Back to basics

Posted August 17th, 2005 by Penny Wise

The last few times I have visited the supermarket, I have come home with my bags and thought, 'heck - where's all the food?' It took me a while to figure it out, but now I know why; it's because in the last few months I have gone back to basics. No more convenience foods, sachets and sauces. I no longer buy pizzas, I make my own. I turn leftovers into pies, casseroles and soups and make all our meals from scratch using natural ingredients - including the boys' chips! Even the vegetable peelings get boiled up and added to the dogs' pet mince. I am saving over $100 on each supermarket visit - which means as I visit the supermarket approximately every three weeks, that's a yearly saving of over $1700! The biggest rip-off I have seen for ages is that 'Sweet Chilli Philly', you know - the cream cheese doused with sweet chilli sauce? My friends and I have been making our own for years, and for half the price! If you can't be bothered to drizzle some chilli sauce over a tub of cream cheese to save money, there's something wrong!

While I was in the supermarket today, I picked up a dozen free range eggs, from the supposedly budget brand, but dropped them like hot coals (not literally, think of the mess) when I saw the price of them at $6.99. No way! I pick them up from my local corner shop for $3.90! There are only three things I refuse to budget on - one of them is free range eggs - there's no way I could eat eggs from those poor deprived battery hens, another is baby peas (can't stand big fat old woody peas!) and the third is Pantene shampoo. Mind you, I'm even learning to diversify on that too - I've discovered that I can use my expensive shampoo, but have recently substituted my $9.79 Pantene conditioner for a $2.99 VO5 one - and the results are just as good, plus everyone keeps commenting how nice my hair smells!

Even Noel keeps laughing at my skinflint ways, though he was pretty impressed that I managed to save $41 on our last power bill, just by paying it within seven days. An impressive discount! A couple of weekends ago some friends and I took the kids to McDonalds. When my friend bit into her burger, she didn't like the taste and realized she'd been given the wrong one. She was going to let it go, but not me! I marched up to the counter (much to her embarrassment), explained the error and requested a new burger - easy peasy. A few months ago there was no way I would have ever done that, and she's supposed to be the Happy Hanna! Mind you, I surpassed myself at a recent visit to The Warehouse. I had recently bought a plastic measuring jug for the princely sum of $1.68. The first time I washed it, all the measurements came off! Now I know this is a dollar we're talking about here, but as far as I was concerned, I bought it as a MEASURING jug, because I needed to measure things - the fact that all the measurements were now non-existent had rendered it useless. I took back my rubbish measuring jug and demanded a refund, yes, all $1.68 of it! I'm sure the shop lady thought I was being really petty, but hey, it was the principle of the thing.

Want to comment? Become a Simple Savings member »

January 2015

December 2014

March 2014

December 2011