How to Save Money on Meat

The cost of living today is high. Cutting corners wherever you can will help your income stretch farther. An easy place to begin to save money is on your meat purchases. Making a few small adjustments to how you view and prepare your meals can add up to big savings in your pocket. Read on to learn more.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

1. Make meat the side dish in your meals. A single serving size for meat is 2 to 3 ounces. The food pyramid recommends two to three servings of meat, fish, poultry or eggs per day.

2. Use your leftovers. It's a great way to save money on your meat bill. If you have pot roast one night use the leftovers to make roast beef sandwiches or serve the pot roast leftovers over noodles for an additional meal.

3. Plan your meals for the week. Make a conscious effort for some of those meals to be meat free or to use leftovers from a prior meal. If you think ahead you will be less likely to just throw together the usual meat, vegetable and potato meal.

4. Look for "choice" cuts of meat instead of "prime" cuts to save money on meat. While choice cuts may not be considered the best of the best meat cuts, it can still make a tasty meal and is less expensive than prime cuts.

5. Stick to a grocery budget when trying to save money on meat. This will keep you from overspending on impulse purchases of meat.

Tips & Warnings

• Portion sizes served in restaurants are often much larger than the suggested 2 to 3 ounce servings for meat. Take your leftovers home and you can get two meals out of one, or split one entrée between two people.

• Eat some non-meat meals. Try some vegetarian pasta or stir-fry, make bean burritos or vegetable soup.