Thrifty Thursday - Cost Per Servings

This week for my Thrifty Thursday post, I'm talking about cost per serving.

I personally try to be very careful and keep my meals at around the $5 mark. Sometimes I go over, of course, but most of the time, I do a really good job in keeping it close by purchasing as much as I can on sale and with coupons.

The other day, I stopped into a grocery store I normally don't shop. Looking over the meat sections, I found several nice roasts at great prices (under $4), so I grabbed one. Upon preparing it, I found out it was bone-in. (I'm so used to buying boneless roasts that I didn't even think there were a lot of bone-in roasts) I came home, popped it in my slow cooker, and went about the rest of the day.

Not only was the roast not ready when expected - it actually took longer to cook than a boneless roast, but the amount of meat we ended up with didn't make it such a great deal anymore. Sure, dinner still stayed around the $5 mark, but the leftovers I was expecting wasn't really there. I would have been better off spending $1 more per pound on boneless to get another 3-4 servings!

And that's the thing with a lot of products. We think we have a really good deal, but when you work it out to cost per serving (or cost per use with some products), the deal just isn't as good as we expect it to be. If you're buying a meat or vegetable product with a lot of waste, often times it can be a lot cheaper to just buy the boneless or already cleaned up vegetable. Or sometimes, buying in bulk doesn't really save anything - we could actually be paying more for that large container of peanut butter than the smaller container.

I know it's hard, especially shopping around naptime, or when kids get bored, but you can actually save a little hidden money if you pay attention to the cost per serving.