Fiscal Fowl 5: Planning and Your Needs

those who love organization will enjoy these two tips for managing money:

Fiscal Fowl 4: Brands and Sales

it’s another wordy post filled with my ramblings about financial tactics we use every day.  since i’m sure this topic is not everyone’s cup of tea (and since i’m by no means an expert, i’m just a stay-at-home soon-to-be-mom with a lot of time on her hands) i won’t make you stare at all those lines of text.  but if you’re up to it, i’d love for you to click to…

Fiscal Fowl 3: Respect the Plastic

i hope you’ve enjoyed my previous Fiscal Fowl posts (here’s the first and second) cuz you’re getting another today!  it’s not a pretty post (no pictures), so i’ll put it after a break. you’ll have to click for more…

ALDI Praise

we love ALDI at our house. and not just because it’s a german company.

whenever we need groceries, that is our go-to shopping location.

it’s true, they don’t always have everything on our list. and they don’t usually have name brand items (except for their special buy section).  but shopping at ALDI is more than awesome enough to make up for its meagerly small shortcomings.

there are so many ways that ALDI makes saving money easy!

1. there are no cart boys or cart girls wandering the parking lot

why not? because you have to deposit a quarter to use a cart.  when you return it, you get your quarter back.  why wouldn’t you return it?!

but i must say, i love arriving at our ALDI and finding an abandoned cart in the parking lot. something about gaining 25¢ off someone who was too lazy to walk a hundred feet or so gives me great joy!

2. there are no shelves to keep looking pretty

ALDI retains the shipping packaging to keep their product orderly.  so you’re not paying to have some tired teenager come in after hours to remove everything from the shipping boxes, drop half a dozen of the items, and then arrange them on the shelf!

don’t get me wrong, ALDI still has a worker go through the stock and pluck out mis-placed items and empty shipping boxes.  but they keep those boxes available for you to use (just like at sam’s club or in the movie ‘employee of the month’).

3. you have to pay for your bags

this has so many POSITIVE benefits that i don’t understand why people even bother to pay for their bags via price-hiked merchandise any more!

by having to bring in your own bags, you’re saving your money, the store’s money, and the environment! so DO IT!

and for you crafsters out there: sew your own! pay homage to your favorite sports team, give new life to an old t-shirt, have fun with it!

4. you don’t have to pay for someone else to man-handle your groceries

i grew up bagging groceries for my parents. i know what i’m doing. and i don’t like it when a bagger who’s paid to do that job does it horribly.

there’s no reason to save all the light items for one bag and all the heavy items for another. if you put the light, squishable items on TOP of the heavy, crushing items, there won’t be a damaging amount of crushing going on.  but if you put all the heavy items in the same bag, i may just get a hernia trying to heft that bag out to my car!

on the flip side of that, you don’t need to put every other item in its own bag.  let’s save some plastic for the next schmuck who didn’t bring their re-usable bags, shall we?

5. variety is not the spice of life when you’re paying for it via hiked-up prices

yes, you can find a dozen varieties of cereal and half a dozen types of salad dressing at ALDI.  they have all the various fat content levels of milk.  they have half a dozen different lunch meats to choose from.  they even have the choice of white or wheat bread!

and they can offer you all those choices for a FRACTION of the cost of other grocers because they DON’T offer 8 different BRANDs of each choice!

6. ALDI brand is not bland

for those who go for the store brand to save money, ALDI is often no different.  plus, if you don’t like something, you can RETURN IT! how awesome is that?! they even have a shopping challenge advertised on their website! check it out!

we’ve only had 1 or 2 items of ALDI brand that have been duds. one was their version of rice-a-roni.  oh well, it’s really not all that healthy anyways when you look at how much butter you’re adding to it when you cook it.

7. small store, small staff, small payroll, small-town feel

we’ve seen all of the 6-or-so employees at one time or another. we’re basically on a first name basis with one or two of them (except they don’t wear name tags and don’t ask for our names)!  we’ve gotten quite a few congratulations and questions from them since my baby bump has grown past pineapple size.  and all of the employees know how to do all of the tasks necessary to run the store. they’re all well trained in store policies and (just as importantly) customer service!

 

i’m sure there are more plusses, but if these aren’t enough to convince you, i don’t know what will!

if you could get a discount for using re-usable grocery bags, wouldn’t you?

Fiscal Fowl 2: Knowing

as i mentioned in my first Fiscal Fowl post, i have a lot of former coworkers who had a pretty similar life experience to mine: grow up, finish high school, go to college, get a job. even though they skipped a few of the things our household has done (like buying 2 exotic cats, 2 foreign cars, and a house, and getting engaged, married, and pregnant parts) they were constantly complaining about having NO money and no savings to speak of.

so what’d we do differently from them? how’d we spend more money, but also end up with more money in our bank accounts? i’ve got a lot of tips and tricks i’ll share, but i hope you’ve already heard (and embraced) them all.  the first two (and this post) are about knowing where you stand and knowing what you need to do to improve.

it gets a little wordy, so to read more click…