BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 3: Cutting Your Grocery Bill in Half with Erin Chase from $5 Dinners

Episode Date: January 15, 2018

As a mom of (then) two, Erin Chase found herself shopping for groceries without a plan, picking up things that sounded good, but no idea what she’d do with them once she got them home. They made their way into the refrigerator, then on to the trash after they rotted. She knew she had to significantly cut her grocery bill if she wanted to get ahead. In this episode of The BiggerPockets Money Podcast, Erin shares how she cut her grocery bill in half - while adding two more kids to the mix. She gives actionable tips for significantly reducing your grocery bill - without clipping coupons! Don’t miss this awesome episode with Erin! Links from the Show Checkout 51 King Soopers Favado Coupons.com Albertsons Safeway   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets Money Show, show number three. It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in a cubicle for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you're looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth creation. You're in the right place. This show is for anyone who has money or wants more. This is the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How's it going, everybody? This is Scott Trench.

Here with my co-host, Miss Mindy Jensen. How you doing, Middy? I'm doing really good, Scott. How are you doing today? I am doing great. I'm excited to learn a lot about budgeting and grocery shopping and learning how to really make a dent in my food budget here. This show is fantastic. Aaron Chase is the founder of $5dinners.com, $5 meal plan.com, the grocery budget makeover.com, and she's author of the $5 dinner mom cookbook series. And before we talk any more about her, I want to say that all of these $5,000, dinners are actually really good meals. She's not sharing with you how to make beans and rice or how to make a peanut butter sandwich. She's sharing really delicious meals using everyday ingredients

that you can find at your store. She doesn't have those weird ingredients that cost like $100. She doesn't have boring meal plans. She's on a mission to help busy, overwhelmed home chefs learn how to spend less money on groceries and get organized in the kitchen. And I've made her meals. I subscribe to $5 dinners myself and they're amazing. And one of the reasons why we're talking about this here is, you know, when it comes to your budget, when it comes to starting out and cutting expenses, the three biggest expense categories for the average American are going to be your housing expense, your transportation expense and your food budget. Housing is going to be 33%. This is data that I know off the top of my head because I'm a huge personal finance nerd. And you also wrote a book, right? And I wrote a book.

So, you know, 33% of the budget is housing. 17% is transportation. And then the next 13% is going to be food. And of those three things, food is the one that you can probably make the biggest dent in in the immediate future. And who better to go to than an expert in affordable meal planning like Aaron? That's why we have Aaron on the show. and there's nobody else that we could go to. That would be a bigger expert in this space, in my opinion.

And Aaron shares her these tips that are like, I could do this today. I don't have to, you know, she doesn't talk about clipping coupons and, you know, buying the newspaper and being one of those crazy coupon ladies. She gives us a lot of tips that you can start saving today on your very next grocery bill with like five minutes of preparation. Yep. And is this going to have maybe the. the same impact as house hacking or earning an extra hundred grand a year? No, no. But this is the biggest

thing you can do this week, tomorrow, today to save a lot of money. Perfect. Perfect. Yes. This is the biggest thing you can do today to start. If you're coming from a place of negative wealth where you're in debt, stop spending so much money on groceries. Aaron is going to share some amazing tips with you with us about, you know, and it's, it's not deprivation. She's not for, you know, encouraging you to just eat peanut butter sandwiches all day long. Let's let her tell it. Well, awesome. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps

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It saves time, money, and probably a few years of life expectancy. Found has over 30,000 five-star reviews from owners who say, Found makes everything easier. Expenses, income, profits, taxes, invoices even. So reclaim your time and your sanity. Open a found account for free at found.com. That's fowundd.com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Bank. Banking services are provided by lead bank, member FDIC. Don't put this one off. Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Found. Audible has been a core part of my routine for more than a decade. I started listening years ago to make better use of drive time and workouts, and it stuck. At this point, I've logged over 200. 229 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Leen or Stronger for Fitness, the Anxious Generation for Parenting Perspective, and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental

well-being. What makes Audible so powerful is its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible Originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more, all accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. So let's bring in Aaron Chase from $5 dinners and $5 meal plan and $5 My Freeze Easy. Aaron does everything for $5.

That's right. I should be. Welcome to the show, Aaron. How you doing? Hey, thanks for having me on. Thanks for coming. Yeah, so you've got an awesome story here. Can you tell us a little bit about how you kind of got into this meal planning space and, you know, what kind of kicked off this journey?

Sure. So, let's see, nine years ago, which just seems like yesterday, but nine years ago, our family, our personal budget was feeling the pinch from the rising gas prices. If you remember, you know, they basically doubled one summer from like two bucks a gallon to four bucks a gallon. My husband had a long commute and I wasn't working at that time. And so I just decided I need to figure out how to spend less money on groceries. If I'm not bringing in money, then I need to spend less money, right? It kind of took like the reverse approach, I suppose. And so just went and tried to tackle the grocery line item because it was the most expensive,

the biggest line item that we had the most control over. And actually, I think that's true for a lot of people. And so I went after it with meal planning, with strategic couponing. I've never been an extreme couponer or like a hoarder, just putting that out there because people ask me that all the time. And then just being really smart when you're in the store. I think that's where a lot of people trip up. Like plan, that can be a four-letter word for some people, right? And then couponing, people are like, eh.

But really, like, if you can dial in and behave yourself in the store and have, like, a good plan, there's that four-letter word again. Like, for when you go in the store, then you're going to find, you know, success. And you're going to feel less like you're like flushing money down the toilet as you walk out the store every week. Yeah, that's one of my biggest problems is I go into the store, even now, it's you're rushed because you're getting off of work. And then you're like, oh, this looks good. This looks good. Maybe I'll make something with this. And then you get home and you're like, what am I going to do with a leak?

I don't cook with leaks. Why did I pick this up? And having a plan is so important. And I think that's a, you know, you said that this was the largest line item that you had control over. that is what I hear over and over from so many women. I spend so much money at the grocery store. And you know, you really don't have to, but I don't want to sit there and clip coupons all day.

I don't want to be an extreme. I tried the extreme couponing. That lasted. I think my husband was about to divorce me. One minute. Yeah. Yeah. We don't need 76 tubs of mayonnaise.

Oh, but it was on sale. We don't have any space. Yeah, I think you're totally not alone in that, right? Like, so I think it. If you can just give me, give yourself 10 minutes a week to just look over the ad scan, make a quick list. If you want to dig so far as to like make a meal plan to go with it, that would probably be more like 20 minutes. Then you're like going to be winning at the grocery game, right? Like you have to know what's on sale and you have to know what you're going to eat.

And I think what happens is if you can set yourself up for that success, then you'll follow through throughout the week of like, oh, I have everything I need for this week. and then you're less likely to like grab that leap like what are you going to do with that like who cooks that gourmet on a week night right like I don't um so you know but it's like shiny it's like shiny object squirrel syndrome when you're in the store like ooh those are beautiful today or they moved the display in the produce like how many times you walk in the produce department and the display is or like the where things are is different in my store it's like every other week they just and they do that on purpose right like it's part of it's part of it's of the game because they want you to pick up that leak so that, you know, then you think you'll cook

with it and then you end up throwing it away. So another thing that I recommend and do is like, when you are like, and this happens to me, like for us it's usually strawberries. It pains me. We go through a lot of strawberries, but it's hard to estimate like how many are we going to actually need for lunchboxes for snacks or sometimes I'll use them for dessert, right? So like I usually end up, there's usually a couple in the container that have just kind of gone bad. But any produce like that, when I throw that in the trash, I, like, equate how much money that was. Like, that was 75 cents worth of strawberries. Like that one time is like, eh, but like, do that over and over, like, the leak that you

probably paid $1.50 for, right? Or even $2. Like, oh, my gosh, like that, you're throwing money in the trash. So if you can kind of, like, mentally put that together, I think it'll help, like, motivate you to be more disciplined in actually getting what you need from the store and not getting what you think you need or shiny object squirrel items. Does that make sense? That makes so much sense. So do you have any idea how much money you are spending on food in general prior to kind of undergoing this shift and then what your budget looks like now after kind of some years of

optimization? Yeah. So when we very first started, it was my husband and I and our two young kids, like toddlers, three and one. And I was spending about $500 a month at the store, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a lot for a very small family. Got that down to $2.50 on the regular. Added two more kids nine years later. Actually, not a ton of inflation. People think that food is more expensive, but I have tracked grocery prices for nine years now.

And the sale prices are still pretty similar. The baseline prices or the regular prices have come up, maybe a smidge. But overall, we're still seeing a couple of ingredients, like beef went up a little bit with the drought, a couple years ago. Milk has gone up a little bit. But overall, the sale prices for a lot of ingredients are still the same. Like you can still get a box of 50 cent pasta or even free pasta if you can match the coupon with the sale, right? So you can sue that. So now our grocery budget is closer to 600, 650. And that accounts for our growing family and our growing kids. And I also have in our

budget some convenience foods that I used to not have if that makes sense. And as our life's gotten and busier. I've kind of adjusted to be able to include some more convenient food type snacks. I still do a lot of, you know, baking and making of, you know, batch cooking and freezer cooking and things like that. But I also have added a little bit more into the budget that I didn't have back when I wasn't working and it was just the little kiddos. So. And I want to jump in here and say that Aaron has four boys. How old are you, I mean, I have two girls who eat like linebackers. I can't imagine what four boys eat like. And when you say $600. a month. I'm like, that's it? Yes, maybe $6.50. It kind of depends on when we go to Costco

and when that falls. I usually go every five to six weeks. So a Costco month might be closer to $700, but I'm still also very mindful what I'm buying in there as well, very intentional with that, because that's a bigger spend. It's a bigger trip, right? So I have four boys. Their age is 12, 10, seven, let's call him eight because he turns eight this week and four. And so my, the two older ones, for sure eat more than I do. And sometimes they eat almost eight year old will if he's in a gross spurt or something or he's had a really busy weekend or something like that. He'll for sure eat more than I do. And so yeah, it's like, but it's this, it's for me, it's a game of I cook a lot. I like to cook. I want to cook for my boys. I want to feed them great food. And just it's this

ends up being this game of like, what's on sale? What can I kind of mix and match? Sometimes it's fresh produce. Sometimes it's frozen veggies. Sometimes it's organic. veggies from Costco. Like, it really depends on what's in the freezer and the fridge, right? And when I've been able to get on sale at the store that particular week. And so then it's, it's, for me, it's that it's that fun game of playing what's on sale, what can I kind of throw together for dinner. Well, I mean, to show that we're playing with like real numbers here, you know, at first, with the, even with the small family, that was $250 a month. That's $3,000 a year. You know, what do you think that's like now, what do you think your your, your bill would be currently if you weren't doing

this kind of, this kind of optimization and we're just kind of going like the average person? Easily a thousand bucks, twelve hundred bucks a month. In one of our classes, we ask, we get real clear on what our numbers are, right? And I mean, I've had people tell me that they're spending $24, $2,500 a month on groceries? Yeah, yes, yes, on groceries, not. not including like dinner. That's the highest number I've heard, but we have a lot of people in that like $1,500 range who have, you know, four or five people in their family.

They're not feeding, you know, 12 people, let's say. So I've been shocked. And I think a lot of people fall into that $1,500 month range for groceries, add on, you know, going out. And if you're doing drinks and things like that, like then it really adds up real quick, right? So I think, I always say, I think I can pretty well, unless you're already a super saver, I can pretty well save you two,

300 bucks a month if you're willing to put in 10 to 20 minutes of work a week. But once you kind of get the flow of it and you experience the results, right, of like, oh my gosh, I actually spent 50, 60, $75 less this week. Then all of a sudden you have this new motivation and this new challenge to keep doing that week after week. And then it becomes your normal, right? So wait, you're telling me I need to trade 10 or. or 20 minutes for $50 or $75.

Sorry, you don't have time. I mean, who can't? That hourly rate is like way higher than most people earn in their job. So like that and that's what I think it comes down to. Like, that's why I like to break it down like that. Like it's not reverse engineering, but it's just like if you can think about it in those terms, it's all about how you think about it, right? Like you're throwing away a dollar when you throw away the strawberries that are left over or

that leak, right? If you can think about the hourly rate of what this could be, you have to do it to see it, right, and experience it. And I think that's where people get tripped up is that, you know, all of other life's, you know, things that are coming at you in life, just kind of muddle it all down. And then it's like food becomes an afterthought, right? Well, I think food should be like the forefront, right? Like we could, that's always another conversation. But yeah, like if you can invest a little bit of time, it doesn't take much. Like the very first time, it might take you a little longer to get your bearings of like, where do I find the ads and where is this?

And do I need to use a mobile app and things like that? But the very first time might take you a little bit. Once you kind of figure out, like, I just need to scan the front and back page of the circular. If you really want to go inside, you can. And then make a list of, okay, so chicken and steak are on sale this week. So we're going to have two chicken meals. We'll have a steak meal. And I bet I can find two or three meals out of my pantry.

Right. And then you just spent $100 bucks less at the grocery store. So let's use me as a test subject. I'm a single guy. I go to the grocery store. I buy food and I cook it. That's my approach. How can I improve upon that in a meaningful way based on what you're talking about here?

So do you look at the store ads before you go in? Nope. I just show up and buy whatever. I'm feeling like buying that day. So I think I see your problem, Scott. Number one rule is you've got to look at the store ads. Like, I've said that already like four or five times, right? Like, you can, you got to make them come to you.

That's what I, that's what I advise. Like, it used to be, I mean, they still do come in the newspaper, right? You kind of have to fish through that, right? Like, get the stores mobile app on your phone, right? Interesting. I don't even know you could do that. Yes. This is all new for me.

Right. Like, if you really want to get serious, put the app for the store on the front page of your phone. I've taken notes here. No, take notes. He's like downloading the app right now. Yeah. You don't press your Wi-Fi, Scott. But or you can have, you can sign up for the store's email newsletter and it'll show up in your inbox.

So King Supers has a mobile app and a newsletter that I can sign up for and just look at before I head, I head over there when I make my list. King Supers also has coupons that you don't have to clip. They're on the app. And you just, you check, yes, I want to use this coupon. Yes, I want to use this coupon. And I think most grocery store apps are about the same. I'll show you after we're done with this, God, I'll show you because I've already got it on my phone. Okay.

Yay. All right. Because I'm not new. But I still don't do all the things. I mean, I get the $5 meal plans in my inbox every week. It's really awesome. It's click here to download. I open it up and it's got seven recipes.

Is it seven recipes? Now I'm drawing a blank. Six dinners plus breakfast, lunch, dessert and like a snack. So just kind of a little variety of new things to try. Yeah, and I can go through there. Oh, pork's not on sale today. Okay, I'll go back and use a different week's meal plan. And because chicken is on super sale. So I'll make all chicken dishes this week or, you know, whatever's on sale. And King Supers always has something on sale. So you go and you choose based on the meat. And then you build. Here's a newsflash for you, Mindy. You don't know that this is an option. So you can go onto the website into the web app. And like if let's say pork's on sale, but there's like not a pork. You can drag out a recipe and drag in a pork recipe and then reprint out your meal plan. For real. You like swap out recipes or you can go in and like just be like,

chickens on sale and steak is on sale. I'm going to pick three chicken recipes and one steak and just print that out. Does that make sense? Well, let's remind the. You can manipulate it based on the sale ads in your area because sale ads are different everywhere. We can't create a meal plan for everybody's sale ads. Right. But you can.

Now you can. So there you go. And which one of. the websites is the one that you can do this particular. The $5 meal plan. $5 meal plan.com. Okay. The five is a number, but I don't know if it be directs, actually, but the five is a number.

We will put a link to $5 meal plan in our show notes so that people know what we're talking about. Awesome. Go there and see it quickly. All right. So just to make sure I understand what's going on here. I sign up for my, you know, breakthrough moment at the grocery store newsletter and the app. I look at what's on sale before.

go to the store instead of while I'm at the store. Oh, remember that four-letter word, she said, the plan. You have to have a plan. A $5 meal plan, yes. And then I go to your website, and I have a list of recipes, and I choose the one that makes the most sense based on the sale, the sale prices that are occurring at my current grocery store. And this will save tons of money over time, you know.

Oh, wait, there's more. At the end of these, you've got the six recipes and then at the, or the, however many recipes. 10, but yeah, yeah. Yeah. You've got a shopping list at the end that tells you exactly what you need. You don't, you just print that out. You don't even have to print out all the recipes and take them with you and be like,

oh, I need three chicken breasts for this one and four chicken breasts for this one. The shopping list will say you need three chicken breasts for this one plus four and you're like, oh, okay, here's a package of seven. I've got what I need. Or you need two tablespoons of butter for one recipe and five tablespoons for another recipe. So you grab, you know, butter if you don't have it. But Scott, didn't you write a book called Set for Life?

I go and I buy reasonable food from the grocery store. I have clearly a lot more optimization to be doing in this department, though. And I go to Costco a lot. That's how I've been doing this. So this is mind-blower. This is like a travel hacking thing where I just, like, didn't even know that it existed. I need to jump in here and say that Scott is significantly younger than I am. He's probably the same age as Aaron, 25.

27. Oh, you are funny. Wait, how old are my voice again? No, I just entered a new decade. Oh, congratulations. I'm halfway through one. Funny. So I graduated from high school, and then Scott was born.

Maybe for me too. I was thinking that we were talking about, like, ads in the newspaper to see what's on sale in the grocery store. And I was like, that is not happening. Well, no, I still get the newspaper every day. I grew up reading the newspaper. I love the newspaper. It's a dying industry and I'm going to support it until it's dead.

And I do get the newspaper with the circular every week. And I go through it and oh, okay, this is what's on sale. But right now I have a touch of a hoarder in me and I am trying to shop my pantry and really get everything out of my pantry. So I can go to Costco and get, you know, 12 cans of corn that I'm going to use up over the next three months. So I'm in a bit of a different spot right now. So let's focus on Scott. Scott, just like travel hacking, you can save money at the grocery store by making a plan. Fair enough.

I've, yeah, this is mine. This is, this is a new information to me that I'm going to go out and implement immediately. I love it. Life changing. Changing. Changing your life. Woohoo. Grocery shopping trip. So, Aaron, I have a lot of people in my life who are not frugal.

And they say things like, I don't have. time to clip coupons. I don't have time to do all this. You said it takes 10 minutes. How much time do you spend clipping coupons? Or do you not even clip physical coupons anymore? Do you just use the apps? I do a little bit of both and I don't spend a lot of time on it. So like if you want to layer it together, right? Like write a meal plan and shopping list from your sales circular 10, maybe 20 minutes. Clip coupons, another five, maybe 10 minutes. And with the cashback apps, what we recommend doing and what we have found to be the best for actually taking action on it is before you even leave the grocery store parking lot, like you've loaded your groceries into the car and you're getting ready to leave.

Like just sit there for a minute, snap the receipt or upload the receipt or whatever the app asks you to do before you get home. Does that make sense? Because once you get home and you start unloading groceries and then you see the pile of laundry and then you do this and then you do that and then all of a sudden you forgot about that receipt, you need to upload or scan, like, and then that doesn't help you. Does that make sense? That does make sense, but I want to go back to the beginning of this. And what apps are you talking about?

Oh, my gosh, there's dozens of them. What are your favorites? Do I? My favorite is Check Out 51. Check out 51. Check out 51. That's my personal favorite. There's a lot of cashback apps.

You can just go into either app store and do. just search cashback grocery apps. And it'll, it'll, the idea is you upload or scan your receipt, or Walmart has a program like this now. It's kind of like you're getting the savings after you've purchased instead of before you've purchased. There are a couple of coupon apps that you can do like before coupons.com just actually redid their entire app where you can print from your phone and use your phone to scan now.

That's brand new. I think even of like as of a week ago, and it might not be fully. rolled out over all their platforms yet, but it's coming. So you can use coupons on the front side, grocery store apps. You can use coupons on the front side. So you show them the little barcode before you leave the store. Like that would be the King's Supers app would do that. You click the ones you want, you show it to them, they scan it, and then it takes that amount off. So there's two ways to do it. So if you're using the before transaction apps, you've got to plan that when you're planning your meal plan, your grocery list. Does that make sense? So that is, that becomes a part of that.

Then there's the after the fact, you know, so it kind of depends on your MO. It depends on how you think it would work best for your personality and your situation. You could also just put the receipts in a stack and at the end of the month, scan them all up and get the savings back. Does that make sense? So it doesn't have to take a long time if you, like, plug it into your system, I suppose, at the right time. Does that make sense?

Supposing this was also a new concept to a listener or be, could you provide maybe a list of these apps that you could scan your receipts for our show notes? And then also, how long in the past can we go back and upload these receipts? I do not know that. At the top of my head, you'd probably have to look at each one's terms. And it might even vary by actual door. But it depends. like the offers are only, it's probably not very long actually because the offers are usually only good for a week, two weeks, four weeks. And so if you scan a receipt from two months ago

that has a deal from something you bought today, it'll decline it. Doesn't that make sense. They're all a little bit different in that sense. Checkout 51, Barry Cart, I bought a, are the big ones. Favato is different. It tells you what's on sale and what coupons are available. So it's, It would be one you use on the pre side and the planning side, coupons.com. You would also use on the front side where you're planning. And then, of course, any store app that, you know, whether it's King Supers or Albertsons or Safeway, they all have, each store has slightly different programs. And you would probably want to do that on the front side, the planning side as well. Can you combine them?

Can you use coupons at the checkout and then scan your receipt at the, on the backside? You technically can. Is it allowed? No. It kind of depends on who's issuing the coupon as well. If it's a store issued coupon and a manufactured issued coupon, you might be able to use both since the savings are coming from two different entities. But if it's two manufacturers coupons,

technically are not allowed to do that. And that's actually the reason that coupons.com is coming out with a new app to prevent that from happening. Okay. I'm not trying to do anything. No, I know. It's a good question. People ask it a lot. I have always taken the, if it's two manufacturers coupon, so if it's a manufacturer's coupon coming

through the Kroger app and a manufacturer paper coupon coming from the newspaper, do not use those together. They're not meant to be used together. But if it's a store coupon, let's say it's like a Target store coupon in their app or in their flyer, let's say, and then there's a manufacturer's coupon, those can be used together because there, does that make sense? Right. What I was asking, what I meant was can I use a coupon at the sale and then scan in the receipt for I Bata? Same stories. It depends on if it's mainly, it's most likely manufacturer and manufacturer.

So I would say no. Can you technically do it where the register will allow you? Yes. But I don't want to promote bad couponing practices so that it ruins it for all of us, like an unnamed television show did. So anyways, I just have always aired on the side of, you know, keep it clean. Okay, I wasn't sure where the money was coming from, like the cashback. So let's look at checkout 51. You go in, you scan your receipt after you're sitting in the grocery store parking lot.

What happens after that? Do you get like instant money or? Yep. So typically with the cashback apps, you would scan or upload your receipt according to their app. They're all a little bit different. and then you basically have a balance that they owe you, the cash back that they owe you, and then you can cash that out when you want to. Most of them have a minimum threshold.

I think some are even as low as $5 or $10. And you could either like cash that out as you go. Typically it goes straight to PayPal or you could let it accumulate over the year. We've had some of our super savers have been able to save like three, I think one, I saw $326 not long ago that they've saved this year. that she's planning on cashing that out and then using it to help pay for Christmas. Does that make sense? Oh, yeah, that does.

Having an intention for that money, I think is good as well. It just gives you a little bit of extra motivation of like, oh, no, it's worth me spending that 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes to plan this out so that I can have some extra cash at Christmas. And I'm going to get that extra cash by using one of these apps. Does that make sense? Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, safety. investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening.

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Marvel Television's Wonder Man An eight episode series. Now streaming on Disney Plus. A superhero remake. Not exactly what we'd expect from an Oscar winning director. Action! Simon Williams.

Audition for Wonder Man. I'm going to need you to sign this. Assuming you don't have superpowers. I'll never work again if anyone found out. My lips are sealed. Marvel Television's Wonder Man. All eight episodes now streaming, only on Disney Plus. So I was a stay-at-home mom for eight years, and I had noticed that, oh, we're spending a lot of money.

We should start tracking our spending. And one thing that I noticed was that I went to the grocery store literally every single day. And I would, I know, I see your eyes. I didn't have anything else to do. I had two young kids. I would go to the gym. The way that my house was set up, I was like way out in the middle of nowhere. And I had to drive to get to the gym.

And I drove right past the grocery store. every single day. Oh, I just need this one thing. I just need this one. And you go in and you get that one thing plus, you know, three other things, which isn't a big deal if you do that once. But if you do it every single day, you start having all this extra crap in your house. And I read a book from Steve and Annette, Economitas, America's cheapest family cuts your grocery budget in half. And that really, they go grocery shopping once a month, which is not enough for me. But it was really eye opening to see how you could just make it work without going to the grocery store every day. How often do you go to the grocery store? I go once a week. Okay. And so that's grocery store,

grocery store, Costco, tiny grocery store, because Costco doesn't carry everything that I would get for that particular week, but then the Costco will spill over, you know, future weeks. And then grocery store, grocery store, grocery store. Does that make sense? So I mix those in kind of as we need to. and then I would just have a much lower, like I'm only going to grab like four or five things from the grocery store that Costco doesn't have that we need. It's typically fresh produce that I don't want a giant case of whatever produce. I just want a couple pieces. Does that make sense?

Right. So that's how often I go. I've tried the every other week thing and we just eat too much produce that it doesn't last long enough. Even when I like try to intentionally buy like super not right mangoes, super not right pineapple. I want them, but they still ripen up before and we use them before. And by the end of the second week, you're like, we have nothing fresh to eat. And that's not awesome. So, but you can, you know, you can substitute with frozen. And I've, you know, on days like that, I've been like,

okay, everybody gets a fruit smoothie today because I'm, you know, we have frozen fruit that we can, you know, kind of sub in. So you can kind of hack that a little bit. But I prefer to go every week just for the fresh produce. And then I'm just really mindful of making sure what we have the right amount of meat already that we need. And if I need to get any other meat for this week, I do a lot of bulk meat purchasing. And so typically I don't buy a lot of meat at the grocery store. I'm usually getting it in bulk. So I kind of have to rotate through that game as well. So, but I like to go once a week. It's part of the routine too. Like it's like you plan, you get your meal plan, you get your shopping list, you get to the store. Like as much as people say they hate going to the grocery store,

you have to go. I mean, we just, we just do it. If you want to eat, you have to. You have to go to the grocery store or you have to pay someone to bring you your food, right? So, which is now a sort of, it's an option. It's a nice service. But either way, we have to have food brought into our homes. Right. Right. And that's why all these new businesses are popping up like trying to make it easier to get food into your home, whether it's grocery delivery or now Amazon and Whole Foods or the meal kit boxes. Like, everybody's trying to make it easier to get food into your home. But like, we all have to eat every single day. And if you have four boys like I do, like six times a day, right? So like, you know, like you, I just, the cheapest, easiest for me way is to go to the store once a week,

right? But everybody's in a different situation. Like if I was a dink, then I might be doing like meal kits two or three times a week because that's cheaper than going out to dinner. A meal kit is more expensive for our family than going out to dinner is. Right. So like you kind of have to just weigh all the different options and make it work for your situation. And a dink, by the way, is a double income, no kids, right? Yes, sorry. For those. My brother.

Yes. So let me try to give a synopsis of your approach here. You're saying, download one of these apps or newsletters, look at what's on sale, and plan out your agenda what you're going to eat for the week in advance. Go to the grocery store and go to the various grocery stores and Costco that have the best deals on the various items in a well-thought-out, planned attack in a matter of an hour, a couple hours. And then as soon as you're done, upload all the receipts to these post-shopping apps

where you can get cash back. And by doing this, you're saving hundreds or thousands of dollars a year that I'm just leaving on the table right now. Yes. You've got to go find it. You have to understand the approach so you can go find it and put it back in your wallet or put it into your savings account. Like that's the other thing, too.

like I've mentioned this a couple of times, like you need to be thinking about all of food as money, right? And like what, and then what am I going to do with that money, right? Let's be intentional with this savings. Am I going to pay for my kids preschool? Am I going to pay for a vacation or am I paying down debt? Like, what are you doing with the savings? Because I think what that does is if we can kind of keep that top of mind is that on the weeks or days or Sunday or Saturday, whatever you do it, like, I just don't feel like planning this week or I don't feel like making this for dinner tonight. Well, I'm sorry, you don't get to feel that way when you're heavily in debt and you need to pay it off. Super sorry.

Love you, but no, right? Like, if you want to pay off your debt, you really have to be focused on paying off your debt. And you have to make sacrifices because not making sacrifices is what got you into the debt in the first place, most likely. And that's easy for debt, but it's harder when it's like, oh, for a vacation. Oh, it doesn't matter. a couple bucks off the vacation fund. Well, no, yeah, let's go have a great vacation. Like, don't skimp on that either, right? Does that make sense? Well, yeah, I mean, the three largest expenses for Americans are housing, transportation, and food. And this is a very great way to

significantly reduce that one. And as you mentioned at the very beginning of the show, this is one that is under your immediate control. You can go out and implement this next week. I can, as soon as this is over, I can go download these apps and go dig through my receipts and upload a bunch of them and get cash back immediately and save money going forward. Yeah, I've got a neighbor who asks me for my receipts all the time. And I'm like, here you go. I don't have any of these receipts apps. You got to get it.

You're saving money on the table. I know. And I always think I'm so great with money. So many people say that to me. Oh, Mindy, you're so good with money. Well, I guess, but it's not that hard. It is, if you don't know what you're doing, Scott's really good with money. And apparently he, how much do you spend at the grocery?

store? Like probably 70 bucks a week. Okay. So, but that's just you, right? That's just me. Yeah, that's, yeah, we can get that down to 50, pretty easy, I would say. Yeah, I mean, it's just a very easy way for me to save a lot of money. And I thought I was doing it right because, honestly, my approach to this has been, I don't eat out that much. I cook my own food, and it's pretty reasonable stuff. Like, I got 10 or 15 or so recipes that I like to make. And I kind of rotate those. And I thought I was doing pretty good on this stuff. It just never occurred to me that there was so much more, except that it was accessible. I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited. Changing, changing single guys lives. One podcast interview at a time. Oh, funny. Oh, my goodness. This is hilarious. Okay. So you have your meal plan. You have your 10 minutes

that you're spending clipping coupons and finding coupons. When you say you go to coupons, com. How do you use coupons.com? I personally print them out. I just go through. It's real quick. I know I print coupons for products I'm going to buy already. Okay. There's a big kicker right there, right? Like, it's easy to be like, oh, well, I just want to try and score the deals where you're still paying a little bit most likely and you still have sales tax. So don't waste your time if you're not going to use the product unless you're donating. There's always that little asterisk. Like if you're donating things like go couponing crazy, right? But I print the ones for products that I'm

already purchasing and then I'll print as many as I can and then I'll take them with me to the store. Does that make sense? You make your list first and then you go to the coupons. It's kind of a combo. It's kind of all happens at the same time. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Scott, are you writing this down? Yes. Well, I've taken quite a bit of notes here. I have an action He's written to implement. Yeah. Well, do you have anything else to add here before we go on to our famous four and close out the show?

You know, I think, you know, we've talked about a lot of different strategies, right? Like meal plans, shopping lists, coupons, cashback apps. Like, that's a lot to like, you know, you internalize it and you're already thinking like, okay, I already do that, but maybe I could get better at this, right? So I would say pick one thing and try and get better at that one. one thing instead of trying to like go all in and try and figure it all out at once and then you're like, fail, I'm not doing that again next week. I don't want that to happen. I don't want to lose that motivation. Like, pick one thing. Like, okay, this week I'm actually going to walk into

the store with a completely written shopping list. Like that sounds like super simple, but shocking how many people do that. Not very many, right? Like, so you can do that one thing. Just pick one of those, either make a meal plan or make a great shopping list or dig in on. the coupons or cashback gaps, like just pick one of them to get better at and then do another one in a couple weeks, another one in a couple weeks. And then you'll kind of, does that make sense? Like, don't try and rush into the, I mean, unless you're Scott and you really want to because he's already written the book, but like go crazy. Don't go crazy. Like, be intentional and diligent about what you're trying to do to make it better and then just build on that. Does that make

sense? So what would you think is, what would you recommend as like the best thing? If I'm currently Scott and I just fly into the grocery store and just grab whatever looks good, and you know, Well, I make a list, and I thought I was doing way because I make a list and I don't go to the store hungry. Those are the two things that I needed to do to avoid over shopping at the grocery store. Do you stick to your list or do you grab extra stuff? I almost always stick to the list. I'm kind of in and out. Scott's pretty disciplined.

I will give him that. I like it. Yeah, I would say you got to look at the store ads before you make your list. I think that's crucial and kind of planing around that because when you think about like, meat and produce especially like meat, like for chicken breast, you can pay $5.99 a pound or you can pay $1.99 a pound. Like that's a pretty big price difference. And like over the year, like just the chicken savings alone could be hundreds of dollars, right? Like so if you think about like if that's a pretty popular meat, I always use that example because it's so popular and there's so many great

recipes with it. Right. But like think about it that way. Like you got to check, I would say checking the store ads before you write your list would be for Scott and I think for a lot of people. the number one, I guess, tweak. Okay. And then after they do that, what would you recommend the second one to be? The meal plan and shopping list. Those kind of have to go hand in hand. I mean, here's what's on sale.

Here's what I'm making with what's on sale. Here's the shopping list. Behave yourself in the store. And then the third thing is to go get all of your neighbor's receipts and upload them to the checkout 51 app, right? Yes, do that. Okay, so check store ads, then make a meal plan and a shopping list, and then use coupons and receipt scans or receipt scans. Yeah.

Okay. Thank you for sharing all of this really great information with us. You've already converted one person. We're not even done with the show yet. Woohoo. And kind of half, because I know what I should be doing, but I don't really do it all that much. But for 10 minutes, I mean, I'm foolish not to do it for 10 minutes, 20 minutes. 20 minutes.

Okay, Scott, you want to start the famous four questions? Absolutely. These are the same questions we ask every guest. And the first one of these is what is your favorite finance-related book? Okay, this is business finance, but it's finance nonetheless, profit first. Flip in the accounting model backwards, it's a good one. Highly recommend it if you have a small business. Awesome.

I have not actually heard of that one. So I'll have to go check it out. Yeah, I haven't heard that either. Michael McCallowitz, you guys don't know about him in the pumpkin plan and all hit, mm, good stuff. Wow, Aaron Chase schooling us on everything today. You know everything. I didn't tell you, we were just at a conference with Aaron, and I wanted to tell you your keynote was fantastic. She talked about, she talked about time blocking. And that is the subject of a completely different podcast. We'll have you back for that.

Yes, there's more of that coming. Don't you worry. That was really, really helpful to me. And I have sat down and I have blocked out a few spaces simply because Aaron Chase said, do it. And she said it in such a way that really, really spoke to me. So thank you, Erin. I'm glad. No, that's awesome. I love it.

Okay, back to the actual show. What was your biggest money mistake? I know my segues are terrible. Money mistake. You know what? It was not, I can't say it was intentional, but looking back, it was a big mistake. I lived in the Dominican Republic on a missionary salary for six years in my 20. And I set aside a little bit of money.

We didn't make a lot of money. And we were living and working in pesos. And so we had to, you know, exchange it back to dollars, which wasn't always a great, depending on the rate, whatever. But I didn't save for retirement in my 20s the way that I should have. And so the last decade has been like backtracking and like trying to fill that back up. Does that make sense? So that crucial time when we should have been saving, we were saving a little bit.

There was a little bit there, but we've been able to grow it since then. But that in retrospect, I was just like, oh, I'm young and I'm just doing this great thing. And I live in a foreign currency. Not wasn't, the fourth, the, you know, foresight wasn't really there. And in retrospect, I think, I think that's probably the biggest money mistake that we made. You're not alone in that. I was not saving a lot in my 20s. Scott can't say anything.

He's. He's got 27. Well, I've had the, I've had the good, the good fortune just being able to absorb information from other folks and be able to avoid some of the, some, many of the mistakes that people make. It's just, it's not really like being smart or anything. It's just, here it is. Here's how to do it. Okay, let's do it. I love it.

I'm not going to go be smart by going to do exactly what you just told me to do today with the grocery shopping. It's exactly what you told me to do. And it's much clearly better than what I'm doing. I go execute. It's, there's no. There's no challenge to it. It doesn't take a genius to do any of this stuff, right? Right.

That's the thing. You don't need any special skills to do this. You just need to actually do the work. Okay, Scott. Awesome. Moving back to the really important famous four questions, what is your favorite joke to tell at parties? Oh my gosh, y'all.

I'm so not funny. I'm so not a joke teller. Like, it would be something really inappropriate. Can I be inappropriate for a second? Not wildly inappropriate. Little boy inappropriate. Can I be a little boy inappropriate? Yes.

So probably a joke that I would tell it of burning out is I would teach people how to make Alexa, you know, Alexa, the little device, you know, she's probably, actually, I think she's unplugged. Is that the one who spies on your family from Google? Yeah, it's the Amazon, we have one. Allegedly. We, right, allegedly. We mostly use it for music and reminders and alarms and stuff. But if you want Alexa to fart, you can ask her to, but you have to ask her in

really specific way. I can't believe I just said this on a podcast. But like, it's really funny. It's not what you think. You can't just straight up ask her. You have to ask her in a funny way. So like, I feel like as the mom of four young boys, like, I'm on this mission to like educate people about all that Alexa can help you with it. So how do you, how does one get Alexa to fart? You say, ask me for a fart, which is so not like English language, right? You have to say Alexa to ask me for a fart and then she makes, she will make the noise. I cannot believe this is being like public.

Okay, you guys. Well, can we, can we record? Can you show us? Can you do a demonstration? Do you want me to? Yeah. Well,

I have to plug her in. I don't know how fast she would come to life, but I had to unplug her for my computer. Well, maybe on the next episode, we have you back. We'll time block some, something for that.

You guys, so bad. It's also time block. Other, other fun things Alexa can do, you guys. That's as about it inappropriate as I'm going to get here. My friend has an Alexa, so I'm going to go over there and ask her for a fart.

No, you should. And she's like, it's the funniest thing. Like, I'm sorry, but we're humans. It's silly. Like, it's funny. And I have a warped sense of humor because I have four young boys. I have two young girls. They're the same.

Okay. Well, that's a good. Yeah, you think they'd be all delicate and blossom-like and you would be completely wrong. Oh, well, there you go. There's my, it's not really a joke, but how about that? I enjoyed it. Good. Scott was once a young boy.

What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? With money or with groceries? Let's go with groceries. I think this answer applies to both. How about that? You have to measure and track if you want to improve whatever it is your measure and tracking, right? That's just a blanket statement for like, if you want to lose weight, you have to track and measure what you're eating and how you're exercise. If you want to be better with your money, you have to track and measure what you're doing, right?

Does that make sense? Like, if you're not tracking and measure time, going back to time blocking, I didn't even get to that part in the keynote, right? Like, if you want to be better about time, you have to track it. Does that make sense? And so take that statement and apply it to anything in your life. I'm not a numbers person either. Like, I'm just not naturally, I like math and I'm good at math, but I'm not naturally

like a numbers data tracker kind of person. But like really when it comes down to it, if you want to improve whatever it is in your life you're looking to improve money groceries weight loss fitness whatever you have to track if you want it to improve awesome that is the best best piece of advice that i've ever heard that's amazing awesome well where can people find out more about you uh we have everything um available at five dollar dinners.com so that's the number five um dollar dinners.com spelled out you can get more information about the five dollar meal plan there as well but everything is right there on our main $5 dinner's website. And we will include a link to that in the show notes for our listeners to find.

Erin, this has been eye-opening. This is, I thought that I- Some of us more than others. This is very eye-opening for me. I, you know, you got to do the work. And that's not, I mean, I knew that, but 10 minutes, 20 minutes, that's nothing compared to how much you can save. And it's just heartbreaking to throw away the groceries that I bought and I had big plans for. And it's this was great. Aaron, thank you so much for your time and thank you for sharing

all of your information with us. Sure. Thanks for having me on. This has been a lot of fun. Awesome. Thank you. Awesome. Well, a huge thank you to Aaron Chase

from $5 dinners for coming on the show and sharing her grocery tips. Scott, one of my favorite parts of this show was watching you and watching the light bulb go off on top of your head. Oh my goodness,

I can cut my grocery bill. and half. These easy, easy tips, the receipts, the shopping from the sales flyers, you're going to do that the next time you go to the grocery store and you are going to save so much money. And it's not going to make you feel like you're depriving yourself of anything. It's not going to feel like a chore or anything. It's just the easiest thing that you could possibly do. Yeah, you know, I thought that I was doing it right because I was just shopping for most of my meals. with reasonable food from reasonable grocery stores. And how very wrong that was because she just blew my mind.

I did not realize that there were all these different things, all these additional ways I could optimize on top of that, right? Yeah, you call yourself frugal. Yeah, I just scratched the surface of this. And, you know, since that podcast, I've downloaded a couple of the apps on my phone. You know, I'm starting to realize some of these savings. And it's like, why wasn't I doing this before? Why wasn't I optimizing this?

You know, you can go, and like we mentioned in the intro, you know, this is the expert here. She has so much experience and has put so much thought and study and discussion into optimizing meal plan. And she packages it all up into a very easily digestible format. You go under her site and, oh, here's something I could make with chicken. And I have all the rest of the ingredients in my refrigerator, in my cabinet. She doesn't use these weird ingredients. She doesn't make odd things that, oh, my kids never going to eat that. Ethiopian goulash.

No, my picky kids aren't going to eat that. She makes kid-friendly meals that are easy and quick. And wow, if you have not yet checked out $5 dinners.com, you need to go there right now. Awesome. Yeah. And this can make a big difference, not just for folks like you who are, you know, maybe shopping for a whole family, but also for single guys like me. You know, maybe I benefit more from a little good.

because I eat a lot of food and maybe perhaps larger than average man. But still, you know, regardless of how you're shopping, this can be real money and it can add up real quick over the course of a year. Yes. The thing is, this isn't hard. This is one of those small tweaks that you can do to your life that yields huge results. And it's not going to make, you're not even going to feel like you're doing anything. But your budget, your pocketbook will definitely see huge results.

Awesome. So as a takeaway from the show, go ahead and plan out your next meal using some of the tips that Aaron suggested. Buy it from a reasonable grocery store and then save your receipt. And if you just do those three things, you might make a couple of bucks from listening to the show and start a great new habit that can save you a lot of money over the long run. Yes. Okay, Scott, let's go to a slightly selfish portion of the show now where we ask people to give us a rating and review. We currently don't have very many ratings and reviews on iTunes because we are a new show. This is our fourth episode.

And we would love to get the word out that we've got this great new program. If you could go and leave us a rating and review if you liked our show, that would be really helpful in spreading the word that there's a new money show in town. Awesome. Yeah. Please do give us reviews. We always love them. And I check all of them. So even if they're bad, it makes me feel bad.

but I love seeing all of the great, very positive reviews, and I do read them. Yes. Okay, great. Well, Scott, I want to get out of here and go back to biggerpockets.com. So I am going to say, adios. Awesome. For the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, episode number three, this is Mindy Jensen, over and out.