Money is tight for everyone right now. How can you stretch your dollars as far as possible? Here are five ways you can save Right Now.
Buy Two Chickens
Calm down, you don't have to start raising chickens to save money. But you do need to buy two whole chicken fryers at your grocery store. If you live alone, you can get by with one chicken. For the cost of two whole chickens, under $10 total, you will have dinner one night, at least one or two more dinners from the leftover chicken, maybe a sandwich or two, then a vat of broth for the best soup base you can make. It's about the best you eat for the money!
You will need to clean them off and get out all the gizzards. Put them in a roasting pan and slather them you're your choice of butter/margarine/olive oil then sprinkle them with a mix of Italian herbs. If you can afford to buy a lemon, cut it in half and squeeze all the juice over the chickens then stuff each chicken with half a lemon rind.
Bake in a hot oven (350 or so) until it's done - about 90 minutes, use your thermometer and make sure the internal temp is safe and that there is no pink meat. Every 30 minutes during the baking, you'll want to baste the chicken. NOTE: Depending upon the prices at your stores, it may be cheaper to buy two fully cooked rotisserie chickens than to buy uncooked fryers and roast them yourself. After you eat dinner the first night, you'll want to debone the chicken (do this while the chickens are warm) and get every piece of meat you can off the carcass. You should end up with enough meat to use for lunches or another meal. With cooked chicken, you can make a chicken pot pie, chicken salad, lots of casseroles, you name it.
Save the carcasses to boil and make a chicken broth for soup. Most cookbooks will give you recipes for a good broth that includes onions, carrots and some basic seasonings.
Make Your Own Salad Dressings and Croutons
Have you seen the prices of those bottles of bland salad dressing in the grocery store? Why spend so much money when you can make your own dressings for so little yet that will taste so much better? Some of the cheapest ingredients around: oil, vinegar, sugar, salt and pepper are some salad dressing basic ingredients. You can search cookbooks, magazines and online recipe sites for some simple dressings that you can mix up in about five minutes. Croutons take about 15 minutes to make: simply cube several slices of regular bread, drizzle with canola or olive oil, sprinkle with an Italian herb mix, then bake them in a toaster oven on broiler until then are browned. They cook up quickly and taste delicious!
Pack Your Lunch
Stop eating out for lunch. You can pack a lunch for a few pennies instead. A peanut butter sandwich, some chips, a piece of fruit will get you through the day and help your budget. You can package up leftovers from dinner, warm up soup or pasta, or make a quick quesadilla in the office microwave. Whatever you do it will be a savings of about $5 each day and well worth the investment.
Check if your Kids Qualify for Free or Reduced Cost School Lunches
You'd be amazed at how generous the income guidelines are for school lunch help. Check with your school district for the income maximums to see if you qualify. This could save a lot of money over the course of a school year.
Stop Buying Expensive Makeup and Hair Products
How often do you buy a product, use it once or twice and then come to the realization that it just didn't live up to its marketing hype? How often did you toss that product into a cupboard or shove it to the back of the shelf instead of returning it to the store for a refund? Stop harboring junk! First, you need to stop buying products that promise to change your life without demanding that they live up to the promises you paid for. If something you buy doesn't measure up, you must return it on your next visit and get a refund or store credit. Most stores give patrons 10 days to a week to change their mind. Save your receipts and start taking back that horrid color gloss and bad smelling conditioner.
Here are just five things you can do now to save money. Of course, there are hundreds more ways to save money - some more painful than others - but each of us needs to assess our lifestyle, see what we can live with and without, then make those changes. Good luck.
