The Shopping Nazi

Anyone can waste money by eating out. But there are time you just need to get out of  the kitchen and out of the house. A mini vacation you might say.

My wife and I try to get out at least once a week, to sit down together some place and share a meal. No agenda, just sitting there talking small stuff. As a general rule we try to find a restaurant  that we have not visited, or one that it has been a long time, since we were there.

Moon’s Kitchen is on that I saw on through a friend on Facebook. Since my wife and I were going to be in downtown Boise, it seemed like a good place to good for breakfast.

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We are one week into 2010. The experts are saying our economy is in slow recovery. Money is still tight. Prices of most things are rising. Let us take a look at some interesting price increases.

Milk is $2.48 per gallon unless you go to Walgreens then it is $1.99. Gatorade that was 88 cents is now a $1.08 for a 32 ounce bottle. My favorite canned Iced Mocha has stayed the same at the convenience store, but gone up 30 at Winco.

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Last month we went out to have the traditional Thanksgiving dinner. The cost for the meal person was within a few cents. Besides we did not have all that prep time, and clean up afterwards. We just walked into the restaurant, order, ate and left.  This Christmas we are going to do something different.

Each family member is picking a course in the dinner to fix. This way no one individual will get stuck with fixing the whole meal. Each family member is responsible for staying withing budget, and cleaning up their mess, afterwards.

The main dish has a budget of $7 per person, while the side dishes and desert is $3 per person. This makes the meal costing $10 each. Leftovers will be count for future meals. Not Christmas dinner.

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Today is Saturday. Thanksgiving is over. Black Friday is over. Until Christmas we are not going to be relieved from the bombardment of “DEALS” that we cannot pass. Did you know that there are other stores were you can get fantastic deals for other than electronics, cloths, and stuff?

Last night I had to take an emergency run to Winco, my local grocery store, because we were out of bacon. In our family, Saturday morning pancakes and bacon is a bigger tradition than Thanksgiving dinner.

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Yesterday, I was walking out of the local grocery store, the headline of the local newspaper jumped out at me. It read, “The Great Recession Is Over.” My first thought was that it was a cruel trick.

Then I started asking myself, “Is The Great Recession really over?” Jobs are still tight. Milk and other staples have gone up in the past month. Big box store are worried that this Christmas’ sale will be at record lows.

Friday the stock market dropped almost 250 in both the New York and Dow Jones stock exchanges. This is in spite of good financial news for the week.

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Eat your carrots or you will have to wear glasses! Eat your spinach so you can be strong like Popeye! Then there was the latest one I heard just the other day. Eat your vegetables or you will get the swine flu!

Everyone of us have heard some similar phrase from our parents as a means to get us to eat our vegetables. Our government even has whole websites devoted to help up be healthier by eating our vegetables. MyPyramid.gov is devoted to identifying what vegetables are, so we can make the right choices.

Your mom and the US government are telling the truth. Scientific studies support all the claims of government agencies. Vegetables are good for you. It is recommend that you eat 3 to 5 servings of vegetables each day. One serving of vegetables can be:

• 1 cup of raw leafy vegetables
• 1/2 cup of other vegetables, cooked or raw
• 3/4 cup of vegetable juice

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Bacon and eggs, please. I will take two eggs over easy, whole wheat toast, and two strips of bacon. Oh could you make my bacon on extra crispy.

Doctors will tell you that bacon screams heart attack. How comes it is still the major part of any America’s diet. All it is a little pork meat and a lot of fat. A lot of flavorful fat that adds to the comfort level of one’s morning coffee. Eggs and toast are there as the healthy part of the morning breakfast.

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Halloween or Harvest Festival, whatever you want to call it. The last day of October opens the door for children of all ages to dress up. In fact, I cannot think of any other day where one can dress up in their favorite, alter ego, character or scary figure, and have so much fun.

Years ago, I took a special movie make up class. Then spend over a $100 in make up, latex skin, and a false nose. Then I went to the local Goodwill bought some old cloths.

I took that day off from work just to get ready for a Halloween party. At 6 p.m. I walked out of my apartment dressed, walking and smelling like a drunk sailor. Then I went over to a friend’s place where he was getting dressed up as an ole sea hag. From there we went off the a Halloween party.

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Every so often I check the price of a chocolate bar against 1965 prices as a kind of reality check.  Today I paid a dollar – $1 – for a piece of candy, that, in 1965 would cost a nickel.  That is now a 2000 percent increase!

If the the minimum wage kept pace with the cost of a chocolate bar, the minimum wage (compared to $1.65 in 1965) would be $33 an hour.  An unskilled, fresh out of high school employee would be earning $66,000 a year.

Now, to keep this in perspective, a person earning $65,000 in 1965 would have to earn $1,300,000 today to have the same relative buying power.

Ok, before anyone gets on my case and says the minimum wage is not supposed to be a living wage, lets take a look at reality.  If wages were pushed upward in relation to the actual cost of goods and services, the person earning $33 would still be at the very bottom of the economic scale.  That employee would still be among the working poor in any economy.

What to do?

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Become self-employed.  Corporations will not change their wage structures, so rattling their cages will not accomplish a thing.  Work around them, chart your own path and enjoy the journey.

2008 Moody Publishing Co.

Recent recon has shown that the current average price of a 1.55 ounce chocolate Hershey’s bar is 85 cents, when you buy it in the average grocery store. $1.25 when you buy it from a vending machine. The King Size bar weighs 6.2 ounces and will cost you just over 88 cents when you buy them in an 18 pack at Sam’s Club.

We in modern society have gotten in the bad habit of having a too little to eat or no breakfast. Lunch is something quick and easy. The dinner (or supper as some people like to call it) is this large sit down meal before we go off to bed.

I want you to note this is totally opposite to way our body expends energy over the course of the day.

Morning is usually both feet hitting the floor. Getting ready for work. The average commute time, in the United States, is 25 minutes. Add on to that, studies have shown that the bulk of  the work, by employees is done during first 4 hours, of the work day.

After lunch the energy levels drops off. The commute home is nothing more than a rush to get home and rest from the day’s stresses. Then comes the big meal.

Activities after dinner usually consists of watching television, reading, or some other local energy unwinding activity. We don’t need a 1,200 calorie meal a couple of hours before we go to bed.

Can I suggest an alternative. Healthy and saving you money.

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Pre-made frozen meals have gotten better over the years. The quality has improved from paper tasting preservatives to the really tasty meals. Just the other day we had on that was stir fry with shrimp. At a restaurant it would of have cost about $15 each everything including drinks and desert.

The prepackage stir fry was $3.78. Add rice for 50 cents.  A 2 liter bottle of lemon lime soda was 78 cents. Ice cream  was $3.98. That makes the total meal to $9.04. Divide that by the 3 people who set at the dinner table, making the total meal per person costing just under $3.02.

Granted the prepackage stir fry was on sale, it normally cost a dollar more. Ice cream is not the best thing to have right before bed, but it is a great comfort food. Then watching the Syfy channel together for an hour before off to bed is a great way to finish off the day.

For this and other great meal planning and money saving ideas go to Dinnersaving.com.