As 'The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore' says goodbye, late night loses its underdog

On Tuesday night, Larry Wilmore sipped a glass of wine at the desk of his recently-canceled "Nightly Show" and reflected on his 18-month run on Comedy Central, which officially ends Thursday."We started our show thinking all the good bad race stuff was done already, but apparently we were wrong," he told viewers. "And we've covered race from just about every angle you can think of."Wilmore threw to footage of controversial incidents he had covered on his late-night talk show, [...]

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Old steel mill will soon be world's largest vertical farm

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Stacks of leafy greens are sprouting inside an old brewery in New Jersey."What we do is we trick it," said David Rosenberg, co-founder and chief executive officer of AeroFarms. "We get it thinking that, if plants could think: 'All right, this is a good environment, it's time to grow now.'"AeroFarms is one of several companies creating new ways to grow indoors year-round to solve problems like the drought out West, frost in the South or other [...]

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12-year-old chef from Stroudsburg to appear on new cooking competition show

Despite being “chopped” in the Entrée Round of the popular Food Network Television Show “Chopped Junior,” Stroudsburg resident Isaiah Hooks has been asked to return to appear in another cooking contest, the new “Food Network Star Kids.”“I’m excited,” said the 12-year-old who attends PA Cyber School. “I made it to the Entrée Round when I was on ‘Chopped Junior’ earlier this year and that was a [...]

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Zoning officer: There aren't enough contractors to hook up residents to new sewage system

A revised policy granting additional time for Pocono/Hamilton sewer system customers to qualify for discounts to connect to the system won approval Monday night, but could change again before the ink dries. Pocono Township commissioners approved the change giving customers an additional two months to connect after receiving mandatory connection notices, while still qualifying for the discounted rate of $2,500 per equivalent dwelling unit. This is in addition to the three-month [...]

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Local school boards discuss extended summers in hopes of expanding student employment

Money changes everything.While many subscribe to that catchphrase — which was also the title of a 1983 Cyndi Lauper song — the Pocono Mountain Visitors Bureau and local water parks and other tourist attractions are hoping area school districts take heed.A mid-September meeting of the PMVB executive committee has been scheduled as a precursor to a summit with each local school board that could lead to a change in the start date for Pocono region schools [...]

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20 Strategies for Radically Cutting Your Food Expenses

The average American family spends $151 a week on food, according to this Gallup poll. That’s actually quite a lot of money when you consider that the average week contains just 21 meals and that it’s relatively easy to eat a meal that costs less than $1.

The truth of the matter is that people often spend far more on their food than they realize and that those food expenses really add up over time. Even if you’re spending just the average amount on food, a typical family ends up spending almost $8,000 a year on food.

Within that $8,000 in annual spending comes a lot of little choices. You make food spending choices every time you visit the grocery store. You make food spending choices every time you eat out, every time you order takeout, every time you think about eating something in your home, every time you visit a coffee shop.

All of those choices are made as the result of a set of “rules” that you have in your head. You have a certain internal logic as to why you make the choices that you do. Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that if you change a few of those internal “rules,” you can end up saving a ton on food expenses over the course of a year.

Here are twenty such strategies you can apply to change your food spending habits. Some of these strategies will be familiar to long-time readers of The Simple Dollar, while others will be new ones that Sarah and I have learned over the years.

Strategy #1 – Make Simple Meals That You Like

The single biggest money saver when it comes to a family’s food budget is eating at home, and the simplest strategy for eating at home is to get over one’s fear of the kitchen and simply make your own meals.

Many, many people have the perspective that making one’s own meals at home is difficult and messy and, for the sake of convenience, they just order food, whether takeout or delivery or going to a restaurant.

It’s simply not true.

There are many, many meals that are incredibly easy to make. Pasta meals take ten minutes and require little more than boiling water and pouring some sauce on top of noodles. You can make wraps and burritos by wrapping a few things in a tortilla, and sandwiches by putting some things between slices of bread. Soups involve putting things in a big pot with water and boiling it for a while. Stir fry means tossing some veggies and some protein in a skillet over really high heat and then serving it over rice. Most of those things require maybe ten minutes worth of effort at home. They’re also far cheaper than eating out.

The thing with simple dishes, though, is that the more you do them, the more confident you become in branching out and the easier it all seems. Burritos seem easy? Make grilled burritos on a grill or in a skillet with a bit of oil. Basic soup seem easy? Try caramelizing onions before you put them into the soup. Pasta meals seem easy? Try making your own sauce out of just things you like (I like sauteed mushrooms and onions and green peppers and garlic and black peppers in just a bit of olive oil, for instance, and putting that right on top).

Make really, really simple meals at home, things that you’re sure to like. Make them until it seems comically easy, to the point that you could do it with your eyes closed. Then slowly branch out into more complex stuff.

Before you know it, you’ll be able to make tons of tasty things at home really quickly, really cheaply, and with such ease you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it for yourself from the start.

Strategy #2 – Base Meals Around On-Sale Meats and Produce

Once you’re comfortable with cooking at home, the most valuable strategy that you can take on is to cook with the things that are inexpensive at the store – namely, the items that happen to be on sale that week.

Just grab the flyer from your local grocery store (online, preferably, before you even head out to the store) and look at what’s on discount this week. Chicken breasts? Avocados? Tomatoes? Steak? Potatoes? Whatever happens to be on sale, use that as your starting point for meals.

What I typically do is go look for recipes and ideas for how to use those on-sale items as centerpieces for meals, then sketch out a meal plan where I slot in those items for meals for my family throughout the week. I’ll try to use the cheap ingredients as often as possible, so I might plan three or four meals that use tomatoes if they’re on sale, for example.

Centering everything around things that are really cheap this week lets you vary your meals significantly from week to week. You don’t have to eat the same things over and over again in order to eat cheap!

Strategy #3 – Use a Grocery List

The best time to make a decision about what foods and household products you need to buy is before you set foot in the grocery store. You should do this at home, where you can figure out which household items you actually need and which food items you need to fulfill your meal plan for the week.

So, before you even head to the grocery store, make a grocery list. Include everything on it that you would need to make meals for the next week, as well as any household supplies you anticipate needing in the next week. Ideally, if you looked at the grocery flyer first and planned some meals using those items, a significant chunk of the items on your list are already on sale.

Then, head to the store and trust your list. Stick to it. Keep your head down and focus on grabbing just the things on the list. Scratch those items out as you go.

What you’ll end up with is a cart full of stuff you actually need, much of which is already on sale, and very few things that you don’t actually need. Your grocery bill is going to be cheap!

Strategy #4 – Shop at the Local Discount Grocer

If you typically shop at a more expensive food retailer, you really should try out a discount food retailer. Substitute your Whole Foods for a chain like Aldi or Fareway instead, where many of the items are the same but the prices are much lower.

Some people are picky about specific food items and it’s okay if you only buy some of your groceries at the discount grocer, but the more you buy there, the lower your overall food bill will be.

Other discount grocer chains besides Aldi and Fareway include PriceRite, Save-A-Lot, and Grocery Outlet Bargain Market. There are many, many discount grocers that operate only at the local level, so be sure to look around your town and see what’s available.

Strategy #5 – Take Advantage of “Cheaper” Meat Cuts

Many people assume that the higher the price of a meat cut, the better it must be for all purposes. That’s rarely true. Many “cheap” meat cuts work just fine for many purposes and, in fact, work better for some purposes.

Take hamburgers, for instance. If you’re grilling a hamburger, a lower-cost ground beef usually works better as the excess fat tends to cook away during the grilling process, leaving a burger that’s actually tastier if you use 80/20 ground beef instead of the much more expensive 95/5 beef.

If you’re making a soup, buy the much less expensive stew meat cuts instead of the pricier cuts of meat, as the stew meat will cook into exquisite tenderness during the soup cooking process and will actually add more flavor to the soup. If you want to make a chicken soup, use thighs instead of breasts, for example, as it will make the soup much more savory and cost far less.

Don’t fall into the trap of assuming that the expensive cuts are best for everything; they rarely are. Instead, learn more about what you’re actually making and you’ll find that you save money and end up with better tasting meals.

Strategy #6 – Make 2-4 Batches of Most Meals, Freeze the Extras

If you’re making a meal that can possibly be frozen for easy finishing later, such as a soup, stew, or casserole, make multiple batches of it at once and save the extras in a state just prior to the final heating.

For example, let’s say you’re making lasagna. Rather than making just one pan of lasagna, make several pans at once and freeze the extra pans at the point just before you’d stick them in the oven. Then, at a later date, you can pull a pan out of the freezer, let it thaw in the refrigerator for a day or two, then cook it with minimal effort.

Doing this serves several purposes at once. For one, it reduces the average time needed to actually make each pan of lasagna, as you’re merging all of the prep work together into one batch and cutting down on the average cleanup and preparation time. For another, you’ll have convenient foods in the freezer at home, making it easier to choose to eat at home on a busy night. For another, you’ll be able to buy ingredients in bulk, which will make each batch cheaper than it otherwise would be.

You can apply this strategy with many different meals. We often make extra batches of soups and stews this way, freezing them in containers designed for liquids. We’ll even make batches of burritos and freeze those in individual containers.

Strategy #7 – Buy Store Brand Staples

When you’re buying staple items, such as flour or sugar, or condiments like pepper or ketchup, consider buying the store brand version. Quite often, the store brand is identical to the name brand, with the only difference being the label on the outside of the package. It’s pretty wasteful to spend extra money on a label.

The vast majority of the time, you’ll be unable to tell the difference between the two. That’s because, the vast majority of the time, there is no difference between the store brand and the name brand, and even when there is a difference, it’s a minor one that you’ll scarcely notice.

If you do happen to notice a difference and prefer the name brand, don’t hesitate to switch back to the name brand with your next purchase. At least, at that point, you’ll know why you prefer the name brand. Sometimes, you may even find that you prefer the store brand if there’s a difference, and when they’re identical, it makes complete sense to prefer the less expensive option.

Strategy #8 – Don’t Overbuy Fresh Produce

When you find a great sale on fresh produce, like a sale I recently found that enabled us to buy tomatoes for pennies on the dollar compared to their normal price, you want to buy a lot of it to get your money’s worth. After all, great bargains don’t come around all that often.

There’s a catch, though, when it comes to fresh produce. Quite often, if you buy too much of it, some of it goes bad before you can use it. We’ve all seen fruits and vegetables that have gone bad because they’ve sat around for too long, rendering them (at best) unpalatable or (at worst) utterly rotten.

The solution is to stick to your meal plan. If you have a meal plan, you know how much of this produce you’re going to use, so only buy enough to cover your meal plan. That way, none of it goes to waste.

If you find yourself stuck with excess due to an unexpected change in plans, freeze it or preserve it in some other fashion before it goes bad. Just do a quick Google search with regards to freezing the item in question and see what you need to do.

Strategy #9 – Use Scraps Smartly (for Stock)

When you prepare meat or fresh vegetables for meals, you’re often left with scraps. Maybe you have a handful of chopped onion left over, or a quarter of a bell pepper, or a chicken bone. Throw it away, right?

Wrong.

Take any leftover vegetables and put them in a gallon freezer Ziploc bag marked “veggies.” Put that baggie in the freezer and keep adding to it until it’s full. Do the same with chicken leftovers (labeling it “chicken”) and beef leftovers and so on.

Then, when the bag is full, fill up a slow cooker (we’ll get to slow cookers in a minute) in the morning with those scraps, add a dozen peppercorns and a bay leaf, and then fill it with water until there’s about an inch or so until you reach the top. Let it cook on low all day, then come home and strain the contents, saving the liquid. Freeze that liquid that you saved.

That stuff is stock. It’s magical. You can use it as the liquid component of a soup or a stew or a casserole – basically anything that uses water. It amps up the flavor of anything and costs you nothing. Homemade stock is incredibly easy to make, is incredibly cheap, and is incredibly tasty.

Strategy #10 – Develop a Smart Leftover Strategy (for Subsequent Lunches)

When you’re done with dinner and have some leftovers, instead of just tossing the pan in the fridge, repackage it immediately into meal-sized containers. We keep a healthy supply of reusable meal-sized plastic containers in the cupboard and package a meal in each one.

Then, the next day, all you have to do is open the fridge and grab a container and you’re ready for lunch. You can grab it in the morning before you leave or, if you’re at home, pull it straight from the fridge and directly microwave it.

It’s a very convenient lunch. Not only that, if you don’t think you’ll get through all of the leftover meal containers before they go bad, freeze the extras (put a piece of masking tape on it so you can note the contents and the date). That way, you can grab containers out of the freezer for lunches as well.

Moving leftovers into individual meal containers makes it so easy to just grab them and go that you’ll never look back, and a leftover lunch is a very, very cheap lunch indeed. (There are other uses, too… just keep reading!)

Strategy #11 – Have a Regular Leftover Smorgasbord Night

You may find yourself with several leftover lunches in the fridge after a few days, and that’s fine. At your family dinnertime, just pull them all out, sit them on the table with a spoon or fork in each one, and stack some plates and/or bowls. Let everyone make their own plates and microwave them for dinner.

This is an extremely easy, extremely quick, and extremely cheap family dinner. We often do this on Thursday nights at our house (because Thursdays are virtually always busy).

Another smart idea is to simply have a seasoning shaker or three out on the table. Salt and pepper are good starters, but so are red pepper flakes. Some sauces, like Sriracha, are also a good idea. This allows people to amp up the flavor of their foods as they wish.

Strategy #12 – Have a Handful of Cheap, Tasty, and Simple Recipes on Standby

There are some recipes that Sarah and I can just make on a moment’s notice. We almost always have the items on hand for them and can just make them almost on autopilot. Pasta marinara. Stir fry. Vegetable soup. Grilled black bean burgers. I can throw those things together without even thinking due to many years of practice.

Have a few of these “standby” recipes and make sure you have the stuff on hand to make them all the time. Meals that can rely on pantry (meaning nonperishable) ingredients are quite useful.

Why is this so important? There are going to be inevitable evenings where plans fall apart and it’s very tempting to just go out to eat or get takeout and blow $20 or $30 or $40 (if you have a family). Having a standby meal like this reduces that $20/$30/$40 to more like $4/$6/$8 for that meal.

It’s not perfect. It’s pretty standard. But it’s something that everyone likes, it can be made quickly even when you’re distracted, and it’s really inexpensive.

Strategy #13 – Hit the Library

Part of what makes all of this work is simply having a bunch of recipes floating around. I store many recipes in Paprika, my mother uses index cards, and I have a friend that uses notebooks. They all boil down to the same idea – a collection of recipes that we either know we like or want to make in the future so that we have something to turn to when making meal plans for the week, plus they can easily be modified to meet our needs and tastes.

How do I refresh this collection of recipes? Sure, there are a lot of websites to look at online, but I also hit the library and check out their abundant cookbook collection every once in a while. I’ll copy down a recipe or two that I find that looks interesting and suddenly I have new options. Honestly, most of my favorite recipes are modifications of recipes I originally found in cookbooks at the library.

I like Paprika because it’s really easy to search by ingredient, which means that it’s an essential part of weekly meal planning. I look for ingredients that are on sale in the grocery flyer, then search for them in Paprika to find some ideas on how to use them.

Strategy #14 – Know Some “Fill in the Blank” Recipes

One other great idea is to have some “fill in the blank” recipes in the back of your head – more general recipes that work well with almost anything you add to them.

For example, I have a standard “stir fry” that I often make. I’ll cook up almost any green vegetable along with some black pepper and a protein (usually tofu for us, but you can use chicken or steak or whatever you prefer) in a very hot skillet, add a little bit of soy sauce near the end, and serve it over rice. Boom – a recipe that works with almost any green vegetable that’s on sale.

With root vegetables, I make a standard root vegetable soup that works with turnips or potatoes or leeks or radishes or onions or anything like that. It cooks slowly all day until the root vegetables are soft and delicious (mostly, it’s just a few bay leaves, whatever seasonings I can find, and ample black pepper and salt).

I can turn almost any protein, any vegetable, rice, and cheese into a passable meal by cooking the protein, the vegetable, and the rice together, then combining them with the cheese and heating until consistent and adding a few spices (again, black pepper and salt are my friends). It’s my “anything” casserole.

These recipes are easy. They work with almost anything that’s on sale. Thus, they save a lot of money.

Strategy #15 – Choose Dry Beans Over Canned

You can get about four times as many dried beans for the same price as canned beans and they’re both really easy to work with.

Sure, all you have to do is pop open a can of beans and drain them, right? Well, for dried beans, just put them in a slow cooker on low all day with water filled up about two inches above the beans and you’re ready to use them, too.

The difference? The dry beans taste better and they’re about 70% cheaper, based on my own experience. Plus, you can season them a bit by throwing in some salt or a ham bone or something like that, depending on what additional flavor you want the beans to take on.

If there’s any chance I’m going to use beans in the next few days, I go ahead and cook them in the slow cooker during the day, drain them, and save the beans in a container in the fridge for a day or two until they’re needed. So easy, so tasty, so cheap.

Strategy #16 – Own a Slow Cooker and Know How to Use It

So many of the tips above have mentioned a slow cooker. Why? It makes many, many things possible that would be very difficult for a working family.

I can prepare beans and stock while I’m at work by tossing the ingredients in the slow cooker in the morning and letting it cook on low all day. I can prepare lots of full meals in the same way – everything from soups and stews to lasagnas and roasts.

When we’re done, the full crock and the lid go straight in the dishwasher to be used again, often the very next day.

This is my preferred slow cooker that I recommend to almost everyone. It does a great job with almost every kind of food and practically runs itself. You can program it if needed, but it mostly just sits and does its thing with minimal fuss.

The best part is when you come home to the aromas of some freshly-made stock or a complete meal that’s ready to eat.

Strategy #17 – Make Friends with Gardeners

We have several friends who are avid gardeners and we’ve learned over the years that during August and September, they usually have an abundance of vegetables that they have no idea what to do with.

So what do they do with them? They give those extras to us!

Of course, throughout the year, we’re good neighbors and friends. We help them with little tasks throughout the year, like helping them move furniture or watching their children or watching their house while they’re traveling. Giving away their extra produce is just part of that relationship. (We also garden ourselves, so we give away produce sometimes, too.)

Because of that, we often don’t buy any produce at all in the late summer and early fall. Between the bounty of our own garden and those of our neighbors, we’re often flooded in produce. Thus, our meal plans often center around all of this great free produce rather than the grocery store flyer, making meals this time of the year dirt cheap!

Strategy #18 – Make Low Offers at the End of Farmers Markets

We often shop at farmers markets and we’ve learned that some of the best bargains come at the end of the market, when people are about to close up shop. If you walk up to a booth that’s about to close and they still have a ton of unsold produce, you’ll almost always get a huge deal if you make them an offer.

I’ve walked out of farmers markets with tons of vegetables of all kinds that I paid very little for just by making an offer near the end of the market.

The important thing to note is that when you do this, you won’t get your choice of items. You’re relying on what’s left behind that others didn’t buy and the items that the seller is willing to part with at a discount.

Still, it’s a great time to haggle, especially if you’re willing to take home ten pounds of cabbage (I’ve done this very thing, which turned into a large batch of homemade sauerkraut).

Strategy #19 – Host Potluck Dinner Parties

Many people lament eating at home because eating out often means a social engagement. They like eating out with friends and family because it’s so social, even though it’s expensive.

The best way to turn that social engagement into a meal that’s not as pricy is to simply host a dinner party. Invite a few people over and encourage them to bring a drink or a simple side dish while you just focus on the main course.

Doing this makes the meal pretty inexpensive for everyone involved and allows for a meal to be eaten in your home where people can stay around the table for as long as they’d like without being rushed out.

We often have potluck dinner parties where we serve grilled foods, homemade pizza, pasta, or other items, and the guests tend to bring beverages or dinner rolls or a very simple side dish. It makes for a great dinner and a great time with friends without pinching anyone’s budget at all.

Strategy #20 – Try Community Dinners

Another option that we often use on busy nights is to go to community dinners.

In our area, many community organizations host freewill community dinners on weekday evenings that often target busy families. You can simply go there, get a freshly prepared meal, and pay whatever you wish.

Let’s assume you’re paying $5 per person. It’s still far cheaper than eating out elsewhere, you get to interact with people in your community, and the money goes toward a good cause or toward financing future community meals.

Look around your community and see if any organizations host such community dinners. Not only are they often a bargain, they’re a great way to get involved and meet people.

Final Thoughts

The average person won’t wholeheartedly adopt all twenty of these strategies at once – I know I certainly wouldn’t. A much better approach is to just choose a few that seem like they would work well with your life and integrate them into what you’re doing.

Even just choosing a few of these, like a smarter meal planning system or smart slow cooker use, can end up saving you a bundle in terms of your annual food costs. Remember, if you can trim the average American family’s food bill by even 25%, you’ve suddenly freed up enough money to make a car payment or a student loan payment, and that can make an enormous difference.

Good luck!

The post 20 Strategies for Radically Cutting Your Food Expenses appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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Barnes & Noble vs. Amazon Prime: Which is the Best Deal for Home-Schoolers?

Teaching is a hard enough job as it is.

And although you’ve probably got more important things to worry about than books, their price is nothing to sneeze at.

Especially if you’re home-schooling — and supplying the students’ books as well as your own. You might quickly end up spending a lot more than you’d expected.

Even classroom teachers’ salaries don’t offer a whole lot of wiggle room — and you’re working the gig gratis. Lucky you.

What’s a home-schooler to do?

Barnes & Noble’s Educator Program Gives Teachers Discounted Books

Image from barnesandnoble.com

If you regularly shop at Barnes & Noble, you’ve probably been pitched its $25-a-year discount membership.

But you might not know about its totally free Educator Program.

The program’s set up for pre-K and K-12 educators working in public, private or parochial schools — but home-schooling parents are eligible, too.

You’ll need to go into a physical store to enroll with a photo ID and a letter with the following details: “family name and address; name of homeschooling parent(s); grade level of each child being homeschooled.”

Once you’re approved, your two-year membership gets you “20% off the list price of most hardcover and paperback books, toys, and games, for use in the classroom, unless otherwise noted,” as well as “periodic special promotions.”

Plus, you can use the discount both in-store and online.

Barnes & Noble Educator Program or Amazon Prime?

UberImages/Getty Images

A 20% discount is all well and good, but in our internet age, you may have trouble remembering the last time you set foot in a brick-and-mortar book store.

And you may wonder, specifically, how Barnes & Noble’s discount compares with Amazon Prime.

While Barnes & Noble’s deal is free to join, Amazon Prime doesn’t yet offer a specific educator-directed program — so you’d have to pony up the full $99 annual fee (after taking advantage of the 30-day free trial, of course).

That said, Amazon Prime obviously has a lot more available items than just books and games, and many of them are at steeply discounted prices.

Barnes & Noble’s program terms feature a long list of exclusions, including DVDs, Blu-ray discs, periodicals and, most problematic for educators, textbooks.

The program also doesn’t include free shipping, although Barnes & Noble offers free standard shipping automatically if you buy $25 or more worth of eligible items.

But if you only need a book or two, you’ll still have to pay — and pretty dearly, if you want see them show up at your door quickly.

When I put a book into my Barnes & Noble cart shortly after noon on a Wednesday, there was no option to have it delivered by Friday — and if I wanted it Monday, I’d pay more than the price of the book itself in shipping fees.

To compare the two services as fairly as possible, I did a case study with “Uglies,” a book featured on many summer reading lists this year — and that’s all I know about it.

Its price at Barnes & Noble actually corresponds with Amazon’s: Both vendors sell the hardcover version for $13.65, discounted from its $19.99 list price.

The additional 20% discount brings the price down to $10.92 at B&N — but if it’s the only book you buy, you’ll still pay $3.99 for standard, lethargic shipping.

At Amazon, it’s not going much lower than $13.65… unless you buy used, which you can also do in Barnes & Noble’s online store.

But if you’ve already dished out for Prime, you can have it in your hands in two days without paying a dime, even if it’s the only book you’re buying.

So while the book itself is technically cheaper at Barnes & Noble, your mileage will vary based on how many books you need at once and how soon you need them — and whether or not you order online often enough to make Prime’s $99 membership pay for itself.

The bottom line?

The Barnes & Noble program is free and easy to join, and a discount is a discount.

The way we see it, why not join? Then, if you ever find yourself wandering around a physical store — or if you discover you need a book RIGHT NOW — you can easily get 20% off.

Plus, it’s conceivable you might find a book priced more cheaply at Barnes & Noble — some really good books sometimes end up on the store’s bargain shelves!

But we still stand behind Prime as a great deal for pretty much everyone, home-schooling teachers included. And if you use it to order always-needed home goods like paper towels or toilet paper, it’s pretty easy to get your money’s worth in free shipping.

No matter what you do, you can find ways to save even more on school necessities all year long.

First of all, make sure to stack deals to get the very best price every single time you shop — no matter what you’re shopping for. Here’s how to do it.

As you know, there’s more to school supplies than books. Here’s how one mom outfitted both of her kids with everything they needed for the academic year… for just $19.05.

And don’t forget about the clothes your kids are constantly outgrowing. Here are seven smart  ways to save on back-to-school duds.

After all, you’re just going to have to do it all again next year!

Your Turn: Do you home-school your kids? Have you found any other great savings programs? Let us know in the comments so we can help more Penny Hoarders!

Disclosure: We don’t hesitate to pick pennies off the sidewalk when we spot them. But the affiliate links in this post help our earnings grow even quicker. Plus, it’s a lot cleaner than sidewalk money.

Jamie Cattanach is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. Her writing has also been featured at The Write Life, Word Riot, Nashville Review and elsewhere. Find @JamieCattanach on Twitter to wave hello.

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