In eating healthier (see my other blog) I have noticed that along with the soaring cost of groceries, all of those “convenient” snack packs and 100 calorie packs are actually insanely priced for what you actually get. Talk about rip offs. My habit was to eat a small bag of pretzels in the afternoon. From the vending machine, each pack was costing me about 75 cents, I got smart and saved some money and bought the cases of small bags which brought the price down to like 25 cents or so, which was a huge savings, but then I realized I could go farther. I now buy large party size bags of great value brand pretzels, which to me are just as good, the cost for the large bag is $1.00 even, I then divide it out into about 15 zip loc baggies, which makes each one cost about 6.7 cents. I know the zip locks cost more than that, but I have gotten into the habit of re-using them for many weeks in a row. I just re-fill the zip locks over and over with more pretzels until they get a hole in them.
So now with my efforts, my 75 cents from one day’s pretzel snack buys me a little over 11 days of pretzel snacks.
I also do the same with my sun chips, even paying for the name brand sun chips, it’s soooooo much cheaper than buying the bag of pre-sacked chips.
Give it a try, what’s the most you have to lose? I figure in a month I save 75 cents a day x 20 work days = 15 dollars a month, which is 180 dollars a year… adds up.