(NEW YORK) — One woman who said her family was in debt and one step away from financial disaster made a change in her spending at the grocery store that’s paying off big.
Becky Guiles, known as the “Freebie Lady” on social media, shared her money-saving method with ABC News’ Good Morning America, which she said helped her save $1,000 a month on her grocery bills.
“Since we’ve been doing this, we save about $1,000 a month, which equals out to about $12,000 in [the] entire year,” she said.
The mother of two told GMA she uses five easy steps, which she said can be remembered using the acronym “B.O.R.E.S.”: B stands for “budget,” O stands for “organized,” R is for “reuse,” E is for “eliminating waste,” and S stands for “simplify.”
“These are just basic principles that anybody can do, no matter where you are in life or what your family situation is like,” Guiles said. “B.O.R.E.S. is the method that I have used to cut our groceries down from $1,200 to $1,400 a month to only $400 a month.”
Guiles recommended putting aside $100 a month for food per person in the household.
“I go into my pantry and I take out everything that is expired or we’re not going to eat,” she said of the second letter in the acronym to get organized. “And that’ll just kind of give you a clear plate for what you have and what you need to get.”
She said that you can repurpose — or “reuse” — food, by turning things like chip crumbs into breading, stale bread into croutons and vegetable scraps into vegetable broth.
For her next letter of advice, “E,” Guiles said, “We try to eliminate waste as much as possible.”
“Every time you throw food away, you’re actually throwing money away,” she continued. “Once you start thinking about food like that, it totally changes your mindset.”
The final letter stands for simplify and Guiles suggested “the more you do it, the more you are going to save.”
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