Video Summary
Hi everyone! Today I’m sharing five things that I don’t buy that save me hundreds of dollars every month. First, I skip coffee shop coffee which can cost $5-10 each visit and add up to over $100 a month – instead I make my own iced coffee at home or brew tea. Second, I don’t buy canned beans because I cook dry beans myself or can them, which gives me about 10 times the amount for the same price. Third, I make my own broth using leftover turkey bones or chicken scraps with vegetables, which I then can or freeze instead of buying it for $1.50 per quart at the store. Fourth, I use a reusable water bottle with filtered water from my fridge instead of buying bottled water (though we do keep some emergency water stored in the basement). And fifth, I make my own freezer meals instead of buying those expensive pre-made meal kits that can cost $15-20 when I can make the same thing for just a few dollars. As a bonus tip, I share that when I do want to buy snacks like chips or soda, I only buy them when they’re on a really good sale – like soda for four 12-packs for $12-15 instead of $8 each. I’d love to hear what you choose not to buy in order to save money!
Video Transcript
Hi everyone, welcome back. I’m Kari, this is Keep It Simple DIY, and today I’m going to tell you five things that I don’t buy that save me hundreds of dollars a month.
Starting with coffee out at a coffee shop. Coffee at a coffee shop can run you five to ten dollars each time you go. So if you are someone who goes to work outside of the office five times a week and you get coffee every time, that’s $25 to $50 in one week. That adds up very quickly to get over a hundred dollars. So with this item alone, I’m saving hundreds of dollars.
Now I only sometimes am using coffee, and sometimes I’m a tea drinker. What I’ve been doing most recently is I’ve been using my decaf coffee and making a whole pot, putting it in the fridge to get it cold, and then I’ve been making my own iced coffees at home. Otherwise, I will just use a simple tea bag and make myself either a warm tea or an iced tea.
The next item that I do not buy is canned beans. I can my own beans. And realistically, you don’t have to can your own beans to avoid buying canned beans. All you need to do is cook your beans from dry. Dry beans run about a dollar or two for a two-pound bag, and that will make the equivalent of about 10 pints of beans. Each pint can run, you know, a dollar or so at the store, and it’s not even a full pint. They’re usually 14 ounces. So I get about 10 times the amount of beans just by cooking them on my own.
Now to cook beans, you can cook them on the stovetop, or you can cook them in your Instant Pot, or if you have a canner and you choose to, you can can them.
Something else that I don’t buy is broth. Broth from a store to get a quart costs about a dollar and a half, and for me getting this broth didn’t cost me anything. This is turkey stock, and what I did was after Thanksgiving I asked to keep the turkey, and then I put it in my roasting pan with some water and a bunch of veggie scraps that I had, and it made me free turkey stock that I could can. Now I did have to pay to get the lid for my jar, but that’s the only expense that I had with this.
You don’t have to can your turkey broth though. You could make your turkey broth or any kind of broth and freeze it, and then you just reuse whatever container you had and you have yourself some free broth.
The fourth thing that I do not buy is bottled water. I use a reusable water bottle and I just use the filtered water from my fridge. Now truth be told, we do have bottled water in this house, but that is for emergencies. I have the equivalent of six gallons of water in our house that we keep in the basement just in case something happens with our water supply, so we have a couple days worth.
And the final thing that I do not buy is pre-made meal kits from the store. Those things are expensive. Gosh, I’ve seen $15, $20 for some of them when you could make it yourself for maybe five dollars. So what I do is I actually make my own freezer meals. I make single serve freezer meals and I make ones that will feed my family, which is just a family of two, so we make them pretty small. But this saves me so much money. One of these, I mean I can make it for a dollar depending on what it is, sometimes maybe three, and this gives us anywhere from, let’s see, two to four meals depending on what’s inside of it and how hungry we are.
All right, if you stuck around this far in the video, please give it a thumbs up. I do have a bonus tip for you. I do occasionally like to buy snacks. Now I don’t drink soda with sugar. I do use the sugar-free, but I only buy chips and soda when they’re on a good sale. And what I mean by that is not just a couple dollars off.
So to get a 12-pack of soda, they’ve been about eight dollars, which is really expensive, and I’m just not wanting to pay that for each one. So I will get soda when they’re four for $12 or even four for, I think recently it was four for $15. That brings it down to under four dollars for the whole 12-pack, and I’m okay with paying for that. We don’t drink a lot of soda in this house, and so four of those will last us a good six months at least.
Same thing with chips. Make sure you know your prices. Make sure you know what a good sale is. If you want to get a snacky, splurgy item, just wait. It’ll go on sale and then you’ll be able to save money and have your snack.
I would love to know what you choose to not buy in order to save money. If you could comment down below with those, I would greatly appreciate it. I hope you enjoyed this video and I will see you next time. Bye!
