Personal Finance Buzz

The most effective food storage is rotated through periodically. You can’t expect your food to last forever on that shelf, so it’s a good idea to use it on occasion. This is where your frugal meal planning can come in. Pick a week, and try to plan your meals around what you already have.

One of the best ways to keep a frugal budget is obviously to reduce or eliminate needless spending. Convenience does come at a price. One very easy way to save money is to bring your own healthy lunch from home with you to school or work and avoid purchasing lunch on a daily basis. We’ve already discussed that it makes a lot of financial sense to brew your own coffee and the same logic extends to lunches.

Want some tips to eat cheap? Since a big part of your family’s monthly budget goes to food, you'll benefit by spending less at the grocery store.

It’s Wednesday evening, you just got off, the house is a wreck, the dog needs to go out and if you don’t do laundry tonight then you’ll be stuck wearing the ketchup stained shirt again—evidence to your spouse that you ate fast food for lunch and a reminder that you’re starving.

Looks like it’s take-out tonight kids.

If this scenario is foreign to you, than you’re probably in the wrong decade. Within the next five years, Americans will spend over half of the household’s food budget on meals outside the home—compared with the less than 25 percent spent in 1955.

So what does your checkbook balance have to do with your belly? More than you think.