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Why you should stock up on cereal now
Here's a not-very-sexy food story that's been developing all week: due to Russian droughts and smaller wheat crops in Canada and Australia, wheat prices have surged 55% in the last two months. This is good news for American farmers -- they've got oodles of grain in easy-to-dispatch locations -- but not great news for anyone who likes grain-based products. Look for bread, pasta and cereal prices to rise in the near future. If you coupon or stockpile these things when they're loss-leaders in the store, start scoping specials now. And may I suggest bookmarking Allcerealcoupons.com?
| August 05 2010 at 02:58 PM
When buying big doesn't make sense
Yesterday's Apartment Therapy post on small bottle laundry detergents touted the space-saving capabilities of these concentrated products. But I was taking a look at what these bottles cost per load of laundry done -- $2.25 per load for The Laundress Signature Detergent, $0.35 per load for Seventh Generation's Free & Clear, $0.30 per load for Method Laundry Detergent -- and I couldn't help but compare the costs against the bigger bottle. For example, the 50-ounce bottle of Seventh Generation baby concentrate works out to 29 cents a load. Six cents a load seems piddly, but laundry is one of those recurring expenses, and the difference adds up over time.
However, a lot of folks around the Bay Area live in smallish dwellings with scant storage space -- it's a natural outcome of apartment living, or of having a house built back in the early 20th century. So there's an understandable tension between trying to take advantage of volume discounts and trying not to get swamped by your bargains. And then there's the reality that sometimes, buying in bulk isn't a great idea. For example, there's the hazard of getting sick of something before you're done eating your way through the stockpile of cereal. Or there's the pitfall of buying something you're not sure about just because it was such a great bargain. Or there's the conundrum of where to store everything.
How do you navigate the tension between trying to save money and trying not to get buried in your own stockpiled stuff? Tell us at dollarsandsense@sfgate.com.
| March 10 2010 at 02:21 PM
How to be a cheap drunk with taste
First up: I have gotten tipping questions and will be hauling out the reference books to answer those anon.
But I wanted to divert your attention to a San Francisco Chronicle story, "Tough Economy Spurs Shift to Cheaper Liquor." According to industry group the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S., the lowest-priced liquor segment ($10 per bottle of less) saw a 5.5% increase in sales compared to last year, while the most expensive brands (Grey Goose, for example) sank 5.1%.
We're a cocktail-drinking household, and we manage to keep the bar bill under control using the following strategies:
- Go to Costco for the stuff you drink a lot of. You can get rum, bourbon, tequila and vodka there for 66-75% of what you'd pay if you were picking it up in the grocery store. That $50 basic membership pays for itself in a few runs.
- Hit Trader Joe's, as their in-house hooch is very inexpensive.
- Check your local grocery store sales. At least once every few months, there will be a price break on whatever your poison is.
- Get a free BevMo card, and hit the sales for extra savings.
Finally: I rarely indulge when I go out, because I look at that $7 Pimm's cup and I realize that's approximately half of what I pay for a bottle of Pimm's.
Because not all liquors are created equal, I asked my trained-mixologist friend Ben for his advice on stretching your bar budget. His tips:
You can safely skimp on spirits such as brandy, whiskey, gin, tequila and especiallyvodka if you are mixing fruity or fizzy drinks. Drinks with lots of fruit juice will camouflage the harshness of cheap liquor. Same with highballs (spirit + carbonated mixer, e.g. tonic or club soda). One of my favorite drinks is the brandy-and-soda. Know how to make a brandy-and-soda? Put a jigger of brandy in a tall glass, fill it with club soda, drop in a lemon slice (or a couple of splashes of bitters) and enjoy. I use E&J; or Christian Brothers, because it's usually on sale at the grocery store.Where I wouldn't skimp is on cocktails that require almost all spirits. So even though I'm all in favor of using low- or mid-priced gin for gin-and-tonics or gin fizzes, I would never make a martini on the cheap. And, to my tastebuds at least, low-priced triple sec is no substitute for Cointreau.
Ben's got some advice on his own blog regarding what makes a "decent" gin, so if you like martinis, it's worth a visit.
I also checked around for other sources of bargain liquors that don't list "paint thinner" on their ingredient labels. Real Simple recommends Old Forester bourbon, Gordon's gin, Castillo rum, White Horse blended scotch, Jose Cuervo tequila, Smirnoff vodka, Noilly Prat dry vermouth and Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth.
This post focused on liquor because the news story did too. If there's interest, I'll dig into how wine and beer trends are doing, and what you can do to keep your wine cellar stocked at Mad Dog 20/20 prices.
Do you have your inexpensive bar staples? What are they? Share at dollarsandsense@sfgate.com.
| February 03 2010 at 01:42 PM
Reuse, Recycle, and Repair?
The soles of my favorite pair of flats cracked last week, so I'll be taking them over to the cobbler's this weekend. The guy's not much on customer service -- at a party recently, five of us compared notes on him and discovered that his habit of yelling at the customers is apparently universal -- but paying $12 to whip a pair of shoes into shape is a lot cheaper than buying a replacement pair.
Is the repair-before-you-replace sentiment gaining traction? Last winter, Best Buy anticipated the trickle-down of the repair-before-you-replace idea with a "Fix or Replace Calculator" that lets you know which option is presumably the most cost-effective. The New York Times ran an anecdotal piece on consumers electing to repair, rather than replace, appliances as a cost-saving measure. According to the industry people quoted in the article, the general rule of thumb is to replace a major appliance if repairing it will cost more than 50% of the purchase price for a replacement.
If you're curious about how to repair and reuse things around your house, it's worth looking through Planet Green's Repair or Recycle archive. They've got articles on everything from extending the life of your hiking boots to deciding when to replace your water heater.
There are, of course, limits to what should be repaired. For example, two well-meaning people recently gave us a huge, 10-year-old, broken CRT computer monitor; they thought we could either sell it at a yard sale or find another use for it. We'll be recycling it, as the time and money that repairing this Clinton-era relic requires could be better spent on something else.
In your opinion, what's worth repairing and what's worth replacing? And why? Feel free to pass on your experiences to dollarsandsense@sfgate.com.
| September 16 2009 at 10:55 AM
Consider this to-do for September
Play in the dirt now, reap a salad harvest later.
It was a little weird to be thinking ahead of winter this past Saturday -- what with the ridiculous heat and all -- but now is exactly the time to start planning a winter greens garden.
If you're lucky enough to have a bit of sunny, protected space on a balcony or in your yard, it's super-easy to grow a container of lettuce, spinach, kale or other greenery. Sow the seeds now, and you can be snipping fresh leaves all winter. Sunset magazine's got a nice little feature this month on cool-weather greens, and while you don't have to mimic their 13-by-8-foot plan, you can grab some inspiration from their plant list. The Chronicle's Lynette Evans also provided some how-to advice for keeping your fall seedlings healthy.
I've found that growing lettuce and spinach in wide, shallow bowl-type planters works well (and it's portable) -- you can pick these up fairly cheaply at any garden center. I like the glazed ceramic ones, as they're decorative, don't dry out easily and don't fry or freeze delicate plant roots. Last winter, I planted two bowls of spinach seedlings and didn't have to buy any at the store for a few months. It was a gratifying return on investment.
As for the plants, you can take advantage of a sale at Renee's Seeds: enter sale09 as a checkout code and you'll get 30% off all 2009 seeds. This sale ends on September 8, 2009. Alternately, pick up a flat of seedlings from your local garden center and follow the transplanting instructions the Chronicle ran back in May.
| August 31 2009 at 12:22 PM
Shopping your kitchen pantry
I admit it: I am always a little skeptical of any live-well-on-less strategy that requires you to buy in bulk and stockpile food. For people in small urban apartments with no closet space, roomate-type situations with shared fridges and freezers, or no cars, the ol' buy-in-bulk ploy isn't often practical Read More 'Shopping your kitchen pantry' » .
| August 24 2009 at 07:43 AM
How much of a deal is $599?
So JetBlue is offering the "All-You-Can-Jet Pass." The idea's admirably simple: pay $599 now, and you can fly anywhere JetBlue flies from Tuesday, September 8, 2009 through Thursday, October 8, 2009. All taxes and fees are included! Are you already flying somewhere on JetBlue during that period? Just call 1-800-538-2583 and press 4 if you want to upgrade to the All-You-Can-Jet pass. (You'd pay the difference.)
Sounds great, right? Except I got to wondering: How many people will be able to get their money's worth from the pass? I ran a few sample searches for Bay Area flights during the Jet Pass period. The most obvious conclusion: it is probably cheaper to buy the pass if you're planning on heading to any pleasant island well east of here. For example:
If you fly round trip between Oakland, CA, and Montego Bay, Jamaica, from September 13 to September 20, it would cost $608 for the normal fare.
If you fly round trip between San Francisco, CA, and Hamilton, Bermuda, from September 13 to September 20, it would cost $628 for the normal fare.
So there, it makes sense to buy the pass. But what about your standard up-and-down-the-coast jaunt? It's about $90 to fly between San Francisco and Long Beach. And for those of us who have to head to the East Coast? Oakland to Washington, DC, and back will run you about $258. To get your money's worth, you'd have to fly a lot between the Bay Area and ... well, a lot of domestic locations. That would seem to require a lot of vacation time too.
It seems like the All-You-Can-Jet Pass is a great deal if you're in the mood for an impulse getaway, or if you're doing a lot of business travel. Do either of those situations fit into your regular life? It'll be interesting to see how much this promotion will be used over the next month.
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Money-saving site of the day: You don't have to actually have a Twitter account to follow some of the bargain-hunting Twitter streams -- you can subscribe to an RSS feed and get all the pithy posts at your own convenience. One of the more fruitful: Freenology's Twitter feed, which includes links to free food offers, free music downloads and free magazine subs.
| August 19 2009 at 08:22 AM
More little purchases that help you save big
You guys had some great suggestions about little expenditures that can save you a lot of money in the long run:
If you're still using snail mail, it's not a bad deal.
dave_hadick: I bought $1000 of "Forever Stamps" at $0.41 when they first went on sale April 2007. The stamps now cost $0.44. That is a 3.6% return annually over the last two years and for sure will continue to increase over the years.
rjcohen: In these times of low interest rates, select bank accounts (with FDIC insurance too) beat [money market accounts] by a mile. You can find 2% on liquid savings and money market deposit accounts. Shop here.
pam65: Take a look at Bay Area Consumers Checkbook. They have been a goodsend for me.
yooperann: My AmazonPrime membership. $79 bucks gets me free 2nd day shipping for a year. Considering the number of books and gifts I buy, it's a huge bargain. So far, halfway through the year, I've placed 32 separate orders, which would come down to about $2 a piece for second day shipping even if it were only books. But in fact one of those 32 orders was for a 102 pound daybed--I can't imagine what the shipping costs would have been for that.
And finally ...
gearheadfly: My AAA membership pays for itself three or four times over each year in discounts. I saved over $150 on eyeglasses today just by showing the store my AAA card.
I'm strongly seconding gearheadfly's recommendation here. The husband and I are taking a 10-day road trip to Seattle and back at the end of the month, and our $54 "classic membership" has more than paid for itself with hotel discounts, maps (California, Oregon, Washington) and discount guides. If you're a frequent traveler, one $54 purchase could save you much, much more.
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Sale of the day: Speaking of traveling, one of the perks of leaving the U.S. is getting access to some truly delicious candy. (Hello, Cadbury's!) Fiona's Sweet Shoppe in Union Square specializes in European candies, and if you swing by today, you can get $20 worth of hard candies for only $8. That's a 60% discount. Sweet!
| August 03 2009 at 10:12 AM
When little purchases help you save big
When I was 24, I bought my first car. But before I stepped foot one on a lot, I bought a copy of Consumer Reports' automotive issue, and narrowed my choices down by budget and test ratings. I drove my first car (a CR best buy) for twelve years; I got rid of it only because the engine block cracked and replacing it would have cost more than the car was currently worth. I've often thought the few dollars I spent on that magazine ultimately saved me hundreds later.
The warm fuzzies I get from CR have extended to Angie's List. The husband and I live in a fixer-upper. The traditional methods of finding contractors for the stuff that's too much for us to do -- asking friends, relatives and neighbors -- didn't reap great dividends.
Paying $48 for a list of well-reviewed service providers worked. We actually got the membership fee back in coupon savings from the first roofer we used. That's one of the nicer things about Angie's List -- not only do we get peace of mind from finding contractors that had been thoroughly reviewed by other customers, we get coupons from vendors who are trying to woo the Angie's List crowd. So when my membership came up for renewal this year, I thought of the projects we have looming and I happily paid the fee. I figure it'll save me money and frustration in the long haul.
What purchases have you made that you feel have saved you money in the long run?
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There are few cheap thrills more easily attained than popping open a cool drink after a few hours outside.
Sale of the day: REI's closeout deal of the day is the DaKine Cooler Bag, now $20 (marked down 60%). Remember, shipping is free if you pick it up in-store, and there are REI stores all over the Bay Area. Soft-sided insulated picnic bags are often more space-friendly than hard-sided coolers if you're tight on storage. And I've noticed that keeping picnic gear in the car makes us more likely to bring food along somewhere instead of buying it once we get there. So maybe this can count as a buy-once-save-lots-in-the-future purchase.
| July 24 2009 at 11:16 AM
Organic produce doesn't have to cost you the farm
This entry was inspired by commenter armyvet, who pointed out how important it was to time your grocery shopping with when the freshest produce arrives. Thanks!
A few months ago, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman noted that for lots of people "organic eating" was synonymous with two things: eating more healthfully and spending more on everyday groceries. This impression was helped, no doubt, by articles that told consumers they were wasting their money by buying organic products. According to SmartMoney:
"Organic broccoli costs $2.99 per pound at online grocer FreshDirect, which also offers conventional broccoli for $1.49. A pound of navel oranges is $4 for the organic and $2 for conventional. Someone buying a pound of each item weekly could save $182 over the course of a year."
It's nice to think of that $182 sitting in the bank, collecting interest against the day it can be used to treat chronic pesticide poisoning. Or you could simply consider some smart spending to keep the green in your wallet while remaining green.
Can YOU pick out the organic groceries in this bag?
First up, learn what you can buy organic and what really doesn't matter. A general rule of thumb: if you eat the fruit or vegetable skin-and-all, go organic. This means: peaches and nectarines, apples and pears, bell peppers, celery, strawberries, cherries, leafy greens, grapes, potatoes and tomatoes. Similarly, if you peel a piece of produce or it's not terribly vulnerable to pests, you can buy the conventional produce -- onions, corn, oranges, pineapple, sweet peas and eggplant are in this list. For a good primer, check out The Daily Green's "The Clean 15: Foods You Don't Have to Buy Organic."
Second, don't rule out the organic section in your own grocery store. I regularly hit the Nob Hill in Alameda, and during the winter, I picked up organic pink lady apples there for $0.99 per pound, compared to the $2 per pound Gala apples were going for in the conventional section. Don't assume that all grocers automatically equate "organic" with "license to print money."
Finally: Use Local Harvest to find a farmer's market or CSA near you. The organic produce will usually be cheaper and you're not paying a delivery fee. To give you a ballpark figure: I have a two-person household and we eat an average of 5-7 servings of fruits and vegetables daily. Our weekly cost for 85 servings' worth of produce is usually around $30. I bet a lot of you do better.
This isn't to bag on Fresh Direct -- in fact, personal finance types recommend that you embrace online food shopping as a way to curb impulse buying. Just use your brain before you shop for anything -- and ask yourself whether saving a buck now is really worth the cost to the environment, your local food web, or your health later.
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Your deal of the day: So long as we're talking mealtime here, New Day New Deal is featuring an Oster 12" electric skillet for $41.99 today, with free shipping. These things are surprisingly versatile -- we've used ours for slow braising as well as quick frying, and my mom is currently using hers as a stop-gap cooktop while her kitchen's being remodeled. The price is lower on other sites, but you'll be paying shipping: At AllAmericanDirect.com, the same skillet was priced at $36.99 but the shipping jacked the price up to $54.19 -- 30% more than what you'd pay if you went with New Day New Deal.
| July 08 2009 at 09:08 AM
Dollars and Sense is about finding new ways to inject dollars, cents and sensibility into your everyday spending.
By Lisa Schmeiser, Read Bio
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