Smart Purchases Archives - Lazy Man and Money

Porking Awesome! (Or Rich Pig, Poor Pig)

April 7, 2017 by Lazy Man 7 Comments

porking awesome

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote Rich Chicken, Poor Chicken (inspired by popular personal finance book). The article was a bit of a humblebrag about an amazing deal I found at Aldi on some chicken. I ended up paying around 45 cents a pound for boneless, skinless chicken breast, an all-time personal record.

The main lesson was that by being mindful with your spending, you can save money a ton of money. Getting 45 cent chicken requires a lot of luck. However, you have to be prepared to pounce when the luck is there.

Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to get another great deal. Just like with the chicken, I felt like I robbed the grocery store. At least this time it was Shaw’s.

Here’s the deal. As you probably can’t see in the tiny image the promotion on the yellow sticker reads, “Buy 3, save $10.” (Underneath it says “Mix & Match.”)

This promotion was on a bunch of bulk meat purchases. At the expensive end of the spectrum there were $30 packages of Porterhouse steaks. On the cheap end of the spectrum there was the pork that I bought.

You could buy 3 Porterhouse packages for $90 and save $10 to make it $80… or you can do what I did. I looked for the 3 cheapest packages of meat I could find. It happened to be the packages of pork that were $1.89 a pound. That’s not the best price I’ve ever seen, but the promotion turns a good price into a great one.

The three packages I bought were $5.42, $4.67, and $5.88 each. The roughly 8.5 pounds of pork came to a total of $15.97. However, with the “save $10” promotion, it was $5.97… or around 70 cents a pound.

The key to the deal is realizing that a package of meat is a package of meat whether it is $5 or $30. The promotion doesn’t discriminate between the two. You get your $10 savings either way.

The Porterhouse was around 12% off. The pork, for all practical purposes, had a sign on it: “Buy 1, Get 2 Free.”

If Shaw’s had put that sign on the pork, I’m fairly sure they would have quickly sold out. Mindful math for the win.

Rich Chicken, Poor Chicken

March 23, 2017 by Lazy Man 12 Comments

Today I’d like to tell you the story of two people shopping at grocery stores for some chicken. One person runs through the grocery store quickly buying the items he needs (including chicken) and gets out of there paying little attention to money. The other person takes a little more time, not a lot, to pay attention to any particular deals. We are going to focus on their chicken purchases today. We’ll call them Rich Chicken and Poor Chicken*.

I’m going to play the part of Rich Chicken, the person who spends a little more time to find the deals. Last week, Rich Chicken found the chicken deal of lifetime! Even though his wife had warned them that they had too much chicken, Rich Chicken does what Rich Chicken does… buys chicken.

What does a deal of a lifetime look like? This:

You can click on the image for an even bigger one to get the details on the pricing. Pay no attention to the dates, I’m writing this article long after the chicken had been frozen in our chest freezer. The sell-by date was the next day.

The big picture (pun intended) is that each of these packages of chicken are on sale $5 off… and they are only around $7 to begin with.

I’ll give you the details so that you don’t have to squint on that picture. Before the discounts on the packages I would have spent a total of $21.35 for 14.33 pounds of chicken in the three packages (including the devil chicken package at the bottom). That would have been $1.49, which is a great price for boneless, skinless chicken breast under normal circumstances.

After the $15 in discounts ($5 per package), I spent $6.35 for 14.33 pounds of chicken or around 44 cents a pound.

Maybe you are thinking I just changed the discount from $1 to $5 with a magic marker at home. Nope, here’s part of my receipt:

Poor Chicken Shopping

Now let’s look at Poor Chicken. Maybe he’s in a rush (aren’t we all sometimes?), but let’s presume he’s just not mindful of his shopping spending. Maybe he’s got a bunch of other things on his mind. For whatever reason, he doesn’t see this chicken deal in plain sight. Many other shoppers missed the deal as well. There were plenty of packages available that I didn’t buy and I waited a few extra minutes to see people pass it by.

A couple of days of later, Poor Chicken decides he wants chicken for dinner. Unfortunately now, he’s at a different grocery store. This chicken isn’t on sale. Typically, I see boneless, skinless chicken at $2.99… more if it’s organic. He might only buy a pound or two now, so it isn’t that big of deal. However, let’s assume that over some time he buys (the convenient amount of) 14.33 pounds of chicken.

Poor Chicken spends $42.85, while Rich Chicken spends $6.35. For some people that $36.50 isn’t that big of deal. This is an extreme example as well. However, all these mindful shopping decisions add up. I can’t even begin to estimate how much that is when you multiply it across many shopping trips over a lifetime.

There’s a lot of debate in personal finance about whether it is better to make more money or save more money. I think there’s room for both. A penny saved is a penny earned, which is a penny that can be invested.

* The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), chickens, places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Things I Love: Instant Pot

February 3, 2016 by Energi Gal 8 Comments

Editor’s Note: It’s been a long time I’ve written a “Things I Like” article. You’ll have to wait a little longer, because this is a “Things I Love” article written by my wife. Any typos were likely introduced by my editing as I changed some sentence structure for clarity.

With two little kids, I don’t have room for many hobbies. I tried scrapbooking and gardening, but they were too much attention taken away from supervising the kids. I tried canning, but it was too much time in front of an open flame. I love concerts and Broadway shows, but they aren’t frugal and it’s hard to find the time (kids). Then I met Instant Pot… and I might have just found my hobby.

Instant Pot is a 7-in-1 electric pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker, saute/browner, yogurt maker, steamer & warmer. Lazy Man bought it this Christmas on a Slickdeal and presented it as a “family gift.” I did not want another appliance collecting dust on the shelf (I see you ice cream maker), so I decided to give it a whirl… and a new day dawned.

Using Instant Pot

With Instant Pot, you can make a restaurant quality dinner in less than 20 minutes. As Special Agent Oso might say, “Three Special Steps… that’s all you need…”:

Place the meat and oil/ butter in saute mode until brown.
Add the spices and vegetables
Put Instant Pot on pressure cook for 15 minutes

The food never comes out under-cooked or burnt. The meat is so tender you can cut with a butter knife. Thanks to Instant Pot’s automatic shut off, I am able to go give my 2 year old a bath and not have to worry about the food burning.

Lazy Man found this guy on YouTube using an Instant Pot competitor to make buffalo wings. It’s worth watching just for former WWE wrestler Gene Snitsky’s performance:

His pressure cooker looked like an Instant Pot, so I gave it another whirl.

Well, I was just as excited about buffalo wings as Gene was! They weren’t crisp, but they had infused spice and the meat fell off the bone. I could not stop slurping them down!

The dinners are full of flavor and low carb. I ended up drinking the broth of my Thai red curry like it was a 2008 Zinfandel!

Cleanup is awesome as well, no burnt bottom , cleans up with a little water, a drop of Dawn and a Scrub Daddy! Like 2 minutes!

If I had anything negative to say the sauce does come out too liquidy. I add some cornstarch to thicken it up. (Well the dinners were low-carb.)

Let the Culinary Safari Begin

My first meal was from the Instant Pot cook book, but I found that the internet was full of recipes. I soon learned that any meal that simmers can be “Instant-Potted.” In the last two weeks I have made, Thai, Italian, Indian, Chinese and Russian.

I look forward to Hungarian goulash and Mongolian beef. Thanks to my new hobby of being on a culinary safari with Instant Pot.

Everyday, I ask myself, “What am I going to make next?” I’m running our of countries.

Editor’s Final Thoughts

I thought I’d finish up with some final thoughts from my own perspective.

While some of this may sound like a paid advertisement for Instant Pot, it is not. Maybe some of the excitement from my wife is a novelty that will lessen over time. I’ve experienced this to some degree with SodaStream and Fitbit – both great products that are simply less exciting after years of use. In the interest of full disclosure though, I will get a small commission from Amazon if you buy an Instant Pot using one of the links above.
I haven’t learned how to use Instant Pot yet. I work from home which usually gives me enough time to plan something with the slow-cooker. It’s easier for me to make dinner at 10AM than it is to make it at 4PM or 5PM when the kids are home from day care.
For some reason, I thought it was called “Instapot”, but it seems that it is clearly “Instant Pot” and the vast majority of the public gets it right. I’m sticking to my guns, “Instapot” is a much better name.
The Special Agent Oso was my editing. With the kids, we have a fair amount of kids programming going on and Agent Oso’s “Three Special Steps” is a key pattern to accomplishing any task in the show.
I do the “family gift” thing a lot. Am I alone in this? It’s a way to recognize that something isn’t exactly fun or exciting for either of us, but it may improve our lives. I saw a deeply discounted Black Friday deal on something that had nearly 6000 glowing reviews from fans. I made a judgment call and the gamble paid off.
I’ve read that you can crisp the wings by broiling them a few minutes afterward. They are great without doing that, so I’m not sure it is worth the extra work, so I’ll leave it as a reader exercise.
I’ve been blogging for ten years and even my wife wrote “Lazyman” (one word, lowercase “m”) before I edited this. Are people getting this from the logo?
It looks like I’m making ice cream in February. Little does my wife know that I’ve been looking up avocado ice cream recipes since it clearly gives Tom Brady super powers. Aldi has avocados on sale this week. Game on.

How to Save $150 on Cable

November 3, 2015 by Michelle Fitnpoor Leave a Comment

My husband and I are pop-culture nerds. We love chatting about the latest music, video games, and television shows. In the past, we planted ourselves happily in front of the TV for hours before and after work. But then, the bills started adding up.

In 2013, we were paying an astounding $190 for cable, which did not include premium channels like HBO or Showtime. Even more frustrating was the horrible customer treatment and unreliable service, not to mention the dozens of channels we didn’t even watch but were paying for.

When we started saving up for our wedding, we looked for ways to cut costs. The cable bill was one of our biggest expenses, but much of what we watched was online anyway – even currently airing shows, which we often watched on Hulu or network sites. We realized that we could save $150 a month on our cable bill every month by doing something almost unthinkable for pop-culture nerds like us: we cut our cable service.

How We Still Tune In Without Cable

We’ve learned to get creative in order not to miss our favorite shows or programs. Here’s a quick rundown of what has worked for us (and associated costs):

Get an Antenna

Hi-def antennas are ubiquitous for anyone without cable. Costing anywhere from $40-120, these little devices, similar to the “bunny ears” our parents used to use, allow us to watch live local network broadcasts. This way, we don’t miss the shows we actually watch live, like The Amazing Race and The Good Wife. Depending on where you live, you may have to spend some time configuring the location of your television or the antenna’s receiver to get the best reception – but it’s totally worth it.

Stream for Free

Streaming services are already inexpensive – currently around $8-15 a month. But it’s even better if you can get it for free. For example, we nabbed a promotion from a local bank to get Netflix free for a year – and we have a coupon code from our internet provider for another free year, which we can redeem next year. If you can’t get one of these great deals, try asking for gift cards or subscriptions for birthdays or holidays. It’s a great way to reduce bills without cutting down on your TV watching.

[Editor: If you are going to stream television, the very best money you can spend is getting a PlayOn Plus account. It turns streaming television to a computer into a full DVR. See my review: PlayOn Plus Will Change How You Watch Television]

Split Costs

My dad loves cable; he’d never cut the cord. However, he’s more than happy to share his login with us, so long as we contribute to his bill. By splitting costs, we’re able to watch our favorite cable series like Game of Thrones and South Park, and he’s able to cut down on his overall cable costs. We can even stream live sports and children’s TV for our daughter!

[Editor: Show your father how he can eliminate his cable box (DVR) monthly fees! and he might let you have that login for free each month.]

Connect to Your TV

Did you know your TV was made for streaming? It’s true! HDTVs have connections for HDMI devices like Roku and Chromecast, and most laptops even have HDMI ports to connect to your television. These devices are all inexpensive and allow us to watch everything we want in stunning HD. All you need is an internet connection and a device, and you’re set to go!

So far, cutting cable has helped us save nearly $4,000 to pay off debt, travel, and pay for our wedding without going into credit card debt. While I still sometimes get jealous of my friends who have hundreds of channels at their fingertips, I honestly believe cutting the cord has greatly improved the quality of our lives. By reducing our cable bill, we have learned how to prioritize the things that matter in life.

Cut the Cord With Tablo TV?

July 29, 2015 by Lazy Man 16 Comments

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how you can kill your cable box DVR monthly fees. For me, the biggest thing about cutting the cord isn’t necessarily losing the cable television*, it’s the time-shifting of network television shows.

On a basic level, it seems pretty silly to pay a bunch of money each month for what should be solved by one-time costs of a hard drive and a television antenna.

Fortunately a commenter on that last post mentioned TabloTV DVR. I had looked at it a long time ago (perhaps before it was actually released), but had forgotten about it.

It’s something that I’m considering again though.

Most people are probably wondering what the heck I’m writing about. TabloTV is the device that can bridge a high-definition antenna and a hard drive and give you DVR. The 4-tuner version is under $300 and the 2-tuner version is under $200. I don’t watch a lot of television, but there are some nights when three shows I follow are on at the same time. Other nights, it’s zero. For me it’s worth spending the extra money for the 4-tuners.

Of course it requires that you have an HD antenna set up. It also requires that you buy a hard drive to store all the shows. Then you need something on your televisions to connect to the network with your shows. This can be an Amazon Fire TV Stick, Roku, etc. I happen to meet that requirement on my two televisions already.

In fact, there happens to be a big ChromeCast deal today. Amazon will give you a $10 gift card when you buy it for $30.

If you are starting from scratch, you can probably put together a set-up, my favorite antenna, TabloTV, a harddrive, and a couple of Chromecasts for under $500. I’d estimate the average basic cable television bill at around $60. It would pay for itself in about 8 months… and after that you’d save significant money, $720 a year.

There are times when you can make a switch and save money without losing any functionality. The Ooma Telo free home phone service is a perfect example of this. In this case, you are going to lose access to cable channels… so it’s not an even trade. However, it’s not as bad as cutting the cord and losing access to record your own television shows.

What do you think? Is this a smart plan, or does it stretch frugality a little too far? Let me know in the comments.

* Actually I’ve become quite enthralled by Pretty Little Liars in it’s last season. I wouldn’t say that I passively watched it while working when my wife had it on, but it wasn’t something that I put the laptop away for.