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welcome to today's webinar how to save money on food this is part of the get savvy grow your green stuff webinar series we've been doing this for several years and we try to focus on different topics every year today's webinar as part of America Saves Week we wanted to focus on saving and we will be recording this webinar and making all of the resources that we cover in the chat available later we also wanted to make sure that everyone understood that we're going to be using that chat feature a lot so make sure that you can access it I'm going to hand over the presentation to my colleagues Kathy and sation now welcome everybody we're excited to have you on today I am one of your presenters my name is Sasha Grob and saidar and I'm a consumer economics educator in Grundy Kankakee and Wool counties right under Cook County that's where you'll find me and then I'll let Kathy introduce herself as well hi this is Kathy sweedler Stacia are I clearly please let us know in the chat function and we'll try to adjust so likes Asia I'm also a consumer economics educator from University of Illinois Extension and really excited to talk about this topic I've had a lot of fun preparing for it and I'm really ready and willing to go now with sharing it so we're gonna go ahead and let safety get started it sounds like I might have blipped out there this is Kathy sweet ler go ahead Stacia thanks Kathy so we're gonna ask you what state or county are you walking logging in from today so if you're from Illinois let us know what county you're hanging out in if you are from a different state let us know what state you are if you want to add your city - that could be fun Minnesota I see Champaign lots of places Canada whoa that's pretty cool you're in a different country that's pretty awesome we're excited to have you here so thank you all for letting us know where you're from it helps us get a good idea of our attendees and we really do appreciate that so let's talk about our learning objectives today so once you leave this webinar you're gonna know these three things so we're gonna talk about making a realistic plan that balances not only your money your time but also your nutritional needs so there's some important things of course we're gonna talk about saving money on food expenses that's why most of you are here and then of course lastly we're gonna talk about preventing food waste so I'm gonna trip an the silver back over to Kathy she's going to talk about some food expenditures okay I got too involved playing with a chat there okay so what we want to do now is take a look at what the food expenditures look like in the US and well one of the reasons when I do this is say's like to bring you some research-based information the other thing is I really think that having an understanding of how maybe other people are doing things will have give you a chance to bring to your unconscious level thinking about how do you handle float spending and what do you want what do you like about it and what do you want to maybe change if you're trying to save money on it so the first thing we're going to look at is food spending by income and I think it's actually kind of interesting to see that there's a national survey called the Consumer Expenditure survey which is done each year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and they look at how much people spend on lots of categories but today we're interested of course on food spending and you can see that it does vary as a percentage of somebody's expenses and income by their income level which is no real surprise but it averages about 13 percent overall but as you can see that people who have less money are spending a higher percentage of their income on food the other thing I think that's kind of interesting to take a look at here is to see how much do people spend on food that they prepare at home and how much do they spend when they eat out and interesting it kind of breaks down pretty evenly these days on average about seven percent of spent on food at home and about six percent away from home so you know this is a nice overview but you might want to stop and think about like how much do you spend on food and what is how does that compare compared to other things that you're spending and maybe this is something you'd like to track going forward to get a better sense of really where your dollars are going all right so then we can also kind of take a look at research and focus down on how people spend money based on their age and other factors so for example I'm anticipating go back please I'm anticipating that many of we born between 1981 and the mid-2000s and so we're we're born in terms of both location and how we're raised and also when we're born can really have a factor on how we do things and that's what people get kind of excited about and they look at research based on that so let's take a look at those different generations and what they look like you'll see here the millenials which are currently the largest and most diverse living generation in the US but they've got a name for all of us so for example I'm a little bit older and I fall under that Baby Boomers but not retired and there's even people older than me so when in this study people that were asked questions households were defined by the generation of the person who is doing the shopping and one little interesting tidbit of this is that the number of monthly food trips increases with age but decreases with with income and I imagine that many of you you know like I said are Millennials so let's see how that plays out see if you where you fit and if you feel like you are a millennial and I've got a comment here that I'm cutting out random a little bit infrequently I knew I heard that from the other speakers as well if it gets to be a real problem live so make it let me know that'd be good okay next slide okay so one of the things that jumped out at me about this study was oh my gosh the Millennials are great at eating vegetables and they're that red line that you see on the screen and everybody they're pretty much there Inc their consumption of vegetables goes up as their income goes up but that red line for Millennials just shoots up there so that is one thing that we're seeing is that overall Millennials are demanding healthier and fresher foods but in contrast to that I think it's kind of interesting if we go to the next slide you'll see that Millennials though aren't so big on preparing as much of their food as perhaps some of the other generations so they're much more spending a higher of their food food eating at home on buying prepared foods things that are don't take as much prep and take less time so millenials it turns out spend actually an average of 12 minutes less eating and drinking each day than traditionalists who spend 77 minutes a day not really sure how how much time I spend eating but I think it is kind of one of those things when we're planning our food spending and our food preparation is to think about how much time do we really want to spend on it and what makes sense for us so going now I'd like to go back to our chat box and I would like to know what's important to you about the food you eat what do you think about when you are shopping for food and we can put some of those answers in the chat and I'm going to give everybody a chance to do that I see somebody's freshness is popping up short prep time nutrition aspect plus cost price quality no preservatives health a lot of nutrition prep time woo freshness have freshness really going in there quick alright somebody mentions balance of quality and quantity and I think that's one of those probably big takeaways here is a lot of times we have to balance out things that are important to us and so that we can get someplace that works as well and so we're gonna now move back to Sasha and she's going to give us a little bit more information on balancing cost of nutrition Thank You Kathy so we wanted to share a really great resource from the USDA MyPlate website so hopefully it's gonna be thrown there in the chat box but the USDA MyPlate website has a ton of great information on how to balance cost and nutrition so once you go on their website you can find links available about how ething eating healthy on a budget it also has tips on creating a grocery game plan and how to shop smart to fill your cart which I thought were very fun things to talk about so you can definitely prepare those healthy fresh meals like we were talking about they also have a great way to meal plan and if you want to stay connected they can email you updates you just have to scroll down to the bottom other page and put your email in and it'll go right in so some great tips from the USA my plate great resource that we have you know nationally so looking forward we have a lot of advantages to not only cooking at home but eating out so you don't need to have to have one or the other you just need to consider the pros and cons of each and find a balance that kind of makes it make the most sense for you so of course cooking at home you have more control ingredients you can add you know more ingredients in I'm more of a person like if I have an extra bell pepper or onion or anything extra I'll just throw it into the into whatever I'm cooking because you know gets gets that vegetables in I'm a millennial I loves veggies and sometimes it's often cheaper to cook at home than eating out but eating house of course takes less time you know you're someone's already prepared a meal or they're getting it ready you know usually in and out pretty quickly there's obviously skill required and it's convenient for us according to an article in the USA USA Today by The Motley Fool the typical food establishment charges about a 300% markup on the items it serves so that means that you might spend $30 on an entree which you could probably prepare at home for $10 so just think about if you're the type of person who dined out often whether it's a weeknight date or daily lunches you can be spending way more than necessary so just think about all those things about convenience and eating out versus you know the costs at home so of course we will talk about cooking at home because that's someone you know it's important to us we like to come cook at home so the first thing of course is to simple simplify your recipes there's a lot of things out there right now talking about five ingredients or less three ingredients or less even two ingredients or less and then there's a loss of one pot or pan recipes you can try that are really good to do I just made one last week with spaghetti and chicken sausage and some tomatoes and it was spinach and it was really delicious so I only use one pot and I didn't have to clean up a whole bunch of masa or my husband didn't so there's that of course making more meals so sometimes it's easier to make a larger amount of food this is true things like chili or soups or even maybe meatless meals instead of and you can freeze those so instead of eating the same food for a week you can freeze some of it and eat it later I know a couple weeks ago I made a baked potato soup and I put some of it away and then hopefully this week or next week we're gonna get it back out and that saves us not only time and but money too as well lastly of course you're using things that you normally have on a regular basis so those things can be things like eggs milk canned tomatoes whatever you really like you want to keep those things on handy and make sure that you have one or two of them at home of course there are some things that are proven to work so if you're talking about research shows that people who shop with a shopping list spend less money and we'll talk more about that in a second and then of course limiting shopping time to more no more than once a week the more you shop the more you'll spend on average of course if you're looking for an easy way to save a thousand dollars or more a year use that shopping list the average shopper spends about 40% more on impulse purchases when shopping without a list if you spend $50 each week at the grocery store there's a good chance that twenty of those twenty dollars of that purchase or unplanned and that definitely adds up on the whole year the average shopper spends about two dollars and seventeen cents for every minute they're in the supermarket and you're likely to spend 50 more cents for every minute you're at the grocery store beyond the first 30 minutes so if you're in there another you know 30 minutes we've racked up a whole bunch more money than what we originally put in there so great things to know and lastly we don't want to shop hungry I am a person who sometimes don't does that and I shop when I'm hangry and so just you know don't do those kind of things another thing we want to talk to you guys was you know are having things on hand that you'd normally like to have so things like apples and bananas beans Browns rice canned tomatoes canned tuna eggs fat-free milk kale potatoes rolled oats spinach is a good one too just some of these things that you can have that are handy that you have at home all the time these are some great things to you know keep in keeping your pantry keep stocked up in your fridge as well so we wanted to ask what you guys like to keep on hand what foods you like to keep on hand so at my house we keep hot dogs on hand because I have a young toddler he loves hot dogs we you know usually get the beef ones fruit yogurt those are good as well we keep pasta on hand to anyone else black beans and sweet potatoes oh those are good ones definitely so we you know keep all the great things aids yogurt oatmeal chili fixins that's great eggs pasta rice flour to make pancakes and waffles that's a good idea peanut butter quinoa rice pasta yogurt flour lettuce and eggs great burrito fixings I like that too those are some good things to have on hand because I love you know making things really quickly Oh tortillas that's another good one so you guys just keep talking in the chat box I'm gonna keep going forward with our webinar but I want to talk to you guys about unit pricing so this information here breaks down the cost of the product into cost per unit usually given in ounces as you can see here so we can see that the I think this is ice cream it's caramel ice cream for five dollars and 49 cents is the total price you can see what the items description is there's usually a barcode on it but the thing you really want to focus on is that price per unit or price per ounce so in this example it's a nine cents nine point eight cents per ounce for this Breyers ice cream so just one thing to know is that sometimes buying the bigger boxes isn't cheaper by the serving your ounce so definitely when you go to the store comparison shop and see which one is the better the better deal so let's give you a really great example about unit pricing by servings with rice so we have one side it's a long grain rice it's a 16 ounce bag there's 20 servings inside there's 3/4 of a cup each is the serving and then it's a for $0.99 you can get that rice but on the other side we have that fast track minute rice is a 14 ounce box there's nine servings so there's 11 less servings it's the same serving per cup by the dollar ninety-nine so when you break it down at the very end that the longer a green rice is five cents per serving while we're talking about the fast track right which is 22 cents for serving still pretty cheap on the serving prices I'm compared to other things but definitely want to again check out those unit pricing buy servings and then of course we - when we talk about servings units come in different sizes and so there are might be times when you want to compare the cost per serving rather than the cost per ounce so in this example we have an apple for one serving so you might want to consider an apple as one serving so you divide the cost of all these apples so the seven apples so let's say they're five dollars for seven apples you want to figure out what that is versus just find the one apple of course you may want to consider the nutritional value your food preference and the need for a variety in your diet so good things to know about with unit pricing there's you know ounces servings some great things to consider when we go to the store so I'm gonna share this back over with Kathy and she's gonna talk about lowering costs when eating out so um I think that we might we all probably realize that it can save us money when we prepare our food at home but the reality is with all those yummy dining out options we are going to eat out but that doesn't mean that our they have to always be budget Buster type events so I think it's worthwhile thinking of some strategies that can lower your cost when you're eating out and and putting even in place before you get there because it's one of those things I don't know about the rest of you but when I get there and I open up the menu with all those wonderful things if I don't already have my strategy you're gonna order something that might be more expensive and maybe more than I really wanted to order so there's a couple of strategies up here that we have listed things like you know sharing entrees you know cutting back on the beverage cost because that can often be a huge percentage of our bills and we think about really the nutritional value versus what we've ordered there but I think the way I'd really like to focus in on here is know what you want to spend enter that restaurant that event knowing that you know how much is within your budget how much do you plan to spend when you go in there and then try to stay within that amount I think that will help you and you can use these different strategies to try to keep you in that that planned budget idea the other thing to look at is that we don't want to really set us up for failure we want to have success with our food budgeting and one of those things is to think about not cutting things out completely but how can we step down our food costs and I love this example and this graphic that Andrea did which you know looks at well maybe you're one of those people kind of like me it drinks a lot of coffee and it realized that it's adding up especially if you're going out to purchase those fancy coffee drinks that are so yummy so maybe instead of cutting it all out because really nobody wants to work with me if I don't get my coffee maybe I just need to step it down and here is an example of that it also could be that like dining out with your friends is a social thing as well as a you know a convenience thing so if we get if we cut out all dining out we might not have a social life left so we need to think about are there ways that we can step down that cost maybe you can go to a less expensive restaurant or maybe people can agree that they would like to have a potluck once a month and still make it into a social event but you don't have to go out to a restaurant so different things are gonna work for different people and I see that people are starting to throw in best some good which at and I'd like everybody to do that because a lot of these things we need to find something that works for us so what are your best food saving food tip and we can switch sides here too but what what what do you have you found that is worked to help you save money on food costs I know we've got some up here already like taking advantage of weekly specials making your own coffee instead of that Mountain Dew meal prep digital coupons portion control buying in bulk having someone else pick up my groceries for me or putting that order in where you're not hungry and then going and picking them up we're gonna talk about meal planning in just a second here so it's great to see that on their group on packing lunches never shop hungry if any of you have small children I know many people with small children say never shop with your children at least know what you plan to buy before you go so these are great brown-bagging it meal planning little things that you might look at doing like using reusable coffee filters in your eggs instead of paying for that packaging a lot of times we can save money when we can decrease the amount of packaging that's gone into things okay keep those coming but we're gonna keep moving forward since I know everybody can read and listen at the same time it's got all these different tips all these different ideas how can we put this together and make it really work out but and so let's talk a little bit more about creating a meal plan which many of you mentioned in your in the chat box so creating a meal plan is really one of those steps where it helps us really raise to our conscious level what is it we're trying to do and how can we get it done we've already looted the fact that when we're hungry is not the time to be trying to figure out how to save money on food costs I know that if I'm coming home from work and I don't know what I'm gonna eat when I get home for dinner and I don't know what food is there I'm gonna stop and buy something quick and maybe not even something I like all that much because I know I'm hungry but you might instead think about once a week sitting down and creating kind of a calendar for yourself of where you're gonna eat and how you're gonna you know get that food pulled together so a strategy that I use is on the weekend I'm gonna I kind of take a look at my weekly calendar like where do I have to be someplace where am I going what day is am I gonna get home late when those things gonna get crunched for time and I put those on the calendar and then I think given that information I go ahead and add in about the dinner dinner first cuz that's my big meal now if these are big meals you might do that for lunch first and thinking about some ways that you can keep things time effective so when we're putting together this menu thinking about ways to use leftovers I like to use a crock-pot and that gets my food hot when I get home other people might have other favorite appliances like rice cookers and choosing quick feet cook meals of course once I have an idea of like what I want to eat I make sure I check what's in my cupboard and what's my refrigerator and freezer so that I can use food effectively and not have things go to waste sometimes I get stuck for ideas that's when I go to the grocery yards and then I can say oh look what's on sale this week that's what I'm gonna put into my plan then you can also add in lunch ideas things like a lot of times I use leftovers for lunches so I cook more than I need for a particular dinner so I can use those leftovers going forward and of course adding in healthy breakfasts and snacks and there should be yeah the URL just went up about some more information about how to like a what am I trying to say sorry a URL just went up on weekly menu plan ideas where you can get a form that you can use to create your own meal plan with some of these things that I just said laid out in print as well once you've got that meal plan we're back to that idea that Stacia talked about which was write your shopping list when you go to the grocery store then you'll be buying the things that you need not things that you just thought oh maybe I don't already have and you'll have your plan and you'll be able to just work off of it the rest of the week without too much more thought so once it's in place it just rolls out a lot of you mentioned that you like fresh and you like vegetables and so let's talk a little bit about how we can get vegetables added in effectively to our menu plan fresh vegetables are wonderful and I love them and when I can and when they're in season I buy them fresh but if you are in the middle of winter in Illinois or Canada then you probably don't have as much access to fresh vegetables in the winter so you know know that frozen vegetables and fruits are often less expensive than fresh so when you can't get that fresh then I feel that going to frozen is pretty great there is a really cool chart at USDA which we just put in the chat where you can see how different particular fruits and vegetables compare in the cost wise where they're fresh frozen or canned or dried and I think that was really fun to play with so we stuck it up there for you to take a look but for example from looking at that chart typically on average in the u.s. a cup of corn fresh is gonna cost you a dollar eighty one whereas canned it would be 51 cents and frozen it would be 61 cents so when it's in season I'm buying corn when I'm cooking something like chili I'm probably gonna turn to the can because actually after it's cooked for a while it doesn't really matter too much to me but if it's in the winter frozen is what you'll find on my plate so I also don't forget about shopping locally at farmer's market there's a big difference in price of fruits and vegetables if you buy them seasonally or you buy them locally so that's something to think about all right Sasa can I turn it back to you for more on budgeting thank you so a few other things we just wanted to talk about because you know when we talk about food budgeting this is the area where people are hesitant to track their expenses so whether it's tracking eating out groceries or even going to the coffee shop it's best that you start to see where those expenditures are going so when you're budgeting for the food again from the P min for the first time my husband and I did this we tracked our speed our spending for eating out when we first got married and we were completely shocked at how much we were spending we couldn't believe how much we're spending on eating out so we had to you know rein that in a little bit and make a difference in our personal finances by you know stepping down like Cathy talked about earlier of course you definitely want to track the grocery expenses and then any other things that you might want to track for the food budgeting maybe you're a person who goes to the local farmers market a lot you know track how much you're spending there see what kind of evens out and what you might need to do so of course you can also set limits so in my budget we set a limit of how much money we're going to spend each time we go to their grocery store whether it's $50 or $100 you don't want to make sure that you put that limit to see you know that we don't go over it and it also helps you know to stop us from spending extra money like we talked about at the store earlier I guess that for every minute that you're in the store extra affects your 50 Cent's that you're spending so we want to definitely keep that food limit in check and then of course you want to compare costs and change if you need to so when we're doing a food budget not only do you compare you know month to month but maybe by week to week and see maybe what you're doing differently are you doing a lot of things fro you know getting a lot of things that are frozen or are you buying fresh are you buying in bulk or a little bit you know we would definitely want to see where we can save that extra penny if we need to and so of course we wanted to let you know about snap benefits to help people with low income buy food so one thing is we do want to let you know that we are putting that information in the chat so that way if you have questions about snap we are not experts in snap we do have that in extension but we just want to let you all know that we do have this available to help low income people in families buy food need and for good health if you want to check that out again it's gonna be in the chat you go to go to aisle annoyed IET you sash snap that Kendra just put in a little bit ago for most students you might not qualify unless you have a dependent over the age under the age of 6 or if you're taking part in a state or federally funded work-study program if you're working on average at least 20 hours a week so I actually do it I know that Andrea and I talked about this many times about how much you need - how much you need to work versus you know how much we could do so these are great things to be aware of SNAP benefits or food stamps that we you know that we can qualify so again check out the link so another thing we wanted to discuss with you today was about cost saving apps apps can do a lot of different things to help us save money on food so for example they can give us things like coupons or even rebates they can also help us make shopping lists not only by yourself but maybe with a spouse or a partner or even a roommate or friend that way you guys all know okay we all need milk we have no milk for the we definitely need to get that milk or bread or eggs or whatever it may be one of the things I found with apps is that there are even ones that you can scan the barcodes of what you're buying and the way it puts it in your pantry and that way you can just check your phone and say okay let's say you're working or you're at school you need to see oh I I need to know if I have beans from my so I can make that chili you can check out your pantry it'll be right there and say yeah you need you need a can or you don't depending on what you're making that night so good thing to have another thing to look up is that apps from the grocery store that you go to most often I know if you I've downloaded a few on my phone to help me see the ads not only for that week but specials that they're doing so some things just be aware of is that you know those grocery stores do have apps now that you can check what the ads are see what the specials are and then you know sometimes you can even order groceries from the app so do you guys have any favorite apps that you want to add to the chat I know I have a few of my favorites but I'd love to hear what everyone else is using I see Aldi has a place for great savings I bought of the coupon app I've heard of that one before that one's a good one from what I hear a lot of moms use it target all these are groceries or grocery lists that's great Walmart has a source savings catcher that's great everybody so just keep putting them in the chat and we'll keep talking about are these apps available on Mac I would assume if you have an iPhone you can probably down it that as well so we got out of milk Meijer and paprika sounds like so of course we wanted to talk you know we've talked a lot about a lot of things today so ultimately with food and food budgeting you have to decide you know what's the most important to you is it freshness is it cost is it stepping down from you know going out to lunch three times a week to two times a week whatever it may be you have to figure out what's most important to you of course you want to track that food spending and doesn't match what you want for your goals when we talk about budgeting you know do you want only spend $300 a month or $400 a month if you're having some problems tracking that spending is definitely gonna help to curb those kind of extras like we talked about you know going to the grocery store sometimes we can be tempted by those cookies or that ice cream or all the ice cream so just some things to be aware of and then plan to change your spending you know you now that we've talked about all these things from fresh veggies to tracking to budgeting you know how do you plan to change your spending are there some things that you maybe picked up today that you want to do going forward of course we can try technology so I'm gonna pass it back over to Andrea she's gonna talk to you about the financial literacy badges program and thank you seshu so we talked before the webinar officially started about badges so the University of Illinois student money management Center oversees the University of Illinois financial literacy badges program if you complete three educational activities towards a particular badge you will earn a digital badge that you can display on your LinkedIn or your online portfolio and as we know a lot of employers are looking at financial stability as a measure of productivity in the workplace the digital badges program is designed in a way to help you expand your knowledge related to different financial core competencies like saving borrowing spending protection all kinds of things and all you have to do is complete three educational activities in order to earn that badge so this particular program is a saving badge eligible program you just complete the quiz and you have taken your first step towards the saving badge and we'll give you access to other information related to saving after you complete that quiz so check that out we'll also be including the link to the quiz our follow-up email that we send out as well the next webinar that we have in the get savvy series is establish healthy credit credit on April 20th at 12 we will be doing that as part of MoneySmart week's activities so the week after that Friday is Money Smart Week so you can definitely check that out establish healthy credit you can register at goat u Illinois - edu slash get savvy webinars and Kendra put that in the chat for us already it's a great way to expand your knowledge on how to establish credit and how to manage credit and make sure that you are improving credit if you're just getting started if you want to keep in contact with us we're gonna be putting in the chat all the different ways to keep in contact with us I'm not sure if we talked about it earlier but this get savvy series is in partnership with University of Illinois Extension University of Illinois student learning management Center Columbia College unit is also Columbia College in Chicago has also helped to coordinate some programs in the get savvy series as well as Southern Illinois University and North Park University so there's a lot of us within Illinois that are contributing to this particular program in the series of different webinars now we're going to answer all your questions okay so let's check out what we're missing guys someone just asked if there's any thoughts about the new craze for grocery deliveries like Amazon and others are doing is it worth it I believe that they should just wrote an article on this so say sure you want to answer that so I just I would like to say that I have a small child he's a toddler so for me it there is a cost to doing the delivery it depends on what I guess grocery store or it could using Amazon depending on how much it is but that that small cost to me it's usually five dollars or less is worth it to me from keeping myself from buying the cookies and the ice cream and the you know all the goodies that he wants as well so I've enjoyed doing it I don't actually get them delivered I go pick it up at the store I think the delivery for the store I use is about ten dollars so it just depends I'm not familiar with all stores so I can't really speak to every store but I do know that some stores do like a monthly convenience fee or another Stu you know the first time free it really just depends but for me it's really helped to curb my spending and keep my amounts in check and that way I know okay yes I'm spending $40 today and I'm picking it up at five o'clock and I can just take it home and not worry about what you do and what works best for your lifestyle someone also asked if Meyer did curbside for free I think it depends on where your location is and which Meijer it is I think in Champaign I've heard seven dollars I've heard ten dollars so it's probably going to depend on what the demand is going forward and where you are because we know people in Canada are logged on and people in Chicago and Champaign and the prices differ pretty wildly depending on what town you're in let alone what country you're in I'm where I am I've heard at Meijer it's it's like eighteen dollars for the whole month which if you use it a lot that's great but for others who might use it once or twice it might not be cost-effective so one question definitely compare costs so if you're looking into doing a service like that and like I said a lot of places will do it for the first time without a fee so you know if you are super savvy I guess you could have a hit up every grocery store in your zip code you know the first which one you like the best and then go from there since a lot of you are clearly interested in saving money I just thought I would do another plug for America Saves this is America Saves Week and what it is is a chance to challenge everybody to set a savings goal for the year to think about where you would you know where do you need to put it set aside money is it for something like saving for unexpected expenses or for something that's really important to you that you want to do like take a trip with your friends or family and by setting that goal and writing it down research has shown that you're more likely to achieve it so I put some URLs in the chat there's great resources in America Saves it's all free and they don't check up on your pledge or anything like that if you're worried about that but you can sign up for text messages those little nudges can help you stay focused on your savings goal I get them I get them about three probably three times a month and they're really actually quite creative it makes me stop and think about like oh yeah I had that goal where am I on that and what do I need to be doing to keep that going and keep that in place so go ahead and check that out I think this comes back to the point we made a little bit earlier about it's hard to generalize when we're talking about a lot of different universities a lot of states a lot of countries here I think it's worth once some you know especially past that freshman year when people are looking at their sophomore and junior year to really take a look at their own habits and skills and what are they likely to do so if a university food plan means that they're gonna eat regularly and not you know and and it may be worth the cost if somebody is motivated to eat in a healthy way and keep cost down then they might want to look at cooking and buying on their own but I know from having looked at food plans at multiple universities that they're very different one from the other and so you know you really just kind of dig down to see what they're offering and what those costs are but as Kevin said the meal plan is really can it be convenient I know at some universities I've talked to students who say well I get enough of a meal plan that I can eat lunch on campus because I don't have a lot of time and that way I get you know a really big meal in the middle of the day and then I can take care of the rest of the day's meals on my own also access to places where you can prepare your own food may be more limited if you're in a dorm absolutely yes something to consider if you're looking at meal plans versus cooking and buying on your own and what is more likely to happen eating out or trying to cook in a microwave in your dorm and some universities if you're in the residence hall you have to buy the food plan and other places that may not be true so that's why it's a little bit we can't really generalize but it's definitely worth looking at and investigating talk to us about they have a lot left over a lot of meal money's left over at the end of the semester or some that run out halfway through the semester so you've got a kind of plan when you're going to be eating how much it's going to cost using the meal plan itself and what your back-up plan is if there's not enough or if there's too much first semester is a challenge you're probably gonna have to stay flexible you have a little bit of money set aside case the food plan doesn't work out for you but yeah and then that each student I think learns how they are best able to handle that other questions we are here I guess we should also say thank you for attending our webinar so that way if you do need to you know hop off you know and eat some lunch before you you know you'll go the next thing you know feel free but we are here for questions and thank you for attending and we're so glad that you got to join us for this hour and as Andrea said a lot of these links and other resources will be going out in an email to you so if you didn't get a chance to check them all out do some exploring because it was hard to put everything into one you know less than an hour presentation and so those resources can help you kind of move to the next step of your keeping your food costs down you oh ok what do you think of participating with the meal delivery companies okay go okay so I actually used to do this and something that you like to do it's a good thing to try but I would say there's a risk versus the cost you know if you went to go if it was something really extravagant so I remember one time we made like this beautiful beef with ginger and I mean all these exotic vegetables that if I went out to buy it it would be very expensive whereas one time I know we made like a spaghetti meal and it was really easy and cheap and cost-effective that I could make it again so I think it depends on how you feel about the recipes and then of course what you want to have and then lastly if it's fun for you so for me it was fun I could make that the new recipe and enjoy kind of cooking it and doing all that so and I I think I said it just you get a variety of things you need to try different recipes you get to keep those recipes for later it just depends on how you feel about it so it's always good to do a cost analysis to see you know what's best for you but we did it you don't have to do it and most places you don't have to do it every week so you can just get them once a month and kind of go there so and just to add in that I think you know we kind of alluded to the fact that we eat for a variety reasons I mean obviously we eat because we need the calories and the nutrients but we for social reasons and we meet for other health goals as well so for example my husband and I really wanted to add more vegetables into our meals and into our meal planning so we signed up for a box of vegetables in the summer spring summer months from a local farm and by knowing that we had already made that commitment to getting that box and then when there we have all these vegetables we need to cook and eat it really increased the amount of vegetables that we eat so even though it might be costing us a little bit more it helps us with some other goals so I think that's another value in some of these plans but you know be aware of what you're paying yeah it's a CSA so somebody else mentioned that and I love mine I highly support them but anyway somebody asked if we have resources available that may help explain unit prices to younger audiences if you want to email me I might be able to share a little bit of resources on that some lesson materials but I think really kind of going with what's Asia had there I've tried it with younger audiences and they get it so I don't think it takes too much more you can you do it that way especially with like the apples right that's a great example of unit pricing that they can get really quickly or like a bunch of bananas that one's a great one too you know like cuz I mean how many people are gonna like I mean you could share a banana I mean I do that every day but I mean most people you know eat that one banana and for them that's one serving of banana okay and I've done orange juice where you used a little carton of orange juice versus concentrated versus orange juice in like a you know got half gallon container and you know they you could even pour you know pour out a cup how many cups do you get out of it and then they get it pretty easily and they they can relate to that food that's a great one actually yeah so because there's a big difference between getting a little tiny back but good questions we appreciate those and all the comments just makes our webinar so much better any other questions we got a lot of people staying with us on which we appreciate well I'm gonna do a last call for questions and if there are no more questions we're gonna let you guys you know go off to your next adventure whatever it may be thank you for joining us hope you enjoyed it again everything's recorded will be sending out this information so what the earlier you know you got a link to come to the webinar later you get some information from us a link for the recording and a link for all the other things we made today so thank you for coming you you you