The Green Frugal

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Groceries: few people like shopping for them and even fewer enjoy paying for them. While there isn’t a way to get your groceries for free (short of dumpster diving), you do have options. Check out these tips on how to save money on groceries.

Save money on groceries with these easy tips. Image credit: cooksaid.com

Tip #1 – Plan your meals in advance

One recent study showed that 20% of grocery store purchases are unplanned, impulse buys. You can avoid this trap by planning your meals in advance and sticking to your list. Not only will you save money on groceries, but you’ll waste far less food.

Tip #2 – There is nothing wrong with generic 

Most people don’t end up buying generic brands because of perceptions of lower quality. However, you might be surprised to learn that blind taste tests have shown that some customers actually prefer the taste of generic brands. Make a point of giving generic or store brands an honest chance. If you don’t like them, it’s not like you spent an arm and a leg and you might be pleasantly surprised.

Tip #3 – Prepared foods cost extra

If you’re in a hurry, prepared foods are admittedly a great way to save time. However, as prepared foods are generally more costly, a better alternative if you’re short on time is to cook meals in advance and freeze them. While preparing a meal, it’s easy to double a recipe and freeze the leftovers for a later date. As an added bonus, homemade meals are generally healthier than prepared foods. If you need some freezer friendly recipe ideas, a great place to start is Life’s A Mom or Martha Stewart’s Freezer Friendly Foods.

Don't go shopping while hungry. Otherwise you might try something like this. Image credit: funnypicture.in.

Tip #4 – Avoid shopping hungry

This is an oldie but goodie. If you’re hungry while you shop, you will buy more. Everything looks appetizing when you’re ravenous. Make sure you eat a meal (or at least a snack) before shopping and you will find that a lot less ends up in your cart.

Tip #5 – Bend down or tippy toe

Grocery stores and supermarkets usually place the items with the highest markups around chest level. This makes these higher cost items easier to see and more accessible to shoppers. Resist the temptation to reach for what is nearest to you and kneel down or reach up for to find cheaper alternatives.

Tip #6 – Put a little effort into it

Did you know that there are plenty of supermarket chains that offer coupons if you visit their website? Not just that, but if you clip coupons and pay attention to the weekly deals that supermarkets have, you can’t help but save money. A smart shopper saves money on groceries simply by going where the deals are. There are also entire websites dedicated to the art of couponing. Check out Money Saving Mom or Frugal Living NW for daily sale and coupon updates.

Tip #7 – Price match

If you read about a particularly good deal in a store that’s far away, see if one of their local competitors will match the price. This not only saves you money on groceries, but also reduces gas consumption.

These are just seven of the best ways to save money on groceries that we have found, but of course we want to learn about what ways you have found that worked for you. Whether you saved ONE dollar, or twenty bucks, we want to know!

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As we mentioned in a previous post, Cash4Books employees recently participated in a clean-up of Cathedral Park in Portland, Oregon. You may be asking “Why is it called Cathedral Park?” Glad you asked….

The view of the underbelly of the St. Johns Bridge as seen from Cathedral Park. Photo credit: Joan Stevens

The original plan was to clean up the riverbank running on the west-side of the park.  However, thanks to the wettest spring on record in Portland, there was no riverbank.

Something's not right here. Photo: Joan Stevens

Fortunately, not all of the park’s residents were upset with this situation:

"Quack, quack" Photo: Joan Stevens.

So instead of cleaning the riverbank, we headed over to the nearby Baltimore Woods restoration project. We spent several hours cleaning trash and debris from the area. Despite occasional scrapes with blackberry bushes and shrubs we had a great time clearing the area and we were glad to be able to help! Our haul (see below) included a tire, shopping carts, about a dozen articles of clothing, a shovel and for some reason a “for sale” real estate sign.

The Clean-Up Crew! Photo Paul Schertz

A big thanks to SOLV for coordinating this event, as well as many other volunteer events in Oregon. If your’re in Oregon, check out solv.org for more about the organization and for information about other volunteer opportunities. For those living outside of Oregon, visit volunteermatch.org.

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Here’s a reminder for all of you avid readers out there who have gone cyborg (converted to reading books on a digital device): sell us your paper books. We still love them, even if they’re not squeaky clean and digital.

To those Kindle readers out there, I see lots of you reading your eBooks on the train, and you look like nice enough people. Now I’m wondering if we can take those paper books off your hands. They’re just gathering dust and cluttering up your office.

Although the digital revolution is progressing, the game of buying and selling used books is still alive and well (both as a hobby and as a career). So for you Kindle-ites out there, sell us those paper books that you won’t be taking on vacation anymore. Just don’t drop that Kindle in the pool.

Last I checked, it was about $140 bucks to get started with one of those newfangled reading devices. Why not offset the cost by selling us your real books?

Has your kindle made these seem obsolete? Sell them to us! Photo credit: Fredrik Rubensson, Flicker.

But the purpose of this blog entry is not an anti-Kindle diatribe or to extol the joys of buying and selling used books (which there are many joys, discoveries, surprises, and financial advantages), but rather the purpose of this blog entry is to remind all of the Kindle buyers out there to sell us your books since you’re pretty much done with them.

Clear off the bookshelf and sell your used books. You’ve probably got 3G or something, so who needs a bookshelf? Just box ‘em up, and we’ll even pay for the shipping.

Head on over to Cash4Books.net and we’ll give you a bunch of cash for those dusty, glue-bound bricks of verbiage (which we happen to love just a smidgen more than their digital, dustless counterparts).

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UPDATE: Congratulations to our DonorsChoose gift card winner, Andrea Lisa Lopes!

And thank you to all who shared their volunteer experiences and ideas. It is great to hear that so many of our readers are involved in helping out their communities. It is truly inspiring!

This coming Sunday, the team here at Cash4Books.net is going to a volunteer event where we will help to clean up Cathedral Park in Portland, OR. Stay tuned for more details about our experience!

We can't wait to help clean-up beautiful Cathedral Park! Photo Credit: iadk, Flicker

This got me thinking about the many benefits of summer volunteer events. You can get your whole family outside and actually enjoy the sunshine and warm weather. Additionally, if you pick the right volunteer event you can actually get yourself and your family some decent exercise. I know I was pretty sore after one of our previous volunteer events. Finally and perhaps most importantly, you are able to give back to the community!

We’d like to hear from you about summer volunteer event ideas that are great for the whole family. Or let us know about a previous volunteer event that you enjoyed. We’ll pick our favorite and the winner will get a $100 Donors Choose gift card!

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We love that you want to sell your books to us! It’s a winning situation all around: you clear space and get cash and we sell your books to others who want to read them.  Less waste is sent to our landfills as the lifecyle of each book is expanded. But have you ever thought about all of the other things lying around your house that you don’t need? What about those used electronics?

This would also be a cool way to recycle your electronics. It might take a bit more time than selling them to BuyMyTronics.com. Photo: Ross

Well now thanks to our friends at BuyMyTronics.com you can recycle your electronics for cash. BuyMyTronics is an electronics buyback company where you can sell your used electronics including iPods, iPads, smartphones and digital cameras. Check them out here and earn some cash for living green.