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Food can take quite a bite out of your budget. Improve your budget by making smarter choices and having a plan:
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- Fast food seems cheap and convenient, but spending $6 a day can add up quickly. Instead, bring your lunch/make spaghetti. For the same $6, you can have several meals from one big pot of homemade spaghetti.
- You pay more to buy “prepared” foods, such as marinated chicken breasts or pre-washed & torn lettuce. Would you pay someone $3 to wash and chop your salads for you? Because that’s what you’ll pay if you buy a bagged salad mix instead of a head of lettuce.
- Try to go Vegetarian 3 times a week. Meat can be a big ticket item. Think of some alternative ways to get protein (i.e. make a baked potato with vegetables and cottage cheese, or make a stir fry with tofu or soybeans—Costco sells a huge bag of stir fry vegetables for about $7 and it has soybeans already in it!!) You can make a can of soup really hearty by adding veggies and rice. A 3lb bag of rice is about $4, which comes out to $0.08 an ounce!