Eat healthy for cheap

Yes, I said eat healthy for cheap.  Many food manufactures charge a premium for their “Healthy” foods.  The same goes for a restaurant.  He is a really good alternative.  GO to your favorite sub shop and get the veggie sub.  If you think about it, it is like a salad with bread sticks.  Tonight I had a foot long sub with all the veggies (except pickles) and topped off with Buffalo sauce.  Spicy, healthy, and cheap.  I added a bottle of water to with it and it cost me $5.62.  Not bad for dinner for a road warrior.
One thing to watch out for is the dressing.  Stick to something that is not creamy.  The Mayo adds around 110 calories per 6 inches of sandwich.  Chipotle dressing, 100 calories per 6 inches of sandwich. Here are a few good choices: Sweet Onion (30 Cal.), Honey Mustard (30 Cal.)
Also, do not forget the salad bar at a grocery store.  Choose wisely and you can eat well, healthy, and for around $5.

Location is everything in a grocery store

Which items at a grocery store are marked up a little higher than the rest?  Here is an easy way to tell.  if the item is on an end-cap.  that is the space at the end of each aisle, those items are marked up.  That is prime real estate in the grocery world since there are no other products distracting your attention from them. Sure, on occasion these items may be on sale.  Most likely not.  The manufacture of these items are paying more for that prime real estate.  Who actually pays for that real estate?  You do.

Here is another no-mans-land in the grocery store.  Any item place between knee and shoulder height are marked up.  These shelves are easy to see and reach.  Look for items above your shoulders and below your knees for the best prices.

Before You Add Additional Expenses

Some friends of ours came to a really good decision today.  Often they would tell us about their financial difficulties.  We listen compassionately, but also we know in the back of our minds that their financial decisions , and no one else's, is the cause of their financial stress.  Today they made a very wise decision.

For the last few weeks, they have been telling us about the new dog they were going to get.  Everybody who knows me know that I am an animal lover with a weakness for dogs.  There is one sitting on my lap right now.  We generally encourage all homes with love to give to go to their local shelter.  There is no love in the world like that given by a rescued dog or cat.  With our friends though, this would not have been a good decision.

Just one of my dogs cost $400 a year in medical expenses.  That does not include food and treats.  Our dogs are part of our family and they give far more than they take, but they do take fiscal responsibility.  Far to often I read on the Facebook page of our local Human Society about animals whose owners could not afford to keep them.  Cats and dogs that have been with the family for 10 years having to be given up.  It is very sad and the animals do not know why they have been separated from their pack.  They do go through depression.

In short, before you do anything to add to your monthly expenses, get your financial house in order.  If you struggle to pay the bills, do not add to them.  This will only increase the stress on you and your family. As for our friends, they decided to focus on getting their financial house in order, then add to the family.

What is price per unit?

My wife and I were at a home improvement store to buy some stain for our fence.  We like to maintain the assets that we buy so we wanted to make sure our fence looked new when we sold our house.  I knew that the fence would take between 4 and 5 gallons of stain to complete.

At the store we found the color we liked and noticed that the stain came in 1 gallon and 5 gallon cans.  Which on was cheaper?  Most of us have a smart phone with a calculator on it.  I simply pulled out my calculator and figured out the price per unit.  In other words, was it cheaper to buy five separate one gallon cans or a single five gallon can?

I took the price of the 5 gallon can and divided it by 5.  This told me to cost of the price per gallon.  I then compared the price I just calculated to the price of the 1 gallon cans.  The 1 gallon cans were saving me $.10 a can.  Not much, but it does add up over time.

If you do not have a calculator or paper and pencil on hand, just ask a store attendant.  In the home improvement stores, they have calculators everywhere.

A few Coupon tricks

Manufactures want you to buy their products, but they also know that we are creatures of habit.  Manufactures know that they must find a way to lure you away from your habits of purchasing someone else's brand of fish sticks to get you to buy theirs.  How do they do it?  With coupons.

I’m not suggesting that you start dumpster diving to get mountains of coupons for products that you will not even use.  I’ve seen those extreme shows where die hard compounders spend more time planning a shopping run than actually going to work. Just use the coupons for the products that need that pop up right in front of you.

As always, go to the grocery store with a list that you intend to stick to.  When you get to the store, pick up the in store flyer and see if there are any coupons for the products that you need.  Don’t stick to a specific brand, but be flexible.

When you get to the product that you need, look for two things.  Peelies and blinkie boxes.  A peelie is a coupon that is on the product that you peel off and present at the register.  A blinkie box are those coupon dispenses that hang on the shelf with the product.  compare the prices of all the brands, taking into consider any coupons from the store flyer, blinkie boxes, and peelies. 

You may like a particular brand, but you may also like a brand that you have not yet tried.  Do not develop a brand loyalty.  The manufactures are not loyal to you.  They only want your money.  Spend it wisely.

Planning Your Grocery List

Impulse buying is a wonderful way to lose money.  Impulse shopping runs rampant in grocery stores.  Before going to the store, make a list and stick to it.  If I find that if I need to go to the store for something, I run in, get the items and then quickly get out of there.  This is especially true if I am hungry.  Know what you are going to buy and avoid the rest.  If you need to reduce temptation, move through the safe aisles of the store.  Those are the aisles of cleaning supplies and dog food. Get in, get out, get done.

Use that Rebate!

A rebate is a discount that you have to apply for through the mail in order to get it.  A rebate is used to tempt you to purchase a product and lure you into a store.  The thing about a rebate is that it takes effort and time to get it.  Both of these play into the hands of the products manufacture. 

They rational is that if it takes effort, most people will not bother doing it.  Actual rebate rates are very hard to get information on.  I’m finding that rebates are claimed at the rate of 2% to 80%.  That is a wide range.  The reason for this wide range may be to obscure the fact that this is a profit stream for the manufactures. 

One of the data sets that I looked at stated that nearly half of the TiVo subscribers in 2005 did not redeem their $100 mail in rebates.  The result, TiVo pocketed approximately $5,000,000 dollars. 

If you are considering purchasing a product because it has a rebate, make sure you read the terms carefully.  Many rebates come with requirements to purchase additional services with a required period of time that you must retain that service.

Many rebates require a little effort on your part.  As proof of purchase, you generally need to send in a copy of your receipt, any rebate documentation, and cut out the UPC bar code attached to the product’s box.  Yes, the actual code, no pictures or photo copies.  It looks like this.

So, is it worth the effort?  Everybody's choices and situations are different.  If it is a simple mail in with no strings attached, go for it.  Let’s check the value of your investment in the time it takes to sign the form, cut the UPC code, and drop it in your mailbox.  That should consume no more than 10 minutes of your time.  To let you know how much money you are making, take a look at the table below.  It simply shows you the rebate amount and how much that time spent equates to a salary per year working 40 hours a week.

Amount of Rebate	Annual Salary Equivalent
$10	$124,800
$25	$312,000
$50	$624,000
$100	$1,248,000

So, for all you TiVo subscribers out there who did not mail in your $100 rebates, for a brief 10 minutes of time, you missed out on working a job that had the equivalent of a 1 million dollar a year salary.  In the process of not redeeming your rebate, you made some stock holders very happy.