<p>No one making $100K a year is “poor” financially except by choice. There is always that choice, yes, with consequences of stepping away from it all and starting from scratch. WIth $100K in salary, you can remake it. With $30K, it’s hard to step down into a way of life to free up more cash and still provide the essentials.</p>
<p>CC has exposed me to the experiences of so many people who have come in contact with others who judge how they spend their money. I have not experienced this with anyone I know ‘in real life’. People question how a parent spends $$ on their own child’s music lessons? Seriously? I guess maybe I’ve been fortunate in the circle of friends I have but I can’t imagine anyone I know mentioning how others decide to spend their hard earned dollars. I don’t think about or care how others spend their money, why would I? </p>
<p>As to the OP: there was an article in the paper here this week reporting on the number of provincial employees who earned over $100,000 last year (this has to be publicly reported annually). Almost 79,000 Ontario civil servants earned more than $100,000 in 2011, a 10% increase from the previous year. </p>
<p>[Ontario’s</a> ‘sunshine list’ grows by 10% - Toronto - CBC News](<a href=“http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/03/23/ontario-sunshine-list.html]Ontario’s”>Ontario's 'sunshine list' grows by 10% | CBC News)</p>
<p>alwaysamom, may be you should start a thread about public employees. “most” of them have much better compensations and job security than the private section employees. </p>
<p>Recently, we have a local school boss who “retired” to start collect a full pesnion. Then the school rehires this person at 50% salary. And they said this is a fair move by the government.</p>
<p>“I wish we lived closer so you could take me shopping! I would love to learn from you. If you have any tips you would like to share, I will be a most appreciative audience.”</p>
<p>I will gladly share. </p>
<p>I only shop every two weeks. </p>
<p>I buy all my dry goods - soup (Annies), chicken and veggie broth, pasta (whole wheat only), cereal - both cold and hot (old fashioned oats,) rice, beans, sandwich bread (Martin’s whole wheat, and for my DH a multi-grain (Healthy Pride I think it’s called and I buy 3 loafs so I don’t have to run to store in between shops,) all my dairy (including organic milk and eggs,) OJ, V8, and the one bag of chips (Utz) and pretzels all at Walmart. If I bought these at my regular supermarket I would my bill with be at least 1/3 higher. The Sabre humus, for example, is $1.50 less than it is at my regular market!</p>
<p>Then I drive down the street to my regular market and…</p>
<p>buy all my meat, deli, plus things like Parm.Reggiano (which I buy whole and grate when needed) and the good artisan bread from the bakery. My market started selling a artisan different bread each day of the week for $2. I buy two and freeze one. </p>
<p>I never buy stuff like bottled salad dressing - I make my own vinaigrette or just use EVOO & balsamic vinegar or lemon. I don’t buy any convenience food - unless you consider canned tuna/peanut butter type things. </p>
<p>I make ice tea using tea bags, and lemon-aid from lemon juice. I never buy soda. </p>
<p>I bake chocolate chip cookies from scratch (about the only thing I bake and which is pretty much the only sweet stuff we ever have it the house - aside from ice cream I buy at the local dairy store (Stewarts.) </p>
<p>I make lots of homemade soup - especially in the winter and casseroles like baked ziti and mac & cheese - all from scratch. There is always some left overs, which DH usually takes to work and now that DS is away we have for a second meal. I make black beans, salsa and sauce from scratch - though in the winter I have to use canned diced tomatoes (I buy Muir Glenn 28 oz @$2.99 can) and that is enough for sauce for at least three pasta w red sauce meals. I always buy the biggest package of poultry but only all natural and put enough for one meal in individual freezer bags. I usually buy one steak (boneless sirloin, meatloaf mix (pork & ground beef) and ground meat for chili. </p>
<p>For seafood, I buy mussels and steam them in a white wine sauce (I think it’s Bobby Flay’s recipe I use) and have started to buy the flash frozen big bags of Tilapia. While not a fan of frozen, the flash frozen it really very good and easy to prepare lots of different ways and I like having it on hand. I also buy a big bag of frozen uncooked shrimp which comes in very handy. I thrown it over pasta dishes, or risotto. </p>
<p>In the summer, I buy all my produce at a local farms farm stand a few miles from my house. It is easier and less much less expensive, imo, then going to the farmer’s market. </p>
<p>Two weeks ago I spent $76 dollars at Walmart and $74 at my regular market for the two of us. I will go marketing again on Tuesday or Weds. </p>
<p>I still have plenty in the freezer, bread, salad stuff and broccoli, eggs, cheese, cereal in the house. I’m am almost all out of fruit though. My frig is only 4 yrs old hardly anything ever goes bad. </p>
<p>Another thing I do at the end of the summer is blanch a lot of veggies (especially green beans) from the farm stand and store in my freezer to use out of season. I do this with strawberries and blueberries too. </p>
<p>On my deck in the summer I grow herbs, tomatoes and peppers in pots.</p>
<p>
And to posters who judge how others spend their money!</p>
<p>Very true, sylvan. :)</p>
<p>I just moved in with my boyfriend in January and he has one of those foodsaver vacuum sealers and that’s been a lifesaver for us. With two Progressive brand lettuce keepers from amazon, an OXO salad spinner, and the foodsaver, I can make a weeks worth of lunch and dinner salads on Sunday night for a few bucks and be set for the week-- I never imagined I could get away with chopping veggies in advance but with the food saver they stay crisp and moist all week without getting soggy. I eat oatmeal and a banana for breakfast, salad and an apple for lunch, some peanut butter on whole grain toast for an afternoon snack, then the salads with dinner cut down on our portions. We’ve really saved some money since we started doing that! (Now if only I could get my meat-and-potatoes boyfriend to LOOK at a salad…) I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my foodsaver. Between that and our new chest freezer in the garage I think we’re really going to be able to start cutting down our grocery bills once I can get boyfriend to stop eating so much packaged food.</p>
<p>I’ve had him looking up recipes this weekend so we can do a two week challenge where we don’t eat ANYTHING that comes out of a package, with the exception of things that wouldn’t be practical otherwise like yogurt and peanut butter. I want to make all our dinners and as many of our lunches from scratch as I can to see if we eat better and to see how our grocery bills change. Should be fun. :)</p>
<p>Emaheevul07,</p>
<p>Have you heard of the book, Fix, Freeze, Feast? </p>
<p>“Buy groceries in bulk, prepare family-friendly dishes, package in meal-sized freezer bags, then stock the freezer with ready-to-defrost-and-serve tasty homemade meals.”</p>
<p>[Amazon.com:</a> Fix, Freeze, Feast: The Delicious, Money-Saving Way to Feed Your Family (9781603427265): Kati Neville, Lindsay Tkacsik: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Fix-Freeze-Feast-Delicious-Money-Saving/dp/1603427260/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332704654&sr=8-1#_]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Fix-Freeze-Feast-Delicious-Money-Saving/dp/1603427260/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332704654&sr=8-1#_)</p>
<p>There’s nothing like the feeling of having home-cooked food (eg: chicken cordon bleu) in the freezer.</p>
<p>You can make a week’s worth of salads in advance? Who knew?!!!</p>
<p>Emilybee, we do a lot of what you do, except we do not eat any seafood. The difference might be that we don’t have Wal Mart here and the meat is ridiculously expensive. We buy a lot of things in bulk and cook multiple meals at a time.</p>
<p>^^^ I’d like to hear more about salads in foodsaver bags too! I have a foodsaver, and love it, but it seems to crush soft things, like a bagel. I do celery, onions, partially frozen strawberries, proteins, cheese. Which salad fixins work?</p>
<p>So far I have done cucumber and celery in the foodsaver… we have these little like sandwich sized tupperware things that are made by the foodsaver people, and I peel and chop my cucumbers and my celery and put each in a container, vacuum seal them and pop them in the fridge. I do a weeks worth at once no problem-- I was chopping veggies every night and it was making me crazy, so this is a great time saver and makes me more motivated to eat healthy. Our containers look kind of like this… [Amazon.com:</a> FoodSaver T020-00024 24-Ounce Lunch-and-Leftover Containers, Set of 3: Kitchen & Dining](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/FoodSaver-T020-00024-24-Ounce--Leftover-Containers/dp/B000OWLQAM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1332708831&sr=8-4]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/FoodSaver-T020-00024-24-Ounce--Leftover-Containers/dp/B000OWLQAM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1332708831&sr=8-4) I was skeptical but my boyfriend insisted it would work, and he was right! I feel like if you can do cucumbers you can do just about anything.</p>
<p>I do iceberg and romaine lettuces so far and I rinse them and spin them dry in my spinner, then I tear it up into bite size pieces and throw it into my progressive lettuce keeper, and I can just take lettuce out of it throughout the week. It stays green and crisp in this crisper the whole week if I spin it first. I go through three heads of iceberg and two bunches of romaine in a week. I can fit two heads in the keeper at once so I have two of the keepers, one for each type of lettuce, and usually on Thursday I put fresh iceberg in because I’ve run out by then. No brown or wilty lettuce!</p>
<p>Each night I just mix together what I want for the next day and pop it in the fridge and it’s ready to go. I have two or three small, sandwich sized vacuum sealed containers of chopped veggies, my two crispers, and some baby spinach my fridge at just about all times, and that takes care of all my salads for the week. I do baked chicken a lot too, I just bake it and cut it into cubes and I can vacuum seal that OR if I freeze it in a single layer and it’s cut small enough, I can put it in my salad the night before and it’ll thaw out fine by lunchtime the next day. I prefer to vacuum seal but I froze it before and it worked fine since I’m not reheating it.</p>
<p>familyof3boys, that book looks right up my alley! Thanks for the recommendation!</p>