Festival of Frugality #8

Frugal Underground is hosting the ever-expanding Festival of Frugality #8 this week and it's looking fab. Yet again, another collection of money saving tips to help you squeeze more value out of your dollars.

This week I was drawn to the posts regarding food since reducing our food expenses is a current focus of mine. Tracy of Healthy, Wealthy and Wise has listed a typical week's worth of meals as an explanation of how she and Brent only spend $25 on groceries a week. Since LaLa and I spend about four times that - on the *new* food budget - I feel I have a lot to learn from Tracy's example. That difference in food spending can't all be attributed to price disparity between Wisconsin and Massachussetts. Granted, I am spending $25 a week on having organic produce delivered to my door right now, but it's an experiment in training myself to eat more fruits and vegetables so I'm counting that as an investment in health (yes, I know that it sounds like I am rationalizing what is probably a very un-frugal choice, but overall I get a lot of value out of it so for now...it stays) Clearly I have more work to do if I'm going to drop our food spending even more.

Also in the Festival, A Frugal Focus wrote a neat little analysis of the long term savings impact of taking your own lunch every day. These days I am either working from home or on the road eating on expense account and I shudder to think of the impact that eating lunch out would have on our current budget. That post took me back to my first experience brown-bagging it (well, other than school). My girlfriend at the time would make me a marmalade and peanut butter sandwich and pack it with a clementine (thank god for you J!) and I was always surprised that it felt like I had more money those months (oh...I spent it though...doh!). Some lessons you have to learn more than once I guess....because I ate out frequently during my last job. Oh the waste....maybe if I had read the above post...things might have been different?