I'm Erin Chase, mom to four boys, and over the years, I set a goal to never spend
more than $5 on a meal for my family.
And I am on a mission to help families spend less money on their groceries.
I grew up not wanting for anything really.
And then in my twenties, I lived for six years in the Dominican Republic.
I didn't have a credit card there.
We'd have to walk up to the ATM outside the bank, get whatever cash
we needed to buy groceries that week.
And then I met my husband.
We were living Dominican peso paycheck to Dominican peso paycheck.
What that helped us do was just get really granular and specific
with where every dollar was going.
There was a small amount of savings that we did for retirement and for
future, but the challenge is building what we missed in your twenties.
That is the most crucial time to save for compounding reasons.
When I moved back to the U.S., my oldest son was about a year and a half, and I
was pregnant with our second son, Charlie.
We moved into an apartment and we were just doing the same thing, writing
down every dollar on a piece of paper.
The tracking system, along with just the money conversations, set us up for
that long-term success.
We knew we want to move out of this apartment and so whatever we need to do to
make that happen quickly is what we did.
I did a lot of couponing for baby stuff, for food stuff.
It wasn't necessarily my job, but I treated it like one,
because at that time I was not contributing to our family's income.
Leading up to purchasing our first home in Ohio,
we were probably saving between five and 10%, um, of my husband's paycheck.
And then after six months, we were able to move into a house.
Shortly after, the gas prices shot up.
I needed to spend less money on groceries because at that time
that was the only line item of our budget that I could control.
When I started really dialing into meal planning, our bill
went, it literally cut in half.
It just came down to just being super aware and picky about the
prices that I was paying for ingredients across the board.
And now all of a sudden I have all this extra money we can put into savings.
One night, I had made a meal and it was $3.85.
And it just was like this light bulb.
This is going to be the new blog chronicling what I was buying at the
grocery store, how much it was costing.
And I think it was just really an encouragement and inspiration
to people to see that, yes, you can do this and here's how.
The first thing for setting up my grocery trip is going to be based on
the meat that's on sale that week.
It's going to cut your bill 20%.
The next is going to be getting produced when it's on sale.
And then the third is anything that's a pantry staple.
If it's on sale, you're buying it to have it on hand when you need it.
Then you'll start to see week after week the, the money just
staying in your bank account.
With our food dollars, we don't realize that we're spending as much as we
do because we have to eat every day.
If I could cut my food dollars in half, let's say from 600 to 300.
Let's multiply that by 12, we're talking about thousands of dollars.
So it just takes that little tiny switch, and for me, the financial
goals are what pulled me out of those temptation situations.
Especially about bigger purchases.
If we were able to get it for this, then we'd have X more to put into a
retirement account or an investment account, and that money will multiply.
So these days we spent about a thousand dollars total on food between groceries
and going out a couple of nights a week.
And I am feeding my four boys, two teenagers and two elementary aged kiddos.
I can still do six, $7 dinners for all six of us.
So when it comes to making a $5 dinner, you really don't have to sacrifice taste.
You just have to get really clever and creative with the different
ingredients in a way that you're going to love the end result.
With younger kiddos, the more variety that you can offer them, the less chance that
you'll end up with a nugget and fry kid.
The financial goals that we've had as a family have certainly
changed and evolved over time.
One of the things is, is definitely building up that retirement
account as fast as we can.
The second would be to help our kids with college.
Beyond that, it just becomes legacy.
What do we want to create and build for the kids that we can leave for them?
But keeping that long-term mindset has been really helpful for us.
And that's something that we hope to teach the kids as well.
My oldest son, he's had a job since right after he turned 15, so he's
going to buy himself a car and he has a custodial investment account.
The best parenting advice would be to don't sweat the small stuff and revel
in the messes with grace and with love.