After a successful shopping trip on Monday the stockpile is up and running again. If you haven’t heard of this concept before, my aim is to have enough ’stores’ built up in my cupboard that I only purchase things when they are on special.
I have been doing this for so long now that I have a sense of the rotation of the specials, that is, that Vegemite may come on sale every five weeks and during that time my family will use 3 jars so when it comes on special I will buy 4 jars to cover it.
If you’re just starting out, take a percentage of your grocery money and use it to build up your stockpile. Each week you can devote more money to the specials and then you are left with a base line of weekly things that need to be purchased. If there are no specials to be purchased in a particular week the money just goes in the jar for next week.
I have found that I save so much money shopping this way and can ‘eat out of my cupboard or freezer’ any time I need to which is great in emergencies or when you want to save all your grocery money one week or if you are so busy you can’t go and do a ‘proper shop’. It prevents you from doing 4 runs to the grocery store a week to get ‘ just a couple of things’ which over the week adds up to more than your usual budgeted amount.

We hear all the time about how much money we can save. We see it in shops – save $15, save 30% or we read about people cutting $25 a week off their groceries.

But are these really savings ? and if they are where does the money go ? I am quickly realising that most so called ‘ savings’ should really be called ‘ not spending’, in that unless you were actually intending to spend, for example, $100 on an item and you only had to spend $80 and invested the $20 – then that is a true ’saving’.

Lets look at it this way.

When doing our budgets we go through and ‘reduce’ our outgoings – $5 a month here, $2 a month there etc etc. – adding up to $400 saving a month and a whopping $5000 saving a year. But do we actually invest that saving and earn interest off it and add to it and make it grow ? Or is it simply money that we could have spent but didn’t!

I am going to make sure that I ’scoop off’ all the little ’savings’ I find. For example, when I budget $150 for the weekly groceries but only spend $125 I will put some aside for weeks when I need to spend more to stock up and I will scoop off some and put in my ‘never to be touched’ savings account. I think in this category a 50/50 split with the leftovers will be good.

Are you frugal, do you work hard to save money …. do you channel that money into savings or into debt reduction ? Post your ideas here.

Tomorrow is number one son’s 9th birthday and tonight I dropped by our locally owned independent toy store ‘Mal’s’. Mal showed me the little plastic pieces that lock together to make things catalogue and told me that anything with a star next to it means that he is unable to order it in because they only supply it to the two large department stores in my area.
Well…………. I was horrified. Those Goliaths are going to put my David out of business if they keep going this way. All I can say and I shout it from the roof tops, is SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL BUSINESSES. I have seen it in a town I used to live in where the only fuel is distributed by those companies who are associated with a food store. Once the independents are gone, the market is owned by the Goliaths and there is no competition and they set the prices. Fuel in this town was 12 c a litre more expensive than the nearest town.
So… I am even more passionate now about keeping local people in business, whether you buy your eggs off the lady down the road, or attend your local farmers market or barter with friends. THINK BEFORE YOU BUY !!!!!