This is Part II in a series on saving money on groceries. This post will discuss purchasing generic vs. the name brand. Do you always buy the name brand? Or do you always buy the store brand/generic? An equal split of both? We all seem to have our loyalties when it comes to name brands. Years ago I remember my sister would get stuck on a name brand item and she wouldn't budge to try another. I used to think… Read the rest

In this series I'm going to tell you how to get ground beef cheaper, which is actually higher quality than standard ground beef. When I was six years old, my mom worked as a meat wrapper for the butcher shop in a local grocery store. All my life she's taken the sale cuts of meat to the butcher to have them ground. Most people don't seem to know that's an option – or maybe they are afraid to ask? Have… Read the rest

Do you still order your checks through your bank? You can save quite a bit of money if you order them yourself. A friend of mine has been collecting the inserts from the past few Sunday papers and asked if I could help her find the best deal. First let me say that it would be much easier to just use the inserts from the paper, than try to figure it out on the websites! I mistakenly thought I'd be… Read the rest

Along with customer service, phone quotes are apparently becoming a thing of the past. Yesterday my boss gave me an impromptu assignment. Find a plumber that could roto-root out our kitchen plumbing. Apparently one of our volunteers put a gallon or so of cooked asparagus down the disposal.  Asparagus is very fibrous and it wreaked havoc in our old pipes.  Our kitchen passes inspection regularly, but the building is old, and the pipes periodically give us trouble. So I got… Read the rest