Sunday, October 11, 2009

A Recession Proof Food Budget

By Mike Jones

Well, the recession is technically over. It sure doesn't feel like it, however. Employers are still not hiring and you may have been lucky enough to keep your job, but you wouldn't mind saving money each month. Especially, on your monthly food budget. How can you do this? You'll need help from the internet.

So, how do you get a food budget and stick to it while not spending a lot of time on this exercise? There are two ways you can do this. You can do it the slow, old fashioned way and look into kitchen for what food you already have in your kitchen. Second, go to your cookbooks and see what you can make with what you already have in the kitchen by looking at. Write down with a pen and paper the ingredients you need to buy and head to the grocery store with your shopping list. That's a good method, but it's very time consuming and not very efficient. Why not use the help of the internet?

With all the different websites to help you find awesome recipes, you might as well use them. Simply search "recipes by ingredients" and select from the list of recipe websites.

Now that you've found a website to find recipes based on the ingredients you already have, it's time to jump onto the site and give it a whirl. When on the recipe website, type in the ingredients or groceries you already have at home and search for what recipes you can make with those ingredients. It's that easy!

I try to do this each Sunday for the entire week because I have the most time on Sundays to grocery shop. I grocery shop early in the morning because the grocery store is not crowded and it's most efficient. I add in all the ingredients I already have at home and then select 5 recipes for the week. The website I use will allow me to print out a list of groceries that I need and I take this list to the store.

I usually spend around $50 for 2 people (my wife and I) for the entire week (Monday through Friday). This means we spend around $200 per month and this saves us probably around $100 each month or $1,200 per year in savings. Most of these recipe websites are free, so give them a shot!

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