15 Frugal Habits People Judge You For (That I Do Anyway)

📕 Thirty years of running a household on a budget, E-Book: http://pearlpennywisdom.com A woman in the checkout line once watched me unload a cart full of yellow-sticker markdown meat and dented cans, leaned over, and quietly asked if everything was alright at home. She thought I'd fallen on hard times. I hadn't. I've run this house on one income for 30 years, and that cart was me saving about $40 in a single trip. People judge you for how you save money. They call it cheap, or sad, or embarrassing. I've heard all of it, mostly because I've done all of it. Here are 15 grocery habits I do anyway. And I'll tell you what each one saves, because that's the part nobody in that checkout line ever asks about. Number one. The yellow-sticker markdown rack. Every store has one, usually shoved in a back corner where they're hoping you won't linger. It's the meat that hits its sell-by date tomorrow, the bread that's a day old, the produce that's a little tired. People treat that rack like it's only for folks who can't do any better. Here's what I do. I go straight to it first, before I shop anything else. I'll find pork chops marked down from $4 a pound to $1.79 because they need to move today, and the second I get home, they go in the freezer. A freezer doesn't know the difference between a full-price chop and a marked-down one. Over a month, that rack alone saves me $50 or $60 on meat and bread, and the only thing it costs me is walking to the back of the store and not caring who sees me do it. I've also learned my store marks things down in the morning, so that's when I go, and if I don't see the rack, I ask. The worst they can say is not today.