One of the best ways to lower your variable expenses is to keep the grocery bill in check. I won't get into my whole system (or the one I want to have) right now. While I am a fan of buying in bulk, I'm pretty skeptical of places like Costco. Maybe because my husband once came home with a 40-pack of Creme Eggs a couple of Easters ago. (Did I mention we've made money mistakes in the past?) But places like that do tend to make people lose their minds; if you're going to shop there, you have to know your unit prices to determine what's actually a good deal and what isn't. I'm not there yet.
I prefer to apply the buying in bulk principle to my local discount grocery store. For instance, on my most recent grocery trip, I purchased 1.5 kg (aka about 3 lbs) of lean ground beef for 10$. Normally, since we only use ground beef about once a week or so, I buy 500g at a time for around 5$, freeze it, and use it later. With this family pack, I cut it in four as soon as I got home (and put away the groceries, and fed and changed my daughter), kept one quarter out for tacos that evening, and double-plastic-wrapped the other three quarters for later use. My husband and I do like meals that involve ground beef (tacos, chili, etc.) but we often don't finish them in one go, so we end up wasting meat. By making our own smaller packs from one bigger pack, we'll use up all the meat and get one extra meal out of it.
In a future post, I'll explain how I shop once every two weeks for groceries and keep my sanity. For now, Happy Valentine's Day, and way to go for gold, Canada!
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