Episode four thirty three, Tips for Grocery Shopping on a Budget.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live your life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are talking about grocery shopping tips. We just recently did an episode about meal planning. We try to do a food episode every couple weeks so or at least every couple.
Months, because we're all eating every single every single day, and it is an area that if we are able to really hone in on our spending, it can make a big difference in our financial situation how we can allocate money. So it makes sense that you all ask about food more than any other thing, and we're down.
Yes, we like food.
And it seems redundant. But there's also so many articles about grocery shopping and meal planning, and we get to cover a new article every time we do a food episode. So that's also fun, is getting a peek inside other people's strategies and what's really working for them, and not specifically the article we've chosen today but first, this episode
is brought to you by Snacks. By What you Love Without Going Broke is officially available for pre order, so grab your snacks because to celebrate, we are throwing a virtual launch party, and it's happening in just a few days Tuesday, August twentieth, at seven pm Eastern Standard. We
will be revealing some of our pre order gifts. Jill will be hosting a game for us to play, and everyone who attends gets a free gift, which is very relevant to this episode because the free gift is a fall meal plan, so you don't have to worry about your meal plan for the fall. We've got you covered with three months of fall produce sale specific recipes from our favorite food bloggers, so that is a free gift for everyone who attends and for everyone who pre orders.
In addition to the pre order gifts, there's gonna be a special party gift that is available, so everyone is welcome. There is no extra sign up required, You just have to be signed up for the friend Letter, so head to Frugal friendspodcast dot com to get on the front letter. If you already have the friend Letter in your inbox, you will see the link in your inbox. You should see it today and then we'll also have one on Monday.
So Frugal Friends Podcast dot com sign up. We will see you at the virtual launch party for by What you Love without going broke pre orders.
I'm so excited.
I can't wait to see what game I end up coming off when I am too.
Because we still I volunteered you for that, Yeah you did, because you are a actual virtual party host.
I have done it before, like it's not my time, but.
She's done it several times. And why would I let you do it for somebody else and not for us? Jill so true using your gifts in your true calling.
The last day of my thirty fourth year. The next day, August twenty first, I turned thirty five, So it's really it's going to be a bang.
The last day of your youth.
It is.
I've I've been thirty five for a while now, for a few months, and I can tell you youth is gone. So let's let's talk about groceries. So a few of the more recent episodes we've done specifically on grocery sales, where we've covered other articles on the internet. We've got episode three ninety one where we talk about the best seasonal grocery sales. Episode two ninety six we talk about grocery saving strategies that will cut your bill in half.
That is an interview with Gina Zachariye, who if you are on TikTok you will know her as the saving Whiz. And then episode two fourteen, how to save money on groceries. That is a general one that you will get some extra tips on. But this article that we're covering today is exciting because it is a mom of five, well a mom of three five people. It's her actual strategy for keeping her grocery budget to about two one hundred and twenty dollars a week. And no, it wasn't written
in twenty eighteen. It was written last year, in twenty twenty three, so it's still relevant. That's another reason why we do these grocery store episodes, because we started this podcast in twenty eighteen, and those grocery episodes are different.
My youth is gone, our youth is over, prices are different.
Our episodes now are different than the episodes of My Youth.
We're closing to forty than we've ever been and you know we're bringing you real talk, so This article comes from BuzzFeed and it is titled Here's how I stretch a one hundred and twenty dollars weekly grocery budget to feed five people and cover nearly every meal. And I will say real talk. A lot of times with the articles that we cover, I don't read them thoroughly. I'm not line per line. There's a little bit of skimming. I'm pulling out the best stuff college taught me well.
But with this one, I actually I spent I spent way too much time preparing for this episode because I truly did enjoy both the tips and then her very specific meal plan that she gives. And I also love this because she talks about every nearly every meal. A lot of times when we get meal plans, it'll just be for dinner. People will talk about their grocery budget as if they're only eating dinner and the rest of us are also having breakfast and lunch.
How do I fit that, I'm intermittent fasting. I only eat one meal a day. Kidding No, sorry, No, that's how I keep my grocery budgets below. But I didn't include that in my article.
Yeah no, And we don't encourage that either.
So this feels so realistic and approachable to also be able to include all of the breakfasts and lunches and all of that. So we're going to first go through the tips on how to keep your grocery bill as low as possible, and then I want to take some time to go through her actual meal plan because I feel like there's some fun things to pull out of that.
Yeah, and I think it's important to note that the one of the second picture on this article she's talking about she is currently a stay at home mom, but throughout this she's also been a college student mom and a full time working mom. And she has a cute little picture of her at her college graduation with the sign that says I did it and a small human that said I helped. And I will tell you that's a complete lie. That child did not help. That child
did everything they could to not help. I am sure so this, and she says that for a long time that budget was one hundred dollars per week for groceries, but because this is twenty twenty three, that increased to one twenty.
So we'll go.
We'll start with her first tip, and that is obviously to meal plan. We have a ton of meal planning episodes, but she meal plans with recipes with ingredients that can be used for multiple meals. I love her her tips for meal planning. We'll go through all of those, but upfront preparation is key, and so we talk a lot about meal planning. But I always say that meal planning was just like a start for me. I meal planning
is hit or miss. It's when I meal prep that that's when I really am using the groceries that I bought. And so it doesn't it's not as much of a thought when you're buying groceries. But the fewer groceries that you throw away is the fewer times you have to eat out right. And so maybe meal prepping doesn't save you money on your current grocery trip, but it will save you money on your next grocery trip, or it
will save you money in your eating out budget. So I just want to preference that with saying like her saying, upfront preparation is key. It's not just about the meal planning, but it's also about the meal prep and planning things that are easier to prep.
The next tip that she gives is to prioritize what's on sale, and this can be found alongside meal planning with a quick search to the grocery store that you typically shop at if you happen to get circulars in the mail. It's a little more old school, but there are ways to identify what is the store going to have on sale and how can I plan what I'm eating around what's on sale. Usually it's going to be
seasonal produce. It might be meats that they got an excess shipment of, and it may mean altering or switching out some of your recipes that maybe you would have used to opt for something that's a little bit more on sale. So she gives an example that instead of chicken brash, she used chicken tenders after seeing them on sale. She was also able to get ninety nine cent milk and berries knocked down from three point fifty to one
sixty seven. So these types of things now, Okay, a dollar here, a dollar day, It doesn't make that much of a difference. But I think as we start to form habits meal planning, especially utilizing these sales, over time, I think we can see a decrease of potentially twenty to thirty bucks a week, depending on how we're shopping. The fact that we are planning and prioritizing ahead of time and over the month and over the year, that can really add up to some money that we can
allocate elsewhere, whether that's for debt payoff or investing. So I think when it comes to grocery shopping and eliminating little bit by little bit, it's a little It's different from just cutting out your coffee daily, because if you save a dollar here, a dollar there on fifty items that you're getting at the store, that's significant even for that one grocery trip.
Yeah, I jumped the gun on my first one. So I want to dive back into it as picking recipes with ingredients that can be used for multiple meals. So this kind of goes into that prioritize what's on sale, find out those things that are on sale, which are going to be those things that are in season, which we are actually when we give you that free fall meal plan at our pre pre order party, it's all going to be prioritizing in season produce for the fall,
which will inevitably be what is on sale. So you choose those and you pick recipes based on those that you can use you can buy a little bit extra of that stuff and use it in multiple meals and in multiple wills ways. So getting creative with leftovers. Jill, You're so good at getting creative with leftovers. I am not as much, but she says, sometimes eating leftovers all the time can get old. I try to remember that I can always use different components of my leftovers to
create new meals. So this also means that we don't always need to be scared of higher cost items. What a concept is that when you can reuse something and use all of it, then you can afford maybe to get some higher cost items. Yeah, it just means you need to be smart and think about how you utilize those items to stretch the budget as far as possible.
I just picked up, for example, tahini this week, which is a higher cost item. But I'm going to lean into my Middle Eastern Greek recipes. Over the next couple of weeks and maybe even months. I'm going to be doing hummus. I made a yogurt sauce for a halal cauliflower bowl yesterday, So now that I know that I've bought this thing, it's not going to go to waste and I'm prioritizing around that, but she also gives some really great examples. In the second part of the episode,
we'll talk about how she reuses ingredients. The next tip on here is clip your digital coupons. Now you know we're not coupon girlies, she.
Said on the outline. Stay with me, but.
Hear me out There are some stores that have store websites or apps where they do offer digital coupons. So while I'm not advocating that we sit around going through circulars and physically clipping things out, there could be times where if you know you're shopping regularly at a certain store they do have an app, there are ways to just quickly select as you're shopping. Yep, I'm getting that item, You select it, you go up, you scan your phone.
That could be worth it as well as I think for some people this isn't for everybody, but I know a lot of people really like fetch an ibota and these types of things where you're just you're scanning your your grocery receipts and getting some money back that way, So it could be well, I think a lot of our pushback on couponting is somewhat having to do with the ways that it was portrayed to us on TLC and like, we'll just take out.
How much time it takes now exactly, but it's not as easy to do. It takes a lot of time for not a lot of savings.
Yep. However, if you are shopping at similar places, like I don't shop at Target, but I know that they have something like this where if you're just in the app and you can can select it as you're shopping and select, it's almost like looking at the circular and seeing what's on sale and basing your budget or your
grocery plan and meal plan around that. It's similar. Again, I don't think that this is going to make or break you, but if you are looking for that extra little bit of ability to save here and there, that could be something to consider if your local grocery store offers it.
Her next tip is to buy the cheapest store brand most of the time, so she says, unless it's something I'm unable to use due to the peanut allergy that one of her kids has, or an item I absolutely love, or a different brand is on sale than she does store brand.
And we did do an episode on that and pretty much found that, yeah, store brands are equivalent yeah, a name brand pretty all the time.
We did a research deep dive into how chefs feel about store brand versus name brand, and yes, we found out that most of the time, except for like stuff like butter and ice cream, everybody preferred the store brand, be cause chefs are very They're cognizant of the cost too, because they're cooking in a restaurant. So yeah, yeah, butter and ice cream. So those dairy cows, you want high quality cows.
The next tip on here, I think has a lot to do with meal planning and being able to stick to the plan. But she suggests asking your kids to help if you have young ones in the house, referencing that feeding kids is a challenge. They often change their minds constantly. They get new taste buds every day and one day they like snack, one snack, the next day they hate it. But she tries to ask them to
pick out recipes, usually by looking at pictures. So showing them here's some things that we could be eating this week and identifying what they are most excited about trying to eat, and also lets them pay out what they want for their lunches, snacks, fruit, veggies for the week. This I think is going to be hit or miss. I think it's going to depend on the child certainly, but I think wherever you can get buy in it might go smoother more smoothly week to week.
Yeah, you have to expect that it won't work, but you still have to try. It's one of those things like you go in there, you do it. You do not have any expectations for it, but you are presenting the option, the lifestyle, the you know, the habit, and you go from there.
That's it.
I think that's a reason to have backups that you know that you do know your kids like they really haven't changed their minds on so that if you do try something new, you've still got that backup. And I think it's a reason to not bulk by as your kids are going through the stage of changing their minds.
I just saw this on Instagram, and I think her name's Leanne Braun, and she made a joke about how she just like bulk bought her daughter's favorite meal and immediately once she bought it, it was not the favorite meal anymore. And I was like, and I was like, I just did the same thing with tortillas, and literally, you know, a week later, Kai decides he no longer likes casadillas. Right, so now I have to think of
some creative wasties tortillas. Thankfully, those are a versatile. Tortilla chips, yeah, that was actually I commented that on her reel and somebody said tortilla chips. Somebody said, like cinnamon sugar on the tortilla. Yeah, there were a few good. Or somebody said, make a casidia, but call it a tortilla, and she's just call it some different.
That's so good, and that's probably the best one. Your problem is marketing. It's not the food, it's your marketing plan.
So there there's your tip.
Next is to shop at the grocery. Okay, this is a mantra. Sorry I'm reading it wrong. She says, I shop at the grocery store. I am not the grocery store. That is a great mindset to have if you are feeding children, and she's feeding three of them, she says, I don't supply endless options. I'm not going to overbuy produce that will end up going bad in the fridge without being used. I'm not going to be a vending
machine for pantry snacks. My kids get to pick what they want their non recipe fruits veggie snacks to be for the week, and we usually pick two options for each category. I think this is an important mantra to have because right now we're seeing a lot of social media reels where people have these like restocks in their fridge and restocks in their pantry, where they look like they are the grocery store. In reality, you shop at
the grocery store, you are not the grocery storing. You don't have to be the grocery store for yourself, for your kids, for your partner, for anyone. So that's a really important mantra. I think that's the most important mantra I picked up is that I don't have to provide endless or even a lot of options for myself or for my children. I just have to include them in the decision of what options I will provide.
Let's talk about the actual meal plan. So she just shows us everything, and it is so helpful. It is one of the reasons that I took such a deep dive on this particular article. She shows you the receipt, a picture of her entire grocery hall, so it all came out to one hundred and twenty three dollars and ninety three cents. Shows you a picture of everything that she bought, and then starts to break it down of how she moved through the week. So Monday, she began
with a rotissory chicken. I love this. First of all, side note for the day that you grocery shop planning that you're not going to get home, unpack, put everything in the fridge, and then cook a wildly complicated meal. Plan that the day that you grocery shop is something easy to prepare once you get home, and that's where
a rotissory chicken is the perfect haack for that. So she got the rotissory chicken for six bucks and had that and then was going to use leftovers, I believe for another recipe.
So yeah, I that's why so many people stoppagepotle on the way home from the grocery store because it's a lot of work, it's a lot of decisions to make, and we have then decision fatigue, and we don't want to expend more energy cooking after we've already made many decisions. So it's why it's so easy to stop and get food after you just bought food, and which is there's no shame. There's it's a joke, right that we see memes of on social media, but there is an actual
reason why we do that. So if you can recognize that instead of just trying to work against it and shame yourself for buying takeout after your grocery shop, understand it and just make sure you get something pre prepared at the grocery store for grocery shopping day.
Mm hmm.
Yeah, So they had burrita bulls that night. Now, I will say this woman is kind of doing the most home that night. Yeah, at this stage of life.
Right.
She did talk about how she's had different stages of life, but right now they went for a walk and then she gives it all you got as soon.
As she gets her groceries delivered, so she'll she probably she pays a little bit extra.
Even for that for that true.
Yeah.
Yeah, so then she prepped some sour doaugh bread. Now, this is where some of your own homemaking DIY can come in handy and cutting costs of some of these things, like your breakfast items. If you're not buying prepackaged things, you can save a little bit, so for her, that's one of the ways that she's able to keep her cost low. So she prepped bread so that they could have that the next morning for breakfast along with hard boiled eggs. Then she used some of the leftover rotisserie
chicken for chicken burritos from the night before. That's Tuesday. What did they do Tuesday night? Oh?
Then she made yogurt.
That's low.
That is a little extra I have before.
I have made yogurt in my Yeah, I've made yogurt before. It's a lot of yogurt. And if you have kids that love yogurt, it's good. I decided it wasn't worth it. Then we see a yummy salad that night.
Then Wednesday is that yogurt that she made, and then more leftovers leftovers of the salad, and then an egg salad sandwich, which I do love. Eggs are the vip, the oat there everything their breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Oftentimes, some of my go to meals do revolve around eggs, whether it's a hard boiled egg in the morning, or it's egg salad for lunch, or it's egg sandwiches, or it's a fried egg on top of a rice bowl,
you name it. They are I think one of the best ingredients that we can get at a low cost and super versatile.
I love eggs.
If you're looking to dip your toe into the water of how do I buy versatile ingredients that I can use across meals and it still feel different and interesting?
Eggs.
Start with eggs and then you're gonna learn more and more from there about how to get creative.
This is the egg Ellergy podcast. So let's get into Are we on Wednesday?
Yeah?
Okay, so we're into Wednesday. So after a nice long incubation piece, she finished off her yogurt. I so I will just buy a big batch of plain Greek yogurt. It's not super expensive, so for me, I don't there's just four of us, and you know, I will put some protein powder in that yogurt to sweeten it up and then top it with some granola. It's so so good. But if you have kids that are eating more yogurt, then by all means, make your own yogurt. But she's
moving on. After the yogurt, some citrus salad. So but needed something additional since the chicken was gone from the night.
Before so.
Hard used the hard boiled eggs that she had meal prepped. Again another advocate advocation for meal prepping. And then she just made her own version of an egg salad sandwich. So this is another key to saving on groceries and saving on food in general. To not follow recipes directly.
Don't do it, say it again, give them permission.
Follow recipes directly. Instead, learn a about like the purpose of different ingredients in recipes. So if there is a spice in a recipe that you don't have, google it and see what its most common role is in recipes, what are common substitutions, so that you can be figure out if you need that substitution or how you can substitute it. So, like my husband doesn't like cuman, I like human, so we kind of alternate. Sometimes I'll put
human in a recipe, sometimes I won't. But if he had his way, it would just never be there and we would not own a bottle of human, And if there was a recipe that called for it, we would
just leave it out. So stuff like that. So she made an egg salad sandwich, but she did not buy extra ingredients to use it because she knows these are the ingredients that my family likes and they eat constantly, regularly, consistently, and very rarely do we buy specialty items unless we know we're going to be able to use it over and over.
Yeah.
She moves on to stuffed potatoes cop potatooes, which potatoes are another MVP.
Jill loves potato. I love tacos. You can put you can make anything, taco, taco, salad, taco like pastado, taco potato. I just made a coppy cat. We talked about this on a recent podcast, A copy cat. Uh Taco bell Fiesta potatoes. Yes, yeah, yeah yeah, And I've been drapped about the steak and just some regular Queso Greek yoga.
I love loaded potatoes. That is to me, that's a great weeknight if you're tired. You don't have to do anything. You just heat up a potato and you throw whatever the heck you have on it in the fridge on top of it. So that's a good and usually a crowd pleaser because everybody gets to pick what they end up putting on top of their potato.
So love that one too. This is just inspiration for me, be really.
She also made some homemade granola for her homemade yogurt again stay at home mom. But it doesn't. I mean it takes five minutes actually to make granola, so she and she has a recipe for vanilla granola she says is a slam dung.
One of the things that stood out to me about this too, as we're just adding our commentary to it, are the habits that are formed around this, right, the habit of meal planning and the habit of meal prepping. This won't necessarily be for everybody, but she has formed a habit of using ten fifteen minutes of her week night after the kids are in bed to prep something, whether it's breakfast or lunch for the next day. And yeah,
that can be a bit of a sacrifice. You might be more tired than the ability to do that if you're also thinking about doing the bedtime routine and dishes.
But if able to stack some of these things, or you've got another adult in the house and there can be some division of labor, it's something to consider as really being able to help the grocery budget of do you have ten fifteen minutes to prep a loaf of bread or to throw yogurt into the instant pot or to prep the granola like she's doing, or whatever else
works for you. Maybe it's muff and tins of eggs that you're baking really quickly, or breakfast wraps that you're making, or sausage that you're preheating so that they can be quickly reheated in the toaster oven, whatever it is. What's one thing that you can do before you go to bed that's going to make the next day or the next two days easier.
Or what's one thing you can do when you get home from work that will make dinner easier later. There's just so many ways to look at it. One thing that's helped me in doing in crossing the barrier to do that one thing is to set a timer. Yeah, when you set a ten minute timer and this goes. This is mostly like seen with a ten minute clean, right. We set it ten minute timer, clean what we can in ten minutes and then be done, and that makes
it less overwhelming. We could do the same thing for meal prepping, so we do what we can in ten minutes when there's a timer going. I also work faster, which is a fun which a fun revelation I've had. What can I do in ten minutes and then once the timer off, I don't do anything else. So that is a really easy way to get over the barrier of like I just I don't have the energy to
meal prep. And some of you have reached out to us whether you have like some kind of like physical like impairment or difficulty saying like I can't you know, have a meal prep Sunday where I'm on my feet for hours meal prepping and we're saying you don't have to. She doesn't that this author doesn't. She's literally just doing like one thing a day that takes ten minutes so
that she can. Because granola is a big way to save money, Like if you're eating granola every week, you can save a lot of money by making your own. So it's also thinking of what is something that I have a lot and how can I cut costs on that versus like if it's something I don't have a lot, maybe I just buy it. Maybe I buy it. But if it's something I am consistently consuming, can.
I make it? Mm hm oh I like that. Yeah.
So Thursday was the granola. Then tacos showed up again. Although this is I'm pulling out so many tips from what she gave it was a DIY taco for lunch for the kids' school and for herself. So tacos again, but I think some of the presentation of it, if you're someone who needs variety or kids kind of need it to look a little bit different or whatever the case may be, just presenting it a little bit different or substituting out a couple of ingredients so that it
doesn't look like the same exact thing showing up again. So, yes, it's tacos again, but it looks different. Some of the ingredients are a bit different, and the presentation is a bit different. Again, that's just a marketing thing. If you're a mom who just needs to be a good marketer to her child, there you go.
Yeah, there's a little tip.
My kid would eat mac and cheese every single day. So sometimes consistency is key, and sometimes you need to serve the same thing with different names or different presentation. It just depends. But so it was chicken kebabs Greek Friday, yes,
which I mean. She recently got the cookbook Meal Prep Magic by Catherine McCord, So if you're looking for a book on meal prepping, a that's one that she recommends, and she made a recipe for leftover rice pudding, so she had leftover rice and then she made a rice pudding out of it.
Which I love that rice pudding is so good. My mother in law made that for us recently and that's a great way to use that leftover rice. Then it was a throw together leftovers of the Greek kebab for her own lunch. She was even able to make an orange Julia snack Listen, we all don't have to go above and beyond like that, but it does look yummy. She made some biscuits, sheet pan eggs. Girl had some
eggs short time on Friday apparently. But then dinner was simple because she did prep some of the snacks and breakfast items for the weekend. So it was just pasta with some sauce for Friday night. And I love that make it simple.
Yeah, And so I think this is an example of like doing this is one hundred percent week, right, We don't always have one hundred percent weeks. We should make it a goal to have one hundred percent week, maybe like every other month or every month. If you're if you're really working toward an audacious goal, then make it your goal. To have one of these one hundred percent
weeks once a month. Yeah, if you're in a season that's difficult, exhausting, whatever, maybe it's your goal to have one of these weeks every quarter.
So it's up to you.
But we don't have to have We don't have to be one hundred percent one hundred percent of the time.
Or flip side.
It could be one hundred percent because you made the plan for it. Like your one hundred percent could include two frozen dinners that week, one takeout.
One dying out.
Like, whatever you plan and however you plan to spend on it, you can do and still hit your plan well, as long as you're being realistic about your actual timing, your energy levels, and your money.
Yeah, but I so I would I point some of this has kind of inspired me for my meal plan for next week. But so I want to point out some of the places where she reused things. So she made several loaves of sour dough, and she used different ingredients inside the sour doughs. Who she was making different types of bread that were the same thing, but reuse different ingredients. She has so like dried cranberries. They love
dried cranberries. She used some of it in a sour dough, she's some of it in her granola, some of it in her yogurt. They obviously had chicken quite a bit. I don't see. I didn't see any other meats mentioned the meat.
Sorry, beef she had on top of the potatoes.
Okay, so the beef. So it was a predominantly like eighty percent chicken week and one beef dish, and but she did have some vegetarian dishes with the spaghetti was not even a red sauce, so she didn't have to buy an extra marenera. She kind of just made her own sauce with olive oil and lemon zea.
Yes.
So so a key thing that stuck out to me was that I think maybe like four meals were chicken, two meals were vegetarian, one meal was beef. Yeah, that's seven, and then she had all of her breakfast were vegetarian, and then don't I don't think her lunches were pretty much just a new like variation of leftovers. So that was kind of what I got from it time and time again, Like meatless meals will save you the most money, man, if you're concerned with saving money, on groceries. Go vegetarian
like that is. I mean, that's just the It's not for everyone, but it just will save you the maximum amount of money, or at least if you can't go one hundred percent, go twenty percent.
Mm hmmm.
Yeah, I mean you'll still have to have your sights on where you're getting your protein. You might need to get proteins upplements, eggs, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, eggs. I'm sorry reusing ingredients, having a plan, sticking to that plan as much as possible.
Yeah, she used raspberries in her yogurt bowls and her rice pudding. I did mention she the rice pudding she made she used for breakfast. So they're living rice on some days for dinner and then the leftover rice was rice pudding for breakfast. They used like a lot of.
Like the same.
I think she used her yogurt to make it to Zeki for the Greek chicken. That's what it looks like. Yeah, so just like a lot of re use, a lot of tomatoes I'm seeing every single day, and guacamole I'm seeing every single day. I'm definitely seeing the oranges on the citrus salad that also showed up in the Orange Julius.
Yeah, I think this is one of those situations where following someone almost replicating what they're doing and just getting your bearings with that and then begin to branch out with your own creativity. But it's also okay to just get a meal plan from somebody else, look at exactly what they did, replicate it, and then refine it from there. And one of the ways that you can do that is by getting our ninety day fall meal.
Plan for free. When you come to the party, you just have to.
The only way you don't have to get the meal plan, just get just to show up live to the party. And I think something that that what you just said that stuck with me when we had Nicole john z Burke from Gardenery, where she said, when you are starting out, or if you don't feel confident in something, you follow one teacher and you do exactly what they do until
you feel confident enough to branch out. It's it's so good and so necessary to take the perspectives from multiple experts so that you can customize a plan for your life. But when you are first starting out, or if maybe you're restarting, or maybe you just hit this place where I've been doing this a while, and I'm I don't feel confident right now in this season to choose one person follow them religiously for lack of a better term, until you gain that confidence or regain that confidence.
That's what Instagram I think is good for, is like finding your people that are going to inspire you towards the habits and patterns that are helpful, not necessarily all this impulse spending that they can influence you towards. But since you're here now, we hope that you come join and celebrate us on August twentieth get the Friend Letter Frugal friendspodcast dot com. But since you're here now, we might as well just do the next best thing.
Yeah, the bill of the week.
That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage, Maybe your car died and your happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Duck bills, flow bills, Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week.
Hi, I'm Judy. My bill of the week is physical therapy. I had some unexpected surgery and my doctor recommended physical therapy twice a week for twelve weeks. It was expensive, but I felt it was an investment in my health. Well, I've improved a lot. I stopped my physical therapy. I am doing it at home. But this is a bill that I'm happy not to pay anymore.
Yes, Judy, my girl. A bill you are happy to pay and a bill that you are happy to pay no more. Both can be true at the same time.
Because this is such a good example, I love that you use the phrase investing in your health because I think we all need to be reminded that this is important when it comes to spending, well allocating our resource as well in ourselves our health. It's so important, and also the reminder that our spending on our health is
not always going to be long term. We can invest in physical therapy, mental therapy for a season, for whatever it is that we're going through and navigating and get to the other side of that concern and not need to spend on it anymore. And who knows how much that's going to end up saving us in the long term too. Because we didn't ignore the problem, we addressed it, We invested in ourselves. There's no better person to invest in than yourself. And this is turning into the encouragement.
Hour with Jen and Jell mostly Jill.
Thank you, Judy, this is so inspiring.
Judy, Jen, Joe, Yes.
Triple j.
If you are listening and want to submit a bill, whether it's about paying for something that you don't mind paying for, being happy you're not paying for something anymore, or just investing in yourself.
Maybe your physical therapist's name is Bill.
I love that Frugal friendspodcast dot com slash Bill.
Leave it for us and now it's time for the light around all right?
How often do you go grocery shopping? And Jill and I are very different because Jill doesn't eat much and my family, yeah, we have many people who drink and eat a lot, so Jill.
I go every two weeks. But I'm getting better at eating more food.
I don't it's not bad. I'm not saying it's a bad thing.
Well, I did realize recently because I've been thinking about everyone's talking about protein right like getting blah blah blah. But that, along with kind of everything else, it made me think like, oh, how much food should you be getting in a day, and how much protein and where where do we kind of line up with this? And we were pretty far off to an alarming point. I feel okay, but I need to be eating so much more than I'm eating.
So I'm trying. We're getting there, but.
I'm still only shopping every two weeks and planning around that. But just like trying to incorporate a lot more calories every.
Day, well, I'm trying to do the opposite.
The average person supposed to have two thousand calories a day.
That is an average.
Yeah, and it's been hard to like that feels like a full time job.
It's been hard to figure out. I know how to do this.
Yes, I am in the same boat. Actually I had to. This is embarrassing. I recently had to set alarms on my phone and two hours to remind myself to eat.
I believe that because you wor here when we were writing the book together. There were many days that we co worked together at my house and I typically, since I'm just accustomer working from home, I do I break for lunch. I get hungry and I make lunch for myself and Eric usually, and when Jen was here, like I would make food for you and you. There were times where I'd get up, make lunch, bring it over
to you, sit it next to you. You wouldn't notice it for like a full forty five minutes, and I'd be like, I made you lunch.
It's right there, be like, oh my gosh, I didn't even notice.
So, yeah, there are people like you who also get like really zoned.
IM zone in.
Yeah, I have. I don't know if that's like an ADHD thing. I'm not diagnosed with the ADHD, but like for some reason, when I start working, I don't stop until like five hours have passed.
A hyper focus.
I think hyper focus.
There's some really great pros to that. The is you need an.
Alarm, might for the business, for the book, for the listeners. That's great for me, not as much.
Okay, so how often do you go grocery shoping?
I go grocery sipping shopping maybe one and a half times a week. So usually it's once a week, but maybe every other week I will have to go twice. I have a one year old who drinks a lot of milk, and when we have milk in the house, everybody else drinks it too, so sometimes I'll have to make like an extra I try to always have two
gallons on hand. But if for some reason, I just haven't gone through the other food in my house, like I might run short on milk, so I'll have to go get like more milk and then end up I'll just you know, kind of look at my list and like replenish as needed. So I will. Usually I go at least once a week.
I think that's reasonable, especially like with having kids and some of your rhythm and routine. Part of my only going every two weeks is because I just don't get out of the house.
But I meanwhile, she thought we were going to record this episode separately, and I'm like, please let me come over to your house please.
Oh of course time. Well, everyone, thanks so much for listening. We hope that this was helpful and inspiring. We hope that you are hungry and ready to meal plan and meal.
Prep and just save on groceries. Something else that.
We're so grateful for is all of your reviews that you leave for us. We love the kind ones like this one from a nap eight five nine says favorite finance podcast five stars. I can relate to these ladies. They are realistic and logical, very well done podcasts.
That is a very logical review, and I appreciate that I can relate to your review.
There are no exclamation marks, there are no oh geez. It is purely periods as punctuation.
And I'm here.
Fless you, bless you, adapt eight five nine, blessings on you, Thank you for listening.
If you have enjoyed the show, please take a minute to leave a rating and review, because it actually it not just helps new listeners know what the show is all about, but when as we are approaching other podcast hosts with podcasts that are a little bigger than ours, it helps them know that, like even if they haven't heard of us before, we have a legitimate podcast and are important enough for them to have on our show so that we can promote our book by what You
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More podcast Yeah yeah, yeah, okay, so thank you. If there's a podcast.
That we should be on, leave that near review because I'll screenshot, I'll send it to.
Him, you know, and we'll also see you August twentieth, Yes, and we'll play games together. Friglefriendspodcast dot com.
Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Siriani.
Jen Speaking of grocery shopping and speaking of getting older, did I talk about that on this yes, speaking of my youth being over pretty much. This weekend, Eric and I checked out a new grocery store that's twenty five minutes away.
We drove twenty five minutes to check out a cool new new to us.
You didn't just drive over a bridge.
You drove over the bridge, the big bridge.
Yes, this bridge, it's called the Skyway. It's big enough and tall enough for cruise ships to fit under it.
That is the point of it being so big is so that the cruise ships can go under it.
It's it's a trip, very fun though honestly, the trip goes by so fast because it's so amazing. Don't want to be up there on a windy day.
Though.
We crossed the bridge to go to this grocery store because again we're closer to forty than we've ever been and going to a cool grocery store on the weekend is what we do.
That sounds so fun. I wish I was at a point in my life where I could have fun.
It was exhilarating and I'm so sorry. You can go to grocery stores too. You should go to grocery stores. It was called Dettwilers in case there's any local people, which side note happens to be owned by people who lived five minutes from both Eric and I growing up in Franconia, Pennsylvania.
So Rancho shout out to Franconia over I'm going, Yeah, whoa a very very small suburb of Philly.
If you're there, vow it would not feel like a suburb of Philly anyways, I digress. And they had an abundance of produce for amazing prices, but also random produce like jackfruit and other things that I couldn't pronounce that usually you can only find at specialty grocery stores, and just every herb, every fruit, every veggie that you could possibly want, at really amazing prices for and very high
quality like organic. They're all of their meats. They pride themselves on how quality their meats are, great prices, their bakery. The perimeter of the store is where it's at. The best part is that they would make announcements consistently throughout the time that we were there, maybe there for an hour, and they'd come on and be like, go get your mama this homemade bread from the bakery. Thanks for coming to debt Wiler's.
Whooo.
Every announcement would end with a whoo.
Sounds like something you'd find in Texas, not Brainton.
Well it is still the South, I guess. But yeah, by that nor conversation.
Yeah, I do feel yeah on that, but maybe I'm adding the twang and that wasn't entirely there, but it felt it felt invigorating, and it felt like where I wanted to be. And so, but to link this into a bit of our podcast episode and a bit of the tips, I do talk about this a lot. But one of the things that keeps me inspired to keep mail, planning, keep cooking is trying new places out and getting some different ingredients and just making the whole experience a bit more live.
Woo.
Yeah, So I feel like I got some different cuts of meat than I would normally get, and a few different types of produce and some baked goods that were new to me. And all at a reasonable price. So yeah, it's one of those things I'm like, oh, I could maybe come here like every other month because it's really good prices on meat. That's something that I think some people will hack, is like I go here for my meet I go here for my produce, and I'm not down to have to drive to a ton of different places.
Like if it's just better to make it convenient and go to one spot, that's great. But if it happens to work out for me where you know, quarterly, I go and I stock up on meat at this one place. It's a little bit further, but it makes sense and I can throw it in the freezer. Those types of things I have found helpful. So one of the things that helps me to only shop every two weeks is I'm I will usually get meat for like two months.
I will just stock up on meat and I won't need to do another meat run for like two months.
How many freezers do you actually?
There is a discount home Depot store I probably talked about in the past near us. So all the things at home Depot sells they sell at fifty percent off. And we got a small freezer like it looks like a mini fridge that you'd have in your college dorm room. But it's that size of a freezer. So I do have an extra one in my garage now so that I can just so it doesn't take a ton of energy to run because it's really small.
We got it at a steep discount and it does.
It helps on Facebook marketplace at the time too.
Yeah, yeah, that's lovely.
Det Wilder's woo woo