Learning to Budget Entry #1

On my fourth month here, I'm thinking about the practical things I've learned. Especially about living in the US.

I think the biggest lessons I've learned in the practical aspect, has been about money. Budgeting has become an important part of my day. It's been a challenge but also it's also been fun in its own way because it forces me to be creative. Out of all the things I've learned, here are the ones that have made the biggest impact on our spending/saving habits.

1. The most important change we've made:

  

Eating at Home versus Eating Out

We have color coded chopping boards. Green is for vegetables.

We eat at home 90% of the time now. Wherein we used to eat out about 60% of the time because we felt that buying all those ingredients and cooking for two would be more expensive and more time and energy consuming than eating out. But I've learned how to plan out meals (I may not be as ambitious as those who plan a whole weeks worth of meals) but I roughly plan out most of our dinners a day or two in advance. I usually base this on what we have at hand or around something we want to eat (like seafood or pasta.) And when we cook, we usually make enough for a few meals so that we have a stash of food good for another lunch or two.

We've also slowly built up our ingredients collection so that it's easy for us to change up things in a pinch. Bread crumbs, spices and seasonings, soups, and marinades have become some of our kitchen staples. And of course, our trusty crock pot and rice cooker now have permanent places on the counter.

Maximizing our freezer is another habit that I've picked up. Whenever we buy meat, usually in "bulk" (not crazy huge portions as we're still only two) we portion them out into servings already before wrapping them in foil and placing them in storage zip bags. For example, we'll buy eight pieces of chicken and portion them out into two servings. So we'll pack four pieces of chicken per bag, with the contents and date stored written on the bag for easy reference.

If I want to cook chicken tomorrow, all I have to do is place one of the allocated storage bags in the fridge to defrost today. Aside from meat, we've also got bagels, yogurt, pizza, basil, and more stored in the freezer. Yes, most of the time it really is cheaper to buy in "bulk" than in smaller quantities. All you have to do is store your perishable items well.

Grilled Steak and Asparagus

Some of the best meals we've ever had, we cook ourselves. We've had barbecue pork ribs, dungeness crab with lemon butter sauce, truffle macaroni and cheese, grilled steak, and more, all at the fraction of what it would cost eaten at a restaurant. (Being married to a chef helps of course.)  Not that we don't eat out anymore, we still do occasionally (you can't beat Japanese restaurants or the variety of food at the farmer's market) but we've learned the value and pros of eating at home.

Dungeness Crab with Seasoned Butter Sauce

And I'm very glad that we have, because I am really enjoying cooking now.

Budgeting Entry #2 in the next post.

P.S. Can I just say that I've become a huge fan of frozen vegetables in steam packs? All you have to do is microwave them and season them yourself upon serving. And at $1.50 a bag, very affordable and pretty good (for vegetables. I'm not a big vegetable fan.)

Safeway Steam Pack Vegetable Mix