Nifty Thrifty Week: Day 3 with Kelly Hancock
Welcome to day three of our Nifty Thrifty week featuring ideas, stories, recipes and GIVEAWAYS from five frugal guests.
(And it all started with my devotion entitled The Boomerang of Blessing. You can click here to read it but be sure to come back!)
Up today is a woman whose book I was asked to endorse a while back. I’d never heard of her but I quickly put her at the tip-top of my “Favorite frugal authors” list. And I absolutely love her main reason for living frugally–so you can give more money away!
When Kelly left her job as a successful sales rep for a Fortune 500 company to stay home with her newborn, she learned quickly to live on less than half the family’s former income. With no special training (and an initial repulsion to budgeting of any kind!), she figured if she could do it, anyone could.
With Luke 12:24 as her cornerstone, she shares her lifestyle of a growing faith, her passion for healthy foods, and her desire to give back as much as possible on her daily cost-cutting blog, FaithfulProvisions.com, and in her book, Saving Savvy: Smart and Easy Ways to Cut Your Spending in Half and Raise Your Standard of Living…and Giving.
Today here as part of Nifty Thrifty Week, she is teaching us to eat healthy on a budget. She is also giving away three copies of her book, Saving Savvy: Smart and Easy Ways to Cut Your Spending in Half and Raise Your Standard of Living…and Giving. As with all the posts this week, you have until Sunday night at midnight EST to comment and be entered in the drawing. All the winners will be announced Monday.
Now, enjoy Kelly’s idea-packed post!
5 Strategies for Eating Healthy on a Budget
One of the most frequently asked questions I get from my readers is, How can my family eat healthy and stay on our budget? Unfortunately, it’s true that eating healthy foods can cause your grocery to bill to rise. Coupons are plentiful for processed foods along with unhealthy snacks and drinks, but how do you save money if you’re trying to avoid those items and striving to eat more healthy foods? There are several cost-cutting strategies that I always count on to help me save money on the healthy foods my family enjoys. These are things I incorporate regularly when I head to the grocery store.
Eat Seasonal Produce. Long before we had supermarkets and wholesale clubs, we had farms and farmers. My grandmother lived on a farm, and she taught me to understand that God has a reason for everything He does, including the order of the seasons and the harvest that is produced throughout the year. It is all part of His divine, orderly way of doing things. Even the fact that foods have different colors, representing different nutrients, indicates that there must be an order to God’s eating plan for us. If we eat what the land produces, when it produces it, we will not only achieve great benefits for our bodies, but we will save money too. When food is in season, it is at its lowest price.
*Download my FREE Seasonal Produce Guide HERE.
Use Your Freezer. With fresh foods comes the dilemma of how to store and preserve them, so you can enjoy and not waste them by having to throw out rotten or spoiled food. Flash-freezing fresh foods is an easy process that will save you lots of money and time. Use the process below to freeze items at their peak of freshness. This process eliminates clumps, so you can scoop out individual or family-size portions with ease. (Watch my How to Flash Freeze video HERE.)
- Dice vegetables or fruit.
- Place the small pieces on a cookie sheet lined with waxed paper.
- Place the sheet in the freezer for one to two hours. Once the food is frozen, transfer to freezer bags (labeled with the name of the item and the date) and return to the freezer.
Another food preservation method, canning, is not really difficult, it just takes some time. Learn one of the easiest canning methods, Hot Water Bath Canning HERE.
Utilize Meal Planning. It is critical to create a meal plan before you head to the grocery store. It can be as simple as knowing what meals you will be making, instead of just shopping for whatever your mood dictates. Meal planning answers the “What’s for dinner?” question, but it also answers the “What am I shopping for?” question that comes first. By having a meal plan, I have peace of mind, feel better about what I will be eating during the week, and save so much time. Check out my Recipe Box HERE for easy recipes your whole family will love.
*Download my FREE Meal Planning Template HERE.
Cook from Scratch. I love to cook, but I really love the savings I get when I make my own healthy recipes as an alternative to pre-packaged foods. Ease into cooking from scratch by starting with something simple, like my Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins or my Homemade Pizza Sauce. You’ll avoid extra costs along with the extra preservatives and higher sodium content.
Stock ahead. A paradigm shift occurs in your mind when you realize that if you only buy what’s on sale, and you buy enough to last you until the next sale, you will save money. Most grocery stores now offer weekly sale prices on organic produce and meat. Check the weekly sales flier for the featured organic deals, and buy enough of the item to last you until the next sale. Learn more about how to stock ahead HERE.
What are some of your favorite tips for eating healthy on a budget? Comment and you might win my book!
I try to shop for items on sale and use coupons. Thanks for the tips!
I really like Faithful Provisions information. Would really love to get her book. Thanks for including her!!
Thank you for all you tips. Being frugal to give more is a blessing I agree. Here’s an idea choose a family or friend that you can alternate a meal with. They don’t have to join you at your house but can pick up or drop off the dinner, gives a family a treat to have someone else cook that night. Then on another day they do dinner for you. It is great fellowship if you get together as a family too. Dinners that stretch are good like Spaghetti, Dumplings, Mac Cheese, things that stretch and are home style cooked meals. Bon Apetite
I guess planting a little garden has been our family’s most cost effective way to save and eat healthy! We are blessed with a daughter who LOVES greens, potatoes, squash, cucumbers and tomatoes…eager to learn how to maximize this by learning to flash freeze and meal plan!
Love the printouts, especially the seasonal fruit guide! Great ideas I can do! Cooking more from scratch.
Buy bulk fruits and veggies at Costco. Good produce!!
To save money I’ve been trying to cook more from scratch. Can’t wait to try the pizza sauce recipe. Thanks for the great tips.
We joined a CSA and I cannot buy the same produce in the store for what I pay for my CSA that is delivered to my door.
When things are in season I buy cases of produce from the farmers and can and freeze for winter. So much better than store bought and such a treat.
It is so frustrating going shopping. All those warnings going on in my head. Some things bad, the good is SO EXPENSIVE. I want us to eat healthy, but we are on a really limited budget and it gets so tiring trying to know what is good and bad. I like your article and would love to read your book!
We garden! If you don’t have enough space outside, do window boxes or a hanging garden. We also do CSA and support local organic farmers.
I buy in bulk and try to make the most of the ingredients I buy. I really need to work on meal planning and planning ahead! Thank you for this post – I look forward to checking out the faithful provisions website and tools!
Blessings,
Emily
Would LOVE to learn more money saving tips and strategies!
Planned over meals are the only way we survive! Other people refer to this as “leftovers” – but in our family – cook once – eat at least 2 if not 3 to 4 times on the same meal. Praise God I have a crew that is not “allergic” to Planned over meals. I package meals in lunch carry containers and LABEL everything with little yellow sticky notes. We sometimes get laughed at in work lunchrooms, but we have discovred if food is clearly labeled in the fridge – it actually makes it to the lunchbox and not the back of the fridge where is becomes an unidentified science projects.
I enjoy buying what’s in season also .. Love fresh food from my grandparents garden! Free with just a little work .. :)
I shop in bulk. Even though we have a big family (8 of us). I can still take bulk packages of meat and other items and break them into smaller units, spreading the cost. But you have to be careful not all big packages are cheaper then the regular size. Some actually cost you more. I also shop at Aldi’s. I use coupons when I can. Bottom line I am always looking for ways to not only stretch my dollars but to eat better too.
Thanks for all the tips. We are trying to eat healthier at our house. I am taking it in baby steps, so that my kids and husband don’t totally rebel against it.
What great ideas and tips! Thank you! One thing I’ve found to save money is to buy from the local farmers markets. We also have a delivery service that is affordable for all incomes. Eating healthy might cost a little more but I’ve realized that my family doesn’t want to eat out when we are eating healthier. We end up saving money. We are going to try planting a garden this year too. I’m looking forward to it!
We are eating low-fat and low-sodium. We tend to concentrate on good vegetables and fruits with just a small amount of meat/protein at each meal. Also, we avoid all prepared foods and desserts and eat fruit for our sweets. We rarely eat meat that is not incorporated into a casserole.
I always check for best sales on meats for freezing purposes! And once a year we go blueberry/strawberry picking on farms and do the flash freeze! It’s awesome! Thanks!
I use a meal plan strategy to create a grocery list. Not sure it’s super healthy, but I know it saves money. Thanks for the great ideas!
Wonderful ideas…I was not aware that organic food would ever go on sale…I will look for that. Thank you for the weekly menu…looks very useful.
Meal planning is definitely my best defense against breaking my budget…My food budget for a month is $500 for our family of five, and I’d love to be able to reduce that even more.
I shop at Aldi’s – I had an extreme aversion to it at first, but things are so much cheaper! It’s crazy! And while they still have processed foods, buying their fruits and veggies at a much more discounted rate than other stores really helps!
I shop at my local farmer’s market. The cost for fresh produce is so much cheaper than at the grocery store and most of it is picked fresh the morning that I purchase it. Some of the vendors give discounts if your bring your own bag. And I get to try things that I never would find in the grocery store!! I absolutely love it!!
I have learned to make most of our own snacks including granola bars and fruit leather that everyone likes. This controls how much sugar is included and what all is included in the recipe. I also dehydrate a lot of fruit to make our own trail mix with just a couple boxes of cereal.