How can I stop wasting food?
"You want to combine a set of techniques to avoid throwing food away. Consider setting aside a weekend day or other non-busy time to do some food prep.  Check to see if there is anything in the fridge that needs to be used quickly and prioritize meals that use that item.  Make a weekly menu and get your groceries.  Chop all the vegetables and fruits you need for the week's meals.  Cook meats that can be cooked in advance.  Chefs call the concept of having everything ready for making a meal ""mis en place.""  Try to do yours in advance to energize you for cooking and also make you more likely to cook on those nights you've been at the office late. Get to know and love your freezer.  Buy frozen meat in bulk and portion individually (wrap 1/2 lb blocks of ground beef and chicken pieces in foil then store in freezer bags, for example).  Get frozen packaged fish fillets for seafood.  Boil a whole chicken, shred the meat, and have on hand for easy meals like tacos, enchiladas, chicken pot pie, pasta, etc.  Do the same with beef roasts or pork shoulder for pulled pork, etc.  Freeze vegetables and fruits if you can't use them in time (or buy frozen vegetables to begin with).  You can even consider making dumplings like perogis or pelmeni and freezing for a homemade alternative to a frozen food aisle meal.  You can even go all the way with freezer cooking. Cook with shelf-stable items.  Rice, pasta, beans, lentils, canned goods, and other items can be made into major components of a meal. When you do buy something perishable that doesn't freeze well, try to utilize it in more than one of your meals for the week.  This works well for items like fresh herbs. If you don't want to spend a lot of time cooking, a source like stonesoup is a great place to start - many recipes there can be finished in under 10 minutes, most are five ingredients or less, and all are tasty and good for you. This question from Seasoned Advice has a lot of great suggestions, although geared towards a college student, that you should consider." Try to choose less perishable items.  Besides canned and bottled are adequate for some foods, and frozen foods for a wider range, such as vegetables and prepared foods.  Dairy has a limited life, but some types live longer, like yogurt.  Fruits like apples and oranges will last a good deal longer in the fridge (bananas too, but the peels discolor).  Bread items and leafy vegetables just won't keep long for fresh use; pick them up when you're actually about to use them.  (Keeping bread in the freezer for toasting works well, though.) Buy products that can be stored for a long time or require thorough thermal processing. For example, you can buy frozen chicken meat in two pounds packs - it can be stored in a freezer for half a year, then you roast it and after it cools down you can put it into a fridge and it will last for up to ten days. Just about anything that you've roasted or boiled for several dozens minutes can be stored in a fridge for at least five days - its taste will get slightly worse over time, but it still preserves nutrition value and is safe to eat. Let me start out by saying I know your pain. One of the most important things to do is have the basics in stock in your larder. They are the sorts of things that keep well, and you can make great simple meals from them whenever, without having to worry about them going off in a matter of days.  A simple inventory like this - http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2006/12/06/the-well-stocked-kitchen-staple-foods-you-should-always-have-on-hand/ - can make a big difference. (This list is good, but check the comments for additional suggestions. There are a few extras that commenters reckon you should have and I think they are right - I certainly have more than just what's on that list.) And remember - frozen veg may or may not be as nutritious as fresh, but they are better than nothing. Make a menu of 15 (or more) things you like to eat.  Write a grocery list for what it takes.  Divide that list into perishable and non-perishable. Put those items into a calendar and try to stick to it. Depending on the amount of storage space you have, once a week fulfill your perishable list.  Use coupons and shop the sales to keep your prices down. On your way home, stop at the grocery store and buy only the perishables you will need that night for cooking.  I personally chose recipes that didn't always need fresh stuff (like canned tomatoes being good enough.) You spend more on the nightly stuff, but you make up some savings with the long term shopping.  Just count on going to the store for 10 minutes a night a part of your cooking routine.  I used to just look at the wall, but with an app like Evernote this would be pretty easy. Most basic tip:  Don't go to the grocery store hungry. What we do to minimize food waste: On Sunday when my wife and I go grocery shopping, we figure out what meals we are going to have for dinner that week, and we only buy what we need for those meals. We also try to decide in advance what night(s) we are going out for dinner. For example, we know we have to take the in-laws out for dinner on Wednesday, so we don't buy a dinner for that night. As part of our weekly planning, we figure out the lunches we will take to work based on our dinners.  For example, if we plan to make a big pot of pasta for dinner one night, we know we'll have leftovers for lunch, so we won't buy a lunch for the following day. Basically, we try to match our food purchasing to our food consumption. During the week, we generally try to cook the dinner that uses the most perishable items first.  If we buy seafood, that will be Monday night's dinner.  The frozen pizza can wait until the end of the week. My wife an I both have to deal with the occasional unexpected late night at work, which can mess up our cooking plans.  As a result, it is not uncommon for us to be too tired to cook, so we skip a dinner.  It is less wasteful to do that with something frozen/preserved. Also, we try to consider cooking time vs our work schedule.  We don't pick a complex dinner for a night that we know in advance will be a long work day. The best way to stop wasting food is to create a weekly plan. Every weekend, before making your grocery shopping, take 30-60 mins and plan (with your spouse if your married) for the next week's meals. It doesn't need to be too detailed, but it'll help you to approximate what you need in terms of food for the whole week and buy accordingly. I have a similar problem where I need to go out often and also work a lot. But spending some time on the weekend to create a plan helps me minimize my wastage a lot. My inspiration to do this has been from the below 2 articles from Trent in SimpleDollar http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2008/10/16/how-to-plan-ahead-for-next-weeks-meals-and-save-significant-money-a-step-by-step-guide/ http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/09/15/the-one-hour-project-plan-your-meals-for-one-week-in-advance/
There are numerous approaches to lose a ton of weight quick. Be that as it may, the majority of them will make you eager and unsatisfied. In the event that you don't have press determination, at that point appetite will make you abandon these arrangements rapidly. To weight loss, every one of your dinners ought to incorporate a protein source, a fat source and low-carbon vegetables. High protein diets can likewise decrease over the top musings about nourishment by 60%, diminish crave for late-night nibbling considerably. "Realize that some friends are a bad influence, and maybe aren't really ""friends"". Don't be afraid to say ""sorry, I can't make it tonight"".  Don't be afraid to go out shopping and not buy anything.  Make sure they know why (Too much Credit Card Debit, saving for a house, etc).  If your habits suddenly change with no explanation, they may think you are dissing them.  But if you explain your reasons, they will probably support you (if they are real friends).  In fact, they probably have the same money issues.   Suggest lower-cost alternatives to hanging out.  Instead of going out, suggest they come over to your place and watch a movie, play board games, Wii, etc.  You can have snacks at your place.  Alcohol is a lot cheaper when you pour it yourself!" "There are many tactics you can use.  If your biggest problem is regretting your larger purchases, I'd suggest giving yourself rules before making any purchases over a certain minimum dollar amount that you set for yourself.  For example, if that amount is $50 for an item, then any item starting at an average price of $51 would be subject to these rules. One of your long-term goals ought to be to become the kind of person who finds joy in saving money rather than spending it.  Make friends with frugal people - look for those who prefer games nights and potlucks to nights out at the club buying expensive drinks and dinners at the newest steak joint in town.  Learn the thrill of a deal, but even more learn the thrill of your savings growing.  You don't want to enjoy money in the bank for the purposes of becoming a miser.  Instead you want to realize that money in the bank helps you achieve your goals — buying the house you want, donating a significant amount of money to a cause you ardently support, allowing you to take a dream vacation, letting you buy with cash the car you always wanted, the possibilities are endless.  As Dave Ramsey says, ""Live like no one else, so you can live like no one else.""" "To me, your question emphasizes something I've heard many times before: personal finance is as much or more about behavior than it is about mathematics or ""head knowledge"".  Sure, you know you shouldn't be wasting a lot of money on something you will use very infrequently, but how do you make this behavior stick?  Here are a few tricks that might help: The other aspects of your question really touch more on psychology than finance.  But getting yourself into a discipline habit with money will help.  And realizing the full cash price of items in relation to how much your disposable income is will help you get control of your impulses, as you review your budget monthly, and keep limit yourself using the envelope system.  But honestly, everybody wants stuff they don't have, it's human nature.  The key is finding ways to put physical limits and guards on yourself to keep you from obeying the self-destructive impulses." "Lots of good answers here about budgeting and other ideas.  Here's a couple more: Think about offense and defense.  Offense is how much money you make.  Are you making enough to survive on?  Is there a way you could bring in more income?  Defense is what you do with your money.  Do you have expensive habits?  Do you have problems with impulse spending?  Do you live in an expensive area with a high cost-of-living?  Think about some of these areas and pick one to attack first. If it is the defense side that is causing you problems (you did mention trying to live on less), consider reading Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.  There's a really good summary of it on the authors' site.  The basic idea of the mechanical part of the book is that you figure out how much you're truly making per hour, and then evaluate your expenses based on how many hours of your ""life energy"" you are using for that expense.  Then you evaluate whether you think that's a fair trade or not.  There's a lot more to it than that, but it's an interesting way to get a different perspective on your spending habits, and may be enough to entice you to change those habits." Planned my grocery shopping better.  You can't just wake up on Saturday hungry go to the grocer and buy what looks good. Take the time to clip some coupons and more importantly make a shopping list. I assume you're posting like an asshole because you've recently lost weight, and there's some sort of psychological consistency thing going on. Did you read the article, you should be aware that you're likely going to feel as if you're starving for several years at best.   For example - many years ago I too lost significant weight (~70 lbs), and kept it off for a long time. Once I assumed I was in the clear a couple of years later and stopped tracking my diet, it slowly started creeping back (maybe +5 lbs/year, almost imperceptible). I find nowadays that if I don't log literally everything that goes into my mouth and weigh myself daily, I inevitably gain weight. That was a lesson that was not easy to learn, and is not part of any diet program I've ever heard of.  Point is - you don't know what you're talking about until you've kept significant weight off for a couple of years. In the mean time, you should chill the fuck out, because when you have a better perspective your current attitude will seem embarrassingly stupid. "I agree with JoeTaxpayer's answer.  The question you should be asking is not ""how do I spend more"" but ""how do I become happier"".  From what you say, it may be that you could increase your happiness simply by cutting back on these aggressive attempts to save a few bucks here and there. At the same time, if you do this, on some level your personality is probably not the type that would allow to simply ""forget it"".  I think many frugal people are somewhat as you describe: they don't like wasting money.  In such cases, often what matters is not so much the actual saving money as the feeling of saving money.  Therefore, I'd suggest that you take a look at which of the ""money-losing"" activities you mention are really worth it. The easiest ones to drop would be things like the home-improvement project, which even you acknowledge does not save you money.  If you like saving money, give yourself a pat on the back when you hire the contractor.  If you want, run the numbers so you can ""prove"" to yourself how much money you are saving by not doing the work. For some of the other things, it may be that spending time to save a small amount can ""gamify"" an everyday experience and make it more interesting.  For instance, comparing products to save a few bucks is not necessarily bad unless you actually don't like doing it.  If spending a few hours comparing two toaster ovens on Amazon or whatever makes you feel good, go for it; it's no worse than spending a few hours watching TV.  By acknowledging that you get something out of it --- the feeling of getting a bargain --- and savoring that, you can feel better about, and also potentially ""get it out of your system"" so that you won't feel the need to do it for every little thing.  We all have our little pet obsessions, and it's possible to acknowledge that they're irrational, while still accepting them as part of your personality, and finding a way to satisfy them in a controlled manner that doesn't stress you out too much." "Budgeting is a tool for planning, not for execution. It sounds like you don't have a problem BUDGETING (planning what to spend on what things) but rather with the execution of your plan. That is - living frugally. This is primarily an issue of self control and personal psychology - not an issue with the mechanics of budgeting and finance, which explains why the most popular personal finance ""gurus"" (Dave Ramsey, Suze Ormond) deal as much with your relationship to money and spending as they do with financial knowledge. There is no easy answer here, but you can learn to spend less. One helpful thought is to realize that whatever your current income is, someone in your community is currently making less than that and surviving. What would you do differently if your real, actual income was $100 or $200 less than it is currently. If your food budget is a concern, learn to cook cheaply. (Often, this is more healthy.) You mentioned schooling, so I assume you are on or near a college campus. Many colleges have all sorts of free-food opportunities. (I used to eat free vegetarian meals weekly at a Hare Krsna temple. Price of admission: listening to the monk read from the Bhagavad Gita.) Fast food is, of course, a complete no-no on low-budget living. It probably goes without saying, but just in case you haven't: cancel cable, get a cheap phone plan (Ting is excellent if available in your area), and otherwise see how you can squeeze a few dollars out of your bills. On the subject of frugality, I have found no book more enlightening than: Money Secrets of the Amish: Finding True Abundance in Simplicity, Sharing, and Saving" Agree wholeheartedly with the first point - keep track! It's like losing weight, the first step is to be aware of what you are doing.  It also helps to have a goal (e.g. pay for a trip to Australia, have X in my savings account), and then with each purchase ask 'what will I do with this when I go to Australia' or 'how does this help towards goal x?' Thrift stores and the like require some time searching but can be good value. If you think you need something, watch for sales too. I know that for me personally, if I buy that giant box of Goldfish instead of the bags, it doesn't mean I'm saving money... just eating a lot more Goldfish.  The trick, I think, to buying in bulk is to make sure that you're not consuming in bulk.  You're not likely to go through more dishwasher detergent just because you bought the big bottle, but you may find the kids are eating a lot more fruit snacks, or you're throwing away half of that huge bag of baby carrots that went bad, because you bought in bulk. This article is a great support for the Shangri-La diet. The author argues that your body has a target weight it wants to be at, and will stimulate you into maintaining that weight. He goes on to say that by consuming flavorless calories (one source given is extra light olive oil), you convince your body to reduce it's target weight, making it possible to eat less and not be hungry. I can vouch that following the extra light olive oil routine definitely makes you less hungry, but you still have to have the discipline to not eat when you're not hungry. One drawback is that you have to keep following the routine even after you lose weight. One interesting point is that the Shangri-La method worked really well for people with developmental disabilities. I hope so. I remember when chain Mexican restaurants started serving gigantic embarrassingly huge portions back in the 80s - couldn't believe it and no one could ever eat all that food. Even then I thought it was wasteful, extravagant and stupid. Who knew that it would also leads to dramatic increases of diabetes and death? "I spend hours researching two comparable products to try to save $3. Me too! I have also argued for hours with customer support to get $5/month off a bill (that's $60/year!), and I feel guilty every time I eat out or do something remotely luxurious, like getting fries with my $1 McChicken. Geez, even when I play video games, I hate spending the in-game currency. For me, it's obsessive-compulsive traits that cause it, but please note that I'm not claiming @Eddie has them. Just speaking for myself here, but I hope it helps. I still struggle with my miserliness, but I can share what works for me and what doesn't. I don't think I'm valuing my time nearly as much as I should. Me neither, but knowing that doesn't help; it makes it worse. For me, putting a dollar amount on how much I value my time does not work because that just complicates the problem and amplifies how much time I spend solving that multi-variable optimization problem. Consider trying to convince Monk not to avoid germs in order to build antibodies; it just makes him think more about germs, raising anxiety and making easy decisions (use a handkerchief to touch doorknobs) into a hard decision (should I touch it or should I not?). It also amplifies the regret whenever you finally make a certain choice (""what if I did the calculation wrong?"" or ""what if I'm going to get sick tomorrow because I touched that doorknob?""). Making the problem more complicated isn't the solution. So how to make it simpler? Make the decision ahead of time! For me, budgets are the key to reducing the anxiety associated with financial decision making. Every six months or so, my wife and I spend hours deciding how much to spend per month on things. We can really take our time analyzing it because we only have to do it occasionally. Once we set $50/month for restaurants, I no longer have to feel like a loser every time we eat out -- similarly for discretionary spending and everything else. TBH, I'm not sure exactly why it works -- why I don't regret the dollar amounts we put on every budget -- but it really does help. I join my coworkers for lunch on Fridays because I already decided that was okay. At that point, I can focus my OC-tendencies on eating every last gram of organic matter on my plate. Without directly touching the ketchup bottle, of course. :) Again, just speaking for myself, but having budgets has done wonders for my stress level with respect to finances. For me, budgets are less about restricting my spending and more about permitting me to spend! It's not perfect, but it helps. (Not that it's relevant, but I reworded this answer about 20 times and only hit 'Post' with great effort to suppress the need to keep editing it! I'll be refreshing every 30 seconds for updates.)" "If you file the long-form Form 2210 in which you have to figure out  exactly how much you should have had withheld (or paid via quarterly payments of estimated tax), you might be able to reduce the underpayment penalty somewhat, or possibly eliminate it entirely.  This often happens because some of your income comes late in the year (e.g. dividend and capital gain distributions from stock mutual funds) and possibly because some of your itemized deductions come early (e.g. real estate tax bills due April 1, charitable deductions early in the year because of New Year resolutions to be more philanthropic) etc.  It takes a fair amount of effort to gather up the information you need for this (money management programs help), and it is easy to make mistakes while filling out the form. I strongly recommend use of a ""deluxe"" or ""premier"" version of a tax program - basic versions might not include Form 2210 or have only the short version of it. I also seem to remember something to the effect that the long form 2210 must be filed with the tax return and cannot be filed as part of an amended return, and if so, the above advice would be applicable to future years only. But you might be able to fill out the form and appeal to the IRS that you owe a reduced  penalty, or don't owe a penalty at all, and that your only mistake was not filing the long form 2210 with your tax return and so please can you be forgiven this once? In any case, I strongly recommend paying the underpayment   penalty ASAP because it is increasing day by day due to   interest being charged.  If the IRS agrees to your eloquent   appeal, they will refund the overpayment."