Save Time and Money with Click N Pull @ Sam's Club!

Get this! My neighbor, Mark, has opened a whole new possibility for time and money savings with regard to groceries! He told me about the Click N Pull at Sam’s Club. I was not aware that such a magical operation was occurring on a regular basis at my good ‘ol Sam’s Club. I have been walking past several taped off shopping carts full of merchandise at the front of the store and not questioning what they were or why they were there. It should be no wonder since by the time I reach the front of the store at Sam’s Club I am pushing my 100 lb cart ahead of me with my arms locked straight and my body at a 45 degree angle while my 2 year old, (who has kicked both his sneakers off at this point), sits backwards in the seat with the belt on his back after squirming around in a full 90 degree turn and is hollering at the top of his lungs, “DOWN!” So it is no big surprise to me that I never wondered what the shopping carts at the front of the store were. I had no idea that my curiosity of those shopping carts could have changed my life quite some time ago. Thanks to Mark, I may finally benefit from this Click N Pull operation that I didn’t know existed before.

So here is the magic. You can shop at Sam’s Club online, submit your order and someone at your local store will gather all the items for you and a shopping cart will be waiting for you when you arrive WITH YOUR STUFF ALREADY IN IT!!!!!!! Isn’t this HUGE? I’m sure you have some questions as I did so let me tell you what I found out. If you place your order before 5 pm it will be ready the first thing in the morning. If you are a business member it will be ready at 7 am or if you are a regular member it will be ready for you at 10 am. You will get an email to notify you that your order is ready for pick up. You pay when you go to the store to pick up your merchandise, not online. If you do not pick up your merchandise within 72 hours then they will reshelve the items. They place your frozen and refrigerated items in their respective coolers in the back so when you arrive for pick up someone is sent to bring them up front. If you want something that is not listed online, (I had 3 items), you can make a note of it in the notes/substitutions box but my notes got overlooked so it is best to call to notify the customer service desk that you have notes written and they will look for them. My local Sam’s Club has a guy, (Bob), who is the designated Click N Pull guy. He fills all the orders in the morning when he arrives at 6 am and I was told that he never misses the notes. My notes were overlooked because I placed my order in the afternoon when he was gone and someone who isn’t accustomed to filling Click N Pull orders filled mine. If I can figure out all these little nuances this could really be a HUGE time saver as well as a money saver for my family.


Why do I refer to Sam’s Club Click N Pull as a money saver you ask? We all know that when we are going through the isles we end up buying something that we don’t really need and which may also not be in our budget. At Sam’s Club and other wholesale clubs, it usually isn’t an innocent $2 donut purchase that we go home with. Instead, it’s a $5 case of donut purchase that ends up in your cart. Come on, you know what I mean. So, if you can plan your list more objectively at home with your shopping list rather than perusing the isles with a hungry stomach or a sweet tooth I believe that there is no doubt that Click N Pull will be a grocery money savings. I haven’t been this excited about a time saving/money saving scheme since I started monthly meal planning. Ahhhhh, it feels good to be a planning/organizing junkie today.

Discover Aldi's and Save $$

I discovered the unbelievable grocery savings at Aldi’s a few years ago. Once I “got it” I couldn’t believe that I had passed up the Aldi’s experience for the first couple years that we lived near one. Once you “get it” you belong to the Aldi’s fan club. I told my friend Colleen that I had finally shopped at Aldi’s after hearing her rave about it for some time and she said, “I TOLD YOU.” I was officially a member. Let me explain how awesome the savings are at Aldi’s even if you don’t track the price of every item you buy. You know that sick feeling you get in your stomach when you check out at the regular Piggly Wiggly/Giant Eagle/Stop & Shop/Krogers when you hear your total? It just seems that you can never get over the fact that you spent THAT MUCH on harmless little necessary grocery items. Well, you get the complete opposite feeling at the Aldi’s check out counter. You can’t believe that ALL those groceries you bought only added up to the total the smiling clerk tells you. It’s unbelievable the difference you experience at the check out.

What the heck is Aldi’s anyway you ask? It is a small grocery store that sells the best quality items it can at the lowest possible price. It does not try to be a full service grocery because of it's size. Aldi’s started in 1976 in Iowa and has grown to over 1,000 stores from the East Coast to Kansas. They attempt to eliminate the bells and whistles that increase price. You’ll see how they do that by visiting a store once. Be sure to take a quarter with you because you will need it to access a grocery cart. You’ll get your quarter back when you return your cart. Don’t be afraid, it’s simple and intuitive. You’ll figure it out. When you enter the store you will instantly sense that something is different but you may not be able to figure it out. It’s the lack of music, (which I believe large grocery chains insert subliminal messages into to get you to buy more and I am only ½ kidding). The products are shelved in the bulk box cases that they come in rather than placed neatly on fancy shelves by store employees. Aldi’s does not supply grocery bags or a bagger. You will bag your own groceries with bags that you either bring or purchase there (paper for 5 cents or large heavy duty bags for 10 cents each). Aldi’s does not accept credit cards but you can pay by debit card or cash. So, the Aldi’s experience is a little different from your typical large chain grocery store but the differences allow for savings that are passed on to the consumer.

Unfortunately you can’t get EVERYTHING at Aldi’s. And a few things I feel may be lacking in quality but there are some really good finds at Aldi’s that you simply can not go wrong with. Here are some items that I have had consistent good luck with at Aldi’s:

Milk
Yogurts
Sour cream/butter/cottage cheese/cream cheese and other dairy goods
Refrigerated Shredded Parmesan/Romano and other premium cheeses such as feta and blues
Spinach
Blueberries
Lettuce leaves of all kindPeppers – red/yellow/orange are always great
Bananas – sometimes a little browned so they go right into the freezer for smoothies
Oranges, strawberries, grapes
All tomatoes, including grape tomatoes
Cucumbers
Beans – pinto dried and canned refried beans
Flour & corn tortillas
Tuna
Pepperoni
Brown Sugar/Flour/Sugar/Vanilla/salt/pepper/baking powder
Honey
Pickles
Corn Meal
Oatmeal
Oat O Cereal
Generic Cereals: raisin bran, rice krispies, cheerios
Tortilla chips & other chips like generic doritos
Frozen berries
Frozen orange juice
Fruit popsicles (yummy)
Ice creams

I would love to add to this list of things that other people regularly buy at Aldi’s so please post here and I will keep adding to it.

Get Your Spices Cheap & Save Loads of Money

Do you ever visit a country store that has flour, oats and spices priced crazy cheap? Have you ever sat in front of the spice bins wishing you remembered which spices you were running low on? I have and then I kicked myself for wasting the trip because I could have used quite a few spices and things and I would have saved some bucks if I had only known what I needed. Now we visit the same country store every Autumn for apple picking so I plan my visits more wisely. My mother also happens to frequent some country stores so I keep a list of the items that those stores carry. (They thankfully keep such a list). If I can’t make my annual trip Mom will pick up some things for me when she goes to her stores.

It is a mystery to me how or why these country stores sell their herbs and spices so inexpensively. However they do it, you should take advantage. I keep quite a number of spices since I am a frequent cook and I like to explore new recipes. I keep the little store size jars in my cupboard for easy access and a bin in my basement pantry for the overflow. In my overflow spice bin I keep a list for my annual country store trip. So when I go to refill a store size jar in my kitchen with my overflow bin and I see that something is running low I add it to my annual shopping list. It is easy to do and it saves a ton of money since I cook a lot.

Here are some examples of the savings I have experienced over the last few years. I have this rather large bag of bay leaves that cost 72 cents at the country store but a store size jar which would be about ¼ of the amount costs around $5 at the grocery. There is also a 1 lb bag of sesame seeds which cost $1.33 but the jar you get at the grocery store holds a measly 2.25 oz (there are 16 oz in 1 lb) and costs around $5. This could easily become a quantifiable category for the “Things I didn’t Buy” savings envelope.

Frugal Habits – Skip the Juice, Eat the Fruit

We all know that juice is packed with calories. I haven’t come across too many parents who give their kids free reign with regard to juice intake. Juice that is truly juice, 100% fruit juice, has many health benefits as evidenced by the nutrition label on the container with all the vitamins. Juice comes from fruit so what is the harm? It is a processed food that strips away the fiber from a fruit. It is also expensive, (as are all processed foods that claim to be “healthy”). Eating the fruit that juice is made from is much more beneficial than consuming just the juice from the same fruit and it is usually less expensive. I know that someone reading this wants to bring up the fact that some juices are fortified with additional vitamins. If you aren’t eating a well-rounded diet that provides all of your required daily vitamins perhaps your doctor will provide you with a script for a vitamin, (cheaper than over the counter vitamins), otherwise just eat a healthy well-rounded diet of whole foods with natural fibers that will satisfy your hunger without excessive calorie intake (yea, sure, says the sugar addict) and save some bucks on unnecessary juice.

Do my kids drink juice you ask? Sometimes they have orange juice with their breakfast but otherwise we do not buy any other juice keeping the grocery bill down and fruit consumption up. On top of that, juice is a special treat to my kids and is much more appreciated that way.

Pricebooking 101

What is a Pricebook? I got this term from the esteemed Amy Dacyczyn. It is a little comparison price list of items that you regularly purchase and consume. You can keep a Pricebook in many ways. You can hand-write everything in a small notebook to keep track of prices or you can keep it up to date on your computer in a word document or excel format and print it out to take with you as you shop. It is sometimes difficult to keep track of the “true” price of items (so you can compare on an apples-to-apples basis) because they are sometimes sold in different quantities in different stores. Unless you are a math whiz the best way to get a handle on how you can get the most for your money is to sit down and calculate the best price per quantity. I will not lie, it is a bit time consuming to start a Pricebook, but like a lot of organizational money-saving tools, once you have it up and running it takes very little time and effort. I have not been keeping my Pricebook up to date lately but I have been saving my receipts so today I will be updating my Pricebook.

When I first made my Pricebook I got very excited about playing the “game.” It was empowering to know that I was no longer throwing money into the wind by purchasing the wrong items at the wrong store for the wrong price. It is an eye opener.
It is also scary to see how prices have been creeping up .10 or .60 cents at a time. We have all been complaining about this price creeping phenomena in our current economy. I try to remember that Americans and other Westerners spent a small fraction of their income on food in comparison to other countries where 80-100% of people’s income must often go toward feeding their family (see More with Less Cookbook).

Keeping a Pricebook opened up an underground grocery world. I quickly found that I was not the only one keeping up with the best prices. If you shop the grocery flyers you will see that it is filled with not-so-great bargains marketed to make you think that it is a great bargain. Before Pricebooking, I didn’t realize this. Many sales prices in a weekly grocery flyer can be beat at Aldi’s or Sam’s Club. When you identify a sale in a weekly flyer that can not be beat elsewhere and therefore is truly a good bargain it means that it’s time to stock up on that item if it is a pantry item, freezer friendly item or paper item. I found that there is a whole underground world that I didn’t know about of people like me who were keeping track of these truly good bargain stock up sales because when I went to the store to stock up the item was GONE! SOLD OUT! And it was ONLY those items. Sometimes it’s like getting an A+ on a report card because if you see that the item you have identified as a true bargain is missing from the shelves or nearly missing, then you got the answer on the test right. Our local store, Giant Eagle (equivalent to Super Stop and Shop, Piggly Wiggly, Krogers, etc) will give you a “rain check” on these items that are sold out which will allow you to purchase the item at the sale price when it comes in even if it is after the weekly sale flyer. You can get your rain check at the customer service counter.

Yes I know that this is a lot for some people and most people I know that love to tease me about these things will have a field day with this, but I will tell you that I am paying less for the same stuff that they are buying and that is worth it for me. I do have a couple friends and my mom who like to do the pricebook occasionally with me by checking prices with me so that is fun. I must admit that I haven’t figured out the coupon world just yet. I have tried a couple times but I never seem to pull out the right coupon with kids in tow and I never seem to come across the right coupon so the Pricebook is my replacement for that although I aspire to get the coupon thing down. I find the Pricebook more satisfying because a coupon you can usually only use on one item whereas hitting a Pricebook bargain you can really stock up at a great price. Here is a view at how I have kept my Pricebook in word format. I occasionally just delete the stores that do not have the best price and leave just the best price on my Pricebook so I know the number I am trying to beat.

Pepperdige Farm Outlet Specials

If you haven't made it to the bread outlet yet but have been thinking about it, look at these specials. Clear out our freezer for some freezer real estate and save some cash!

Empty the Pantry Dinner Entrees

Being as the December menu is during the Holiday season, I thought it would be a good time to institute a pantry dinner entrée. About 7 years ago as a novice cook I wanted to branch out so I started seeking out recipes for ideas. It has been a good learning experience and I have certainly broadened our horizons but now I use recipes as a crutch. I can throw some simple things together but ultimately I rely on recipes too much. So in the sake of saving some extra cash for Christmas I thought that trying to throw together an “empty the pantry meal” every couple weeks might not only save some money but also get me back to “creative culinary genius” as I like to call it. The best meals always used to come out of my kitchen when stuff was just thrown together. My husband misses those days but he forgets how annoying it was when he would ask for the same meal again and I couldn’t replicate it because it was just thrown together. Now of course there are a lot of great resources out there on the web to give you some ideas. Here are a few I have come across:

http://www.supercook.com/
http://www.foodieview.com/
http://www.recipematcher.com/

Most recipe websites will allow you to search recipes by ingredient:

http://www.recipeland.com/search/by_ingredient/
http://allrecipes.com/Search/Ingredients.aspx

And yes, the December menu is almost done!

Efficient Kitchen Processes saves time and Money

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that there are many tasks in the whole food kitchen that can be done efficiently to save time. Warning: I’m about to babble on yet AGAIN about how great meal planning is. Here it goes. If you have a menu printed out with the ingredients in each meal, when you go to chop your onions for the first meal of the week it is super simple to scan the rest of your week to see if you can chop up 4 onions instead of one for later use. Throw the unused portions that you have chopped in a container and throw them in the fridge. This kind of efficiency can be used in so many ways to reduce the time you spend in the kitchen without sacrificing a whole food diet.

Besides dinner meals, I efficientize (ooo, a made up verb) several breakfast processes also. Whenever I make pancakes for instance I will get out my bowl plus two airtight containers. I measure out my dry ingredients first and triple my recipe into each container. I then label with the kind of pancake and the needed ingredients on the airtight containers since we have 4 or more different pancake recipes regularly. I also do this with several cookie mixes and muffin mixes and most anything that I bake often.

Other ideas include tripling rubs or spice mixes. We like a yellow tumeric rice recipe but there are about 5 or 6 dry ingredients to it. The recipe goes so quickly when it is already mixed up and it takes so little extra time to quadruple the recipe when I already have the ingredients out. I also have a blackened catfish recipe that I like to make so I make a big batch of the blackened seasonings and it lasts many meals.

I believe that the more of these processes that you approach with efficiency in mind the more second nature it becomes for you. It’s like trying to establish a new good habit or way of thinking. You can approach many tasks with an efficient mindset but the kitchen holds the most opportunities.

This efficient approach also lends itself to less waste and therefore money savings. For instance, we love our pumpkin pancake recipe but it only calls for 6 T of pumpkin puree. One can of pumpkin puree holds a lot more than 6 Ts so unless I want to get myself into trouble with those browned buttered frosted cookies (and I have in order not to waste pumpkin puree), I will measure out as many 6Ts in containers or baggies to freeze as the can holds. Then when I get out my premixed pumpkin pancake mix, I just microwave the frozen 6Ts of pumpkin puree, add my butter and milk and we are cooking. Also, in October my menu had three dishes that used canned pineapple chunks. This was no coincidence. The pineapple chunks were needed for two recipes and a third recipe just called for pineapple juice to marinate the meat. When I cooked the first entrée that called for pineapple I scanned the rest of my meals and saw that I needed to divide the can for the second recipe (rather than let the kids gobble up the pineapple) and save the juice for the third.

So when you are all wondering how I cook so much with 3 young kids, I swear to you that I do not. I have freezer meals, crockpot meals and simple pasta meals during the week and I efficientize processes as much as possible for the other meals. The most time I spend in the kitchen for a meal is when I am making a massive amount to freeze or when I am trying a new recipe. It can be done.

A Spontaneous Leftover Day!

Each week I schedule a leftover day. It prevents us from getting burned out on the same food two days in a row and is quite fun to have a completely bizarre variety of food in one meal. I need not tell you that it keeps the grocery budget down as an added bonus. In the event we do not have leftovers (which rarely happens), I’ll throw something together that I have on hand or if we have minimal leftovers that don’t quite make up a meal then I’ll supplement it with something. Last night it was obvious that our fridge needed a leftover day. Somehow I missed a leftover day last week so our leftovers were bursting. Another bonus about the monthly menu planning is that there is no guessing as to how old something in the fridge is. As I switch up the menu I will mark it up so I always know when we had what when I go to clean out the fridge. No fear of eating mysteriously aged food and no risk of wasting food that is only a few days old just because we can’t quite remember when we had that particular meal last.

I especially like an unscheduled spontaneous leftover day because it is a day that I normally would have to cook but didn’t have to. It also means that I can shift everything on the menu forward a day which makes us ahead on the meal planning game because the longer it takes to use up the food we have the happier our budget is.

Another Happy Day at the Bread Outlet

I took out my last 2 loaves of bread from the freezer today so I made a quick bread store run. I was welcomed into the store with a sign that read, "Buy 2, Get 1 Free." yea! I got 12 loaves and 3 for a friend. Happy Bread Outlet Day!

I must confess something. I miscalculated my bread savings in the "Bread Outlet Stores Rock" post because the Pepperidge Farm outlet store charges $1.89 per loaf not the $1.29 I quoted. However, all is not lost because a friend of mine just priced a loaf of Pepperidge Farms at Giant Eagle at $3.69. So if I exclusively shopped at the Pepperidge Farm outlet store rather than the farther away Schwebel's outlet (.89/loaf) at 1.89 per loaf, 365 loaves a year gives me a minimum savings of $657 annually. You can get bread on sale at the grocery occasionally (my friend got hers on sale for $3.29) but that can not outdo the bread outlet's 'buy 2 get 1 free' sale or the frequent 20% sales they hold. So thankfullythe more accurate numbers still conclude that Bread Outlet Stores Rock!

Minimalist Preferences = True Frugal Life

Since entering this little blogging world I have spent a little time searching for other blogs that talk about frugal family life or money saving tips and such. This is one of my favorite topics so I am just sure that I will find some good ideas somewhere on-line. One theme seems to run through most all of the blogs that I have previewed thus far, how to spend less on stuff. I hate stuff. I don’t want stuff. I also despise shopping for stuff. So aside from buying necessites like deodorant, toothpaste, toilet paper and soap and such I do not give a rats arse if Walgreens has 20 deals right now on unnecessary things like anti-aging cream, which I don’t believe work, or disinfectant kitchen counter spray. Grocery savings coupons and tips usually include 50 cents off some RiceARoni mix or something similar. No, that is not saving. What would really be saving is buying bulk plain rice and adding your own herbs purchased at a country store at a deep discount. It would be cheaper AND healthier since the cheap version would contain less sodium and preservatives and who knows what other un-pronounceable ingredients. Instead of buying anti-aging cream I would prefer to read about how vegetable shortening or something that most households have on hand might be proven to have anti-aging effects when applied topically or how a mixture of distilled vinegar and water disinfects the same as expensive kitchen counter cleaners. Do you get what I’m saying? The way I like to save money is by truly NOT buying stuff vs. spending less on stuff. Making something out of nothing should be more appreciated than spending less on stuff for the sheer genious of it. I suppose this is why I like Amy Dacyczyn’s The Complete Tightwad Gazette so much. I believe the Gazette is out of print now but there are many money saving tips in there that a minimalist like me can appreciate. My hopes is to share money saving tips on this blog that involve a little more time perhaps and possibly a little more work but a lot less money and a lot less stuff.

I am certain that there are blogs out there that would appeal to my minimalist frugal preferences and when I find them I will be sure to add them to my blog list.

My favorite Day of the Month!

Today was it. It’s not my favorite day of the month just because it is pay day, although that helps, but it’s really more what pay day triggers for me that makes me happy. Today is:

1) Pay day which means budget allocation day & bill paying day (which used to be my LEAST favorite day before I budgeted)
2) The beginning of my two day monthly grocery shopping
3) Monthly grocery shopping means huge Sam’s shopping trip where I “play the game”

I won the game today by the way. I add everything up in my head as I go through Sam’s Club and have the kids help me remember numbers as we get distracted. The bigger the number and the closer I am to the total at check out the giddier I get. I often do a mid-month Sam’s Club run but it’s the first on of the month that is always a pricey run because I get all of my grocery items that will last throughout the month in one trip. For this trip I was really out of a lot of meats and I have committed to a shrimp dish for my Freezer Friends group so it was a big number. Being the dork that I am I really like to tell the cashier my estimate before the total is rung up. Today I said $332 and it came up at $329 and change and she said, “you won!”
My poor husband has to hear about this for a couple days at least. Now if I had guessed $329 he would be hearing about it for at least a week so he should be ok with just a couple days. He tries to be a good sport but really he just rolls his eyes and by the 10th time I tell him how superbly wonderful his wife is at budgeting and totaling groceries and such he’s had it and must ask me, “how much longer are you going to go on about it this time?”

So anyway, I also hit Walmart today and tomorrow hopefully I’ll hit Aldi’s and then Giant Eagle (compare to Stop & Shop, Piggly Wiggly or Krogers). I keep a price book which I will share at some point where I have compared prices of various items that I purchase on a regular basis. In general I have found that I get the most for my money buying bulk at Sam’s (even better than sale prices at Giant Eagle) and then the best bargains are found at Aldi’s and then Giant Eagle (especially with coupons which I am trying to be better at). So I shop the stores in that order, generally. So whatever I did not find at Sam’s will be bought at Aldi’s and whatever I don’t find at Aldi’s I get at Giant Eagle. That leaves me with nothing but produce runs at a much smaller local store, Heinen’s, which has wonderful produce and a great lunch meat that we like in our house ($5.99/lb or $4.99 on sale), milk runs at Aldi’s ($2.39-$2.69/gallon whole milk), and the bread outlet twice a month ($1.29 loaf or $1.03 on sale). Trader Joes is right by my gym and there are a few things I get there exclusively. It is easy for me to stop in at Trader Joes after the gym but it isn’t a regular monthly stop. It sounds like a lot of trips but I swear to you it isn’t. Before I monthly meal planned I felt like I was always running to the main store, Giant Eagle, and I was paying more than necessary if I had consolidated my trips to other stores and I would swear about the produce quality regularly.

My budget/”envelope system” has been in place for nearly a year and a half now and it feels so good to deposit little bits of money into my pretend envelopes and see goals get nearer and nearer each pay period. Budgeting the money for what we really need it for truly is a better feeling than going out and replacing our broken DVD player without having saved for it first or having a new sweater. I am a simple nerdy budget person and I love it! So happy budget day to any budgeters out there.

Bread Outlet Stores Rock!

Our household consists of a 6 year old, 4 year old, 18 month old, me and a husband who eats like a teenager. We go through exactly 1 loaf of bread each day. At our local supermarket a good brand name whole grain loaf costs around $2.69 not on sale (I’m sure that has increased like everything else since the last time I checked) and $1.99 when on sale. There are two different bread outlets in our area. One sells whole grain loaves for .89 each (up from .79 a year ago) and the local Pepperidge Farms outlet sells their loaves for $1.29 each. Pepperidge Farm has a “customer appreciation day” on a Saturday about once a month which offers a 20% discount bringing each loaf down to $1.03. Unfortunately the cheaper bread outlet (Schwebels) is a bit of a drive for me and when gas prices skyrocketed I could no longer justify the trip although I honestly never sat down and did the gas/mileage calculation. So let’s say I buy all my bread at the more expensive outlet and I can’t get there on the 20% discount day so I pay $1.29 per loaf. In one month I save $42. I know 42 bucks means different things to different people but that’s real money in this house. That’s $504 a year. Keep in mind that is a minimum savings. Occasionally when gas prices drop and I find the time or if we happen to be near the Schwebels outlet I always make sure I stop in and I also try to hit the 20% sale at Pepperidge Farms least every other month and I just know that the bread has to be closer to $2.89 at the grocer now.

$504 = > 1/2 a terrificly fabulous Christmas budget
More than enough to justify the occassional beer purchase on sale or at wholesale club.
More than enough to justify occassional wine purchases at Trader Joes.
More than enough to justify occassional soda purchase at Aldi's.
The list could go on . . . .

What allows me to fit a bread store run into my hectic three rug rat life is the less frequent grocery store trips that I make due to my monthly meal planning which would have to rank as the second biggest convenience that makes my family life easier and saves our household the most money. I feel a top 10 list coming on soon . . .