Shelf Life & Expiry Dates

How long can you keep milk in the refrigerator? Is it still drinkable or do you have to throw out that milk carton? Can you save money by using products that are past their expiry dates? What do terms such as "sell by," "use by," "best by," really mean? What does a frugal person do with products that happen to be past the "used by," "best by," etc. dates?

Here is a roundup of useful resources to explain the confusing jargon that manufacturers use and the expiry dates of most products:

• Shelf Life Advice
  A very useful site to find out the shelf life of a particular product. Enter product in search box to find out its shelf life and storage information.
  
  
• Food Expiration Dates: What Do They Really Mean? (Yahoo Green)
  
  
• Expiration Dates (OrganizeYourLife.org).
  A near-exhaustive and very useful list of how long you can keep food, household, beauty and cosmetic products.
  


• Do Food Expiry Dates Really Matter? (WebMD.com)
  An informative discussion about the confusing mix of terms used by manufacturers on their products.
  


• The Secret Code of Beer Expiration Dates (Consumerist.com).
  How to decode the mysterious codes that breweries use on to indicate how old your beer is.

Target beats Walmart at cheap grocery prices

Everyone knows that Aldi's has rock bottom grocery prices, but Target beating Walmart at grocery prices?

Walletpop's grocery pricing survey suggests that Target beats Walmart by a small margin: Comparing grocery prices, Aldi wins overall, but Target beats Walmart. Not surprisingly, traditional full service supermarkets like Safeway, Kroger, Albertsons didn't fare as well as Walmart and Target in Walletpop's study, which also finds that Aldi has the lowest prices, but as anyone who has shopped there would know, selection is limited.

My own admittedly unscientific study, borne from my own weekly grocery routine, suggests that Target and Walmart are extemely close in pricing, especially if they are near to each other. Both Target and Walmart give the managers of their local stores some flexibility in pricing to compete with neighboring stores. Where I live, there is a Walmart, Target and Aldi within a one-mile radius and you can see my local Target and Walmart competing on the pricing of groceries and household items. In fact, prices on many household and grocery items are lower at my local Target than at Target in other neighborhoods.

My personal preference is to do my grocery shopping at my local Trader Joe's, which is about 5 miles away. Both Trader Joe's and Aldi's are owned by the same German parent company and they reflect that German ethos of frugal pricing. I shop for household necessities at Target, which gives me the opportunity to browse their close-outs and clearances too.

Link: Comparing grocery prices, Aldi wins overall, but Target beats Walmart
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Do You Practice Extreme Couponing?

WCVB TV (Boston) recently featured a mom with extreme coupon skills: Mom Feeds Family For Under $10 A Week

Is it possible? Sure, it is, but it requires discipline, long term planning and flexibility (i.e., no impulse buying, on-the-spur-of-the moment cravings). I've previously blogged about using coupons here and here.

As for me, I use coupons primarily for household items (paper towels, detergents, etc.) and organic food (e.g., Mambo Sprouts, Organic Valley). My own savings from using coupons aren't as high because I avoid those coupons for processed food with artificial additives. Long temr health is more important saving money. I'd rather save on long term health costs in the future. It helps that there are organic food coupons out there. One just have to hunt harder for them.

Happy couponing!

Save More At The Supermarket

Looking for tips on saving money at the supermarket? How do you balance your frugal sensibilities with healthy living? Shopsmart has an informative PDF filled with tips and suggestions that you might find useful: Save More At The Supermarket.

Link: Save More At The Supermarket (PDF)

Tips on Buying Organic Food

Many people want to buy organic food for its health and environmental benefits but balk at the higher prices. On the one hand, going 100% organic in one's grocery shopping would strain the grocery budgets of many households in today's depressed economy. On the other hand, it is possible to buy organic food without busting one's finances.

If your finances are tight and you have to be highly selective in your grocery shopping, the trick is to buy organic for those produce that are at highest risk of exposure to pesticides or chemical residues, while buying conventional produce for those at lowest risk of chemical contamination. The Consumerist has a helpful article, "When Is It Worthwhile to Buy Organic?" that, among other things, lists the so-called "Dirty Dozen" with the highest pesticide/chemical residues. These are the items that you should buy organic.

Resources:

• When Is It Worthwhile to Buy Organic? (Consumerist)
• Shoppers Guide to Pesticides (Environmental Working Group)

Tips on Buying Milk

How do you decide which is the best milk to buy? What is value for money? What are the differences between 1% and 2% milk? Between cream and half-and-half? Between powdered and fresh milk?

Two articles -- "How to buy the best milk" (Cooking Light) and "A Family's Guide to Buying Milk" (Mambo Sprouts) offer you tips on how to decide which milk to buy for your family.