cage-free” eggs at the supermarket. That just means they're all shoved into a closed-up barn all together, anyway.)

Phase one of the egg project was a small step: I started buying local eggs at the feed store. People around here whose chickens produce more than they can eat, sell them for $1 a dozen to the feed store. The feed store sells them for $1.70. It messed up my pricing because it wasn't the cheapest, but this concession was worth it to me. I mean, have you ever tasted a fresh egg? No way would I ever buy store-bought eggs again. I am such an egg snob now.

So a few months passed, and sometimes the feed store had eggs and sometimes they didn't. I kept cruising Craigslist's free postings, and came across an ad for two free chickens. Aha! We loaded up and drove 40 minutes to see these chickens, which were what was left of a classroom hatch that a teacher was giving away. She had one of those nifty chicken tractors that allow chickens to free-range just by moving it to new grass every day, and when I complimented it, she said, “Take it.” She gave us feed, feeders, waterers, the chicken tractor, and two young chickens, and that's how we moved into Phase Two of the egg project.

The free tractor coop, with chickens snugly in the upper level during a freak Texas snowstorm.

Our first egg was cause for celebration; we took it to my parents' house, fried it up and everybody had a bite. It was unbelievably awesome. Before long, I found a big coop (free) and raised my own baby chicks that I bought at the feed store when I bought eggs one day (Enter: Phase Three). We've had lots of chickenish adventures and chicken poop on the front porch every day, but the best part is having so many awesome, free-range eggs that I've been giving them away. (We've also had a couple of tasty roosters, but that's another story.) And yet, we're not done: we have 15 new chicks in the brooder and – wouldn't you know it? -- a broody hen sitting on 11 eggs in the coop. Time to find a new free coop or two...

DIY convenience foods: Feed the freezer

You've probably read blog posts or articles about super talented and organized people who spend one day a month “freezer cooking.” These people spend 8-10 hours putting together meals they can freeze and pop in the oven for quick dinners, and they are my heroes. I'm just not that organized.

Being disorganized and responsible for the entire homestead 9 months out of the year makes for some harrowing mealtimes, so yesterday I spent the entire day cooking breakfast. I rarely have a plan when I start cooking, so what I ended up with is a freezer full of breakfast rolls (dinner rolls filled with bacon, egg and cheese), french toast bars (using a failed batch of biscuits) and cinnamon rolls. I figure it's about a week's worth of breakfasts, and they're packaged in foil to go in the toaster oven for about 20 minutes in the morning.

Since these breakfast creations came about through trial and error, it's tough to compare them to store-bought frozen breakfast items. But, I'm pretty sure they're more healthy and cheaper being made from scratch. Freezer cooking is probably really worth it if you're organized. Personally, I prefer adding to the freezer a little at a time. If I make a pot of beans, I put half in the freezer after a quick soak. After cooking, I put half of the remaining cooked and seasoned beans in the freezer. That leaves me with a half-pound (before cooking) of pintos, which we can take care of in one meal. If I choose to reinvent the rest of the beans on subsequent days, I can do it by taking the frozen beans out in the morning. If not, they have fed the freezer stash and are a cheaper alternative to frozen pizza when I'm in a hurry or have stepped on half a dozen rusty nails and can no longer stand up to cook supper.

However you do it, one big tightwad rule is “feed the freezer.” Some families don't like leftovers, and can even recognize reinvented ones the next day. But, put those same leftovers in the freezer, wait a couple of weeks to reinvent, and, voila!: brand new food. It doesn't just work well for leftovers, either:

• Cheese. Calculating price per ounce for my price book, I discovered that a nearby members-only store had the cheapest cheese in town, but it came shredded in 5-pound bags. When I get it home, I fill five, one-pound freezer bags and put four in the freezer. Shredded cheese freezes like a champ, and can even be used frozen if you forget to take it out to defrost. Bread crumbs from slicing homemade bread, and the heels of some tougher loaves, go into a bag in our freezer labeled “bread crumbs.” When it's full, I give it a whirl in the food processor, pour in a little butter and some herbs, and it makes homemade macaroni and cheese downright gourmet.
• Fresh herbs. We use a lot of cilantro around here, but we never could use it fast enough to prevent the black slime from claiming it in the crisper drawer. Dried cilantro just isn't the same as fresh, so I tried a tip I read. Chop and freeze fresh herbs (works for all I've tried), just by themselves, in a jar. When you need some for a recipe, flake some off the top with a spoon, and you've got that fresh-herb flavor without the time constraints of fridge storage.
• Milk. Cow's milk from the grocery store has become less of a staple for us as we've found other ways to get our calcium, and a $3 a gallon, it's a good thing. To make it go even further, I buy whole milk and cut it to approximate 2 percent milk. I get the gallon home, pour half into a clean gallon jug and freeze it. I fill the unfrozen milk jug the rest of the way with water, and do the same with the frozen jug about two days before we need it. This trick effectively cut my milk costs in half. It isn't for everyone, but my children aren't toddlers and no one in my house needs whole milk, so this works fine. (If you do this, though, add milk powder before trying to make pudding or yogurt. Cut milk lacks enough milk protein to make most recipes “set up.”)
• Dry goods. Combat weevils in flours, dried beans and rice by putting them in the freezer for at least 48 hours once you get them home from the store. That amount of time in the freezer will prevent any weevil eggs from hatching (and believe me, they're in there), and if you put them in a sealed container right away with a bay leaf on top, your weevil problems will be gone.
• Water. If all your freezer-feeding efforts still haven't filled it to capacity, put plastic water jugs in the freezer just to make it run more efficiently. All those energy-efficiency experts say freezers and refrigerators run better when they're full, so save money by keeping them that way. And, when you find that 49-cent-a-pound turkey deal, take out all the water and dry goods, serve up some of the leftovers and fill your freezers with your latest stock-up buy!

What's that? You say you only have the freezer-fridge that's in your kitchen? Maybe it's time to talk about high-value tools that every frugal chef should watch for at garage sales...

Starting a price book means never having to head-slap yourself for paying too much

A price book is a notebook you organize to suit your shopping habits, in which you record a product's price per ounce (or serving, if you prefer), the brand, size of the container, store name and date. A cold cereal category might look like this:

Brand Name	Package Size	Store	Date	Price per Oz
HCF Corn Flakes	18 oz	East Side Grocery	04/06/12	0.087

(If using software to make your price book, I just realized you need to set your number format to text so it won't automatically round your price per ounce to the nearest penny.)

When you're first starting a price book, I recommend going to the store without children, if at ALL possible. At least for me, when there's math involved, it must have my undivided attention if it's going to be anywhere close to accurate. Use a calculator to figure price per ounce or serving; don't trust the handy-dandy price per ounce on the shelf tag that some stores provide. That number is sometimes wrong, so figure it yourself.

Calculate the prices of everything in a certain category that you are sure your family will eat, and then decide on a maximum price per unit (price point) you're willing to pay. For cold cereal, I don't pay more than 11 cents an ounce. Don't assume that larger quantities (such as huge bags of cereal) are cheaper; that's what manufacturers want you to assume. Those bags sometimes cost double what smaller boxes cost. What happens when I don't find cereal that is less than my highest price point? We don't have cereal.

Keeping a price book can help you track store sale cycles (usually 3 months). It can also save you time at the store if you're buying loss-leader items, because you'll know in advance if they're good buys for you. Loss-leaders are advertised sales, usually on the front and back pages of a sales circular, on which the store takes a loss. They're hoping that great deals will entice you into the store and you'll spend money on other things so they'll recoup that loss, but an ad scheme is no match for a smart shopper with a price book.

A few of my price points:

• Cereal: 11 cents an ounce
• Fresh fruit: $1 a pound
• Cabbage: 33 cents a pound
• Potatoes: 30 cents a pound (good cheap food, but “junk” food in my book)
• Ground meat: $1.50 a pound
• Bone-in meat: $1 a pound

Just a note: adjust your price points with inflation. The cost of everything has gone up about 33 percent recently, and it's only going to go higher as gas prices increase.

Can you eat on $50 a month? Sure you can, with a few lifestyle tweaks

My family of four, on average, eats for a grand total of $200 a month. Sound impossible? It's totally possible, but first you have to know what you are currently spending on groceries. I'll hold your hand, because it's pretty scary when you actually know.

The most flexible portion of any budget, after entertainment and dinners out (if those are in your budget), is groceries. When Hubs and I found ourselves suddenly living on one income, I sat down and figured out a budget that allowed $400 for groceries. I figured this was pretty close to what we were spending, but knew I needed to know for sure. I kept grocery, restaurant and fast food receipts to figure out how much it cost us to eat one month, and the grand total was staggering. We spent nearly $700 just on food. That was a number that was incompatible with our financial solvency, so we immediately:

• Cut out all food not cooked at home.
• Eliminated almost all pre-packaged foods.
• Began keeping a log of all the food we had to have, where we bought it, when, and how much it cost (per ounce).

Soon I began to notice patterns at my local grocery store. Sales repeated every three months, so I learned when to stock up. We were blessed with a small freezer at the perfect price (free), and I discovered that just after Thanksgiving, turkeys went on clearance for 59 cents a pound. That freezer holds seven large turkeys, I discovered.

Within a couple of months of finding the best prices per ounce for staple foods, following sale trends and getting back to real, homemade food instead of processed food, we cut down to $400 for our grocery spending. That's when I got creative, and shaved off another $200 a month for a sustainable average of $200 a month to feed all four of us. And that, my friends, was just the beginning.

You call that a clearance? Five steps to saving actual money on markdowns

You know the feeling. From across the store, you see an orange price sticker on top of another price sticker, and your palms get sweaty. You thread your cart carefully through displays and past other shoppers, trying not to appear anxious or walk too quickly, all the time thinking, “Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, clearance stuff!” You can actually feel the adrenaline begin to surge as you find THE bargain of the day.

The thing is, sometimes those haphazard piles of stuff aren't really a bargain, but store managers have figured out that those orange tags and clearance bins are magnets for wannabe savers. If you really want to find the great bargains, it's going to take some detective work and discipline that could pay off, big-time. Follow these magical steps to get your tightwad juices flowing:

1. Find department managers and ask them when the sales are. This is especially true at a grocery store. My favorite store bags up clearance produce every Monday night at 7 p.m. The meat counter does its markdowns Tuesday at 7 a.m., so I shop Tuesday at 8 a.m. (Make sure they're actually good deals – see step 3. And remember, lots of this stuff freezes well!)
2. Ask somewhere where the clearance items are located. Periodically, this changes, so making friends with a certain cashier can get you some “insider” information.

3. 

   Next year's Valentines for the boys.

   Know. Your. Prices. Knowing the regular price of a certain type of item is key to saving green. If there's a basket full of wasabi peas for $3.50 per can, but they're regularly $3.65, I don't call that a clearance. It's a “special treat” food, and with little nutritional value, I'm still not paying that much for it. Gourmet ketchup for $3 a bottle is not a bargain when the regular price for store brand is $1.98.
4. Know your price point. I know I'd buy the entire basket of wasabi peas (Hubs loves 'em) if each can was marked, say, 50 cents. Do not waver on the price points you set for yourself.
5. This could also be Rule No. 1: Do not buy things you wouldn't ordinarily buy. A great deal isn't a great deal if you wouldn't buy it otherwise. I don't need Bump-Its, even when they're marked down from $10 to $1.50. It's a great deal... for somebody else.

I think maybe my favorite step up there is number three, but it's also the one that takes the most time and effort. How do you really get to know your prices on a personal basis? Follow me and let's find out...

What is Aeropostale, and why should I care?

First off, let me say that I'm just a regular person and the ideas I have aren't new.

Are you still here? Hellooo?

You see, I've been living this super-tightwad life for several years now, constantly finding new ways to pinch pennies, falling off the wagon and getting back on again. And, I keep learning stuff and living this life and, while it's old hat to me now, every time I open my mouth about the things I do to save money, people act like I've just invented this cool new widget that I must share. Huh.

I started looking into it because I didn't think it needed to be done. I figured all this stuff was covered, what with all the frugal, thrifty coupon sites out there. Heck, I was subscribed to a lot of them. But, as I found myself unsubscribing from the blogs and sites that hawked coupons and ways to save $10 at Aeropostale (what?), I realized that maybe I did have something to offer.

This is not a site for the faint of heart, although if you think you can't do the stuff I do to live the life you want, you might just surprise yourself. I haven't worked outside our home since 2007. On a teacher's salary, we've bought a house with land in the country. We are well on our way to being debt-free, we're healthier than we've ever been, and I have lots of pretty little chickens and two happy country boys to show for it. And, I've gotten to live my dream and raise my kids. That's the most valuable part to me, and who knew I could get there by changing my attitude and washing some Ziplocs? You can, too. Follow me to some sheer tightwad awesomeness...