Part 2 of 5: Medications and healthcare, grocery shopping tips, and housing
Today’s post is all about medications and healthcare, grocery shopping tips, and housing. Before jumping in, however, please note that I am NOT a healthcare provider and before implementing any of the medication or health related tips here, you need to consult with your doctor.
Save on medications and healthcare:
Medications can be expensive, especially if you have multiple prescriptions or chronic health conditions that require you to take medication regularly. There are many ways to reduce your medication costs. Ones I have used in the past are:
Ask your doctor for samples or coupons. I was able to get a full month’s supply of a medication for stomach problems for FREE just by asking my doctor. He also gave me several doses of a migraine medication to try for free.
Contact the manufacturers of your medications and ask if they have financial assistance programs, coupons, or samples. Ask your pharmacy the same thing. I was able to get epi-pens for my son and myself for free, as well as huge discounts on asthma medication this way.
Call around to see if the price of your medication varies from pharmacy to pharmacy—you may be able to save simply by transferring your prescriptions to a different pharmacy!
Ask about generic versions and for medications on the $4 medication list, but understand that many pharmacies will only fill $4 prescriptions if you do NOT have or use insurance to pay for the medication.
Costco doesn’t require you to be a member to use their pharmacy, and they often have lower prices—when calling around to ask about the price of your medications, include Costco!
THIS article from NPR has a lot of great resources regarding prescriptions with lots of links throughout.
If you have insurance, be sure to understand how it works! My current plan has a high deductible and prescription coverage doesn’t kick in until the deductible is met. But, my plan does include a health spending account to help offset costs.
And, take proactive steps to get healthy through dietary changes, exercise, and so on. By taking proactive steps to understand my asthma, including a FREE class at my doctor’s office, I was able to incorporate exercise in my healthcare routine and after six months was able to stop daily asthma medications. I still need a rescue inhaler a couple of times per month, but that’s a huge decrease from prior years! Take control of your health by:
- walking every day
- finding inexpensive fruits and vegetables to add to your diet--look for in season, local produce or look for sales or look for bruised fruits and veggies that are marked down
- doing FREE workouts without equipment by finding videos on YouTube--check out my girl, Alicia and her FREE workout videos HERE or lookup Freeletics HERE. The key is to keep it FREE.
- borrow workout DVDs from your library if you dumped internet service
- replace one beverage per day with water for a week, then two the next week and so on until you are mostly drinking water
- stretch every morning when you wake up and every night before you go to bed
***Again, I am not a healthcare professional--ALWAYS seek advice from your doctor
before embarking on any health or diet changes.***
Take a hard look at your grocery shopping habits:
I’ve blogged previously about grocery shopping, but here are a few more tight budget grocery tips. First of all, if you are truly down-and-out and can’t afford to eat, you MUST call or visit your local food banks, church, and community organizations for help.
Before even heading to the store, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS inventory your fridge, freezer, and cupboards. Figure out a meal plan based on what you currently have and only fill in the necessary gaps.
EAT before you go to the store and consider bringing a water bottle and small snack to eat right before you enter the store. Shopping hungry is an overspending trap as you'll start shopping with your stomach and not with your brain and your wallet.
Can you get groceries for less elsewhere? Do you have a WinCo or Cub nearby or Aldi or Grocery Outlet? These stores frequently, but not always, have better prices than any other grocery stores. Cub and WinCo have great bulk bin sections too where you can buy only the amounts you need of many staple items, herbs, spices, coffee, dog food, and more at greatly reduced prices. Just stay away from the candy, chips, pretzels, and snack type foods that don’t really cost that much less in bulk (at least at my local WinCo...). I usually buy about two weeks worth of bulk goods at a time.
Use SavingStar and Ibotta for additional savings in the form of grocery rebates. You do have to pay for your groceries up front, but if you carefully combine sale prices, coupons, and these rebate sites, you can save significantly on the cost of name brand (and sometime generic) groceries.
Be sure to always look in your cart before you head to check out at the store. If you put anything your cart that you don’t need, consider putting it back on the shelf.
Consider generic versions of your favorite foods, and always always always compare prices! Just because it's a generic version doesn't mean it is always the cheapest version. Sometimes a sale will result in the name brand item being cheaper.
Buy herbs and spices either in bulk at WinCo or Cub or buy them in the ethnic sections of your grocery store—they are almost always cheaper when bought this way! And, skip buying herb and spice blends. Instead, if you need taco seasoning, Cajun seasoning, French fry seasoning, look up recipes and make your own!
If you have special dietary considerations such as a food allergy, don't buy your alternative foods at your regular chain grocery store! I am severely allergic to all dairy products from ALL animal--cows, goats, sheep...I'm allergic to all of them. My son was allergic to soy for many years and still reacts to almonds. For this reason, we use rice milk in place of regular milk. The grocery store is just about the WORST place to buy dairy alternatives. The prices are usually significantly higher than at a health food store or specialty store. I save anywhere from a dollar to two full dollars per carton buy purchasing rice milk and non-dairy yogurt at Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Sprouts, or even Costco when compared to all of my local chain grocery stores. Even WinCo has rotten prices on alternative foods.
The key here, however, is to ONLY buy these specialty items when shopping at a specialty store because there are tons of other things that cost significantly more at these stores and will look and smell incredibly tempting as you walk past to find your items. If you get to the check out and have other items in your basket or cart, put them back or tell the checker you don't want those things. Also, if you can afford to, consider buying your alternatives by the case at Whole Foods--they give a discount for buying in bulk.
Save on housing:
Take a hard look around your home and your neighborhood. Even though moving can be expensive, would it save you money in the long run to move?
If you are truly financially desperate, I want you to consider moving to a cheaper, smaller home or moving in with a family member or friend or renting space in your home to a roommate. For several years, my son and I lived with my mom. I did almost all of the chores in exchange for free rent.
While attending graduate school just outside New York City, we lived in a nice neighborhood in a not so nice zipcode and saved more than $500 in monthly rent compared to my graduate school classmates. Most of our zipcode had a high crime rate, but there was a small pocket than edged up against a very wealthy town and this little pocket has an extremely low crime rate, very little noise, and was walking distance to the train, the grocery store, the bank, and my college. Living two blocks north or west would have literally added $500 to our rent. Four blocks north or west would have added $750. Living in Manhattan would have tripled our rent for our large one-bedroom with a full eat-in kitchen and huge living room.
And, more recently, my son and I moved to a very low cost region of the country, initially renting a house for a year. The rent for a three bedroom house with a huge yard, in home laundry, and giant kitchen was about $300 less than our one-bedroom apartment in New York. However, that $300 was easily made up in heating and cooling costs associated with a large house, yard maintenance costs, and other house-related expenses. We have since moved into an apartment that is closer to my job and is on the ground floor with lots of sun exposure. We save a ton on utilities, in addition to much lower rent.
And, if you are renting, ask if the landlord will consider discounts if you live street-side. Ask if they have any units with older carpeting or appliances—will they give you a discount if you forgo newer amenities? Our current apartment is priced below market value because I was perfectly fine with older carpet and appliances. The landlord was happy to have one less unit to upgrade. If we’d been able to move into a street-side apartment, we could have saved more but none were available when we needed to move.
Before renting a room in your home, be sure zoning laws or landlord-tenant contracts allow you to do so. If you own your own home, also consider renting storage space in your garage, attic, or basement. If you own your own home, also consider ways to earn money from home such as child care or dog sitting (again, checking zoning laws or home owners association rules first).
Future posts in this series:
- Part 1 covers: Getting support, embracing free, food bank, and feminine hygiene.
- Part 3 covers: utilities and transportation.
- Part 4 covers: cooking, kitchen, and pantry habits.
- Part 5 covers: laundry, toiletries, cleaning, and pet care.
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