- 36 minutes ago
The smartest grocery savings happen before October 1st, when the calendar quietly starts working against you. In this narrated money-saving guide, Elias Yoder explains why grocery prices, package sizes, and holiday demand all shift in the fall, and which 10 grocery items are worth buying ahead of time.
Drawing on Amish home-saving habits and farm-life experience in Lancaster County, he breaks down the logic behind canned tomatoes, pasta, rice, sugar, coffee, olive oil, dried beans, flour, oats, vinegar, canned fish, salt, baking soda, and honey. He also explains what not to stockpile, how to read unit prices, why package shrinkflation matters, and how to store food correctly so your savings are real, not wasted.
This is practical budgeting advice for grocery shopping, pantry stocking, food storage, and seasonal price planning, with a calm, instructive tone that fits listeners looking for homestead wisdom, frugal living tips, and everyday household savings.
SEO: Ideal for searches about grocery savings, frugal living, pantry staples, food storage, and buying before prices rise. It also fits listeners interested in budget shopping tips, seasonal grocery planning, Amish home-saving methods, and practical advice for stretching a food budget.
Drawing on Amish home-saving habits and farm-life experience in Lancaster County, he breaks down the logic behind canned tomatoes, pasta, rice, sugar, coffee, olive oil, dried beans, flour, oats, vinegar, canned fish, salt, baking soda, and honey. He also explains what not to stockpile, how to read unit prices, why package shrinkflation matters, and how to store food correctly so your savings are real, not wasted.
This is practical budgeting advice for grocery shopping, pantry stocking, food storage, and seasonal price planning, with a calm, instructive tone that fits listeners looking for homestead wisdom, frugal living tips, and everyday household savings.
SEO: Ideal for searches about grocery savings, frugal living, pantry staples, food storage, and buying before prices rise. It also fits listeners interested in budget shopping tips, seasonal grocery planning, Amish home-saving methods, and practical advice for stretching a food budget.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00There is a thing the grocery trade does every autumn, and almost nobody notices it, and once you have seen
00:06it, you will see it every year for the rest of your life.
00:10It is not weather. It is not bad luck. It is a calendar.
00:15The companies that make your food and the shops that sell it agree their price changes months ahead of time,
00:22and a great many of those changes are set to land in the fourth quarter of the year, October, November,
00:30December.
00:31And they land then for a plain reason, and it is not a wicked one.
00:36It is that between October and Christmas, you buy more food than at any other time of year,
00:43and you pay less attention to what it costs than at any other time of year.
00:48You have a list as long as your arm, people coming, a dinner to put on for twelve, and children
00:55underfoot.
00:56You are not standing in the aisle working out the price per ounce the way you might on a quiet
01:02Tuesday in March.
01:03They know that. Everybody in the trade knows that.
01:08So the new prices go on in the autumn, and the packet quietly loses two ounces before the price on
01:15the front ever moves,
01:17and by the time you notice, it is done, and it does not come back down.
01:23I am Elias Yoder. I farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
01:28Now I do not do your grocery shopping, and I will not pretend to.
01:33My wife keeps the kitchen, and most of what we eat we grew or raised or put up ourselves.
01:40But I know a great deal about buying a thing in the wrong month, because a farm runs on nothing
01:47else.
01:48I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com.
01:53The book is the long version. If you want it, it is there.
01:58I will not mention it again.
02:01My grandfather taught me this in July, in a hayfield,
02:05and I was too hot and too tired to want the lesson.
02:09We were putting hay in the barn.
02:12It was the worst week of the summer for it, the sort of heat that sits on you,
02:17and the mow was filling up faster than I thought we could ever need.
02:22I was twelve or thirteen, and I had reached the point where a boy says something he has not thought
02:28about.
02:29I asked him why we were breaking our backs, stacking grass in July, that nothing would eat until January.
02:38He did not answer me.
02:40He said, ask me again in March.
02:43I forgot about it, the way you do at that age.
02:47The summer ended, the autumn came, the mow went down through the winter a little at a time,
02:53and I never thought about the question again.
02:57So, in March, when the mow was down to the last of it, and the snow had gone off,
03:03a man came up the lane wanting to buy hay.
03:06He had run short, the way men do, and he wanted twenty bales,
03:11and he asked what my grandfather would take for them.
03:15My grandfather told him what he would take.
03:18Then he turned to me, and he told me what that same hay had cost us to put up in
03:24July.
03:25It was not close.
03:28It was not even in the same country.
03:31He sold the man his twenty bales at a fair price, because you do not squeeze a neighbor
03:37in March.
03:38And after the fellow had gone, he looked at me and said only the one thing.
03:44Nothing is cheap when you need it.
03:47It is cheap when nobody wants it.
03:51That is the whole of this video.
03:53Every single item on this list is the same lesson in a different aisle.
03:59Now there is a second half to the calendar, and it is the cheerful one,
04:04so I will give it to you before the list rather than after.
04:08If the dear months are the ones when everybody wants a thing,
04:13then the cheap months are the ones just after everybody has finished with it.
04:18Baking goods go on clearance in January because nobody is baking.
04:24Meat for a roast is cheapest in the weeks after the holiday, not before it.
04:30Garden produce is cheapest the week your own county is picking it,
04:35because it did not have to ride anywhere.
04:39So this is not only a video about hurrying.
04:42It is about knowing the whole year.
04:46Buy the autumn things in September, and buy the Christmas things in January,
04:51and you are never once buying anything in the month it is wanted.
04:57Now, before the ten, one rule that governs all of it,
05:01and if you take nothing else, take this.
05:05Only buy a head on what your house actually eats.
05:10A cupboard full of things nobody wants is not savings.
05:13It is clutter you paid for, and it will sit there going stale
05:17while you feel vaguely guilty about it every time you open the door.
05:22Count what you genuinely use in a month,
05:26multiply it out, and buy that, not more.
05:30Write the ten, and I will say plainly which of these keep for years
05:35and which do not, because that matters more than the price.
05:401. Canned tomatoes
05:43Here is the timing, and it is the clearest example on the whole list.
05:47Tomatoes are packed once a year, at the end of the summer,
05:51when the crop comes off.
05:53What is sitting on that shelf right now is last year's pack,
05:58priced at last year's costs.
06:00The new pack comes in through the autumn,
06:03grown and picked and canned at this year's costs,
06:07and in a can that costs what this year's metal costs.
06:11Canned tomatoes keep two or three years easily in a cool cupboard.
06:17So count what you use between now and next summer, and buy that.
06:22The shop's own label is the same tomato out of the same field.
06:27And the same holds for anything else packed once a year off a single crop.
06:33Canned pumpkin, canned corn, canned green beans.
06:37One pack, one price, and the shelf you are standing at
06:42is holding the old one until it runs out.
06:462. Pasta, and I will put rice in with it.
06:50Both of them keep more of us forever
06:53if you keep them dry and sealed and out of the light.
06:57A great deal of the pasta on an American shelf came over the water,
07:02and anything crossing the water costs more to land than it used to.
07:07The homemade brands drift up alongside the imported ones because they can.
07:13This is the cheapest insurance on the list.
07:16A box is a small sum.
07:19A winter of boxes is not.
07:223. Sugar, white, brown, and powdered,
07:27and the calendar on this one is the plainest of the lot.
07:31Every household in the country bakes between October and Christmas.
07:36Demand goes straight up,
07:38and a price is never friendlier in November than it was in September.
07:44Sugar does not spoil.
07:47Not ever.
07:48Keep it dry and sealed, and it will outlast you.
07:52So buy your whole year of baking sugar now and be done with it.
07:58One word on storing it, because people get this wrong.
08:02Sugar wants dry, not air of us.
08:06Do not put one of those oxygen absorbers in with it,
08:10or you will come back to a solid brick you have to chip at with a knife.
08:15One caution on rice.
08:17White rice keeps for a very long while.
08:20Brown rice does not, because the oil in the bran goes rancid,
08:26and a year is about the most I would ask of it in a cupboard.
08:30If you eat brown rice, buy it as you need it, or keep it in the freezer.
08:364. Coffee
08:38If your house runs on it, this is the one that will save you the most,
08:44and it is the one I hear most about from people who write to me.
08:49Unopened ground coffee keeps a year or better in a cool, dark cupboard.
08:55Whole beans keep longer still, and they will go in the freezer if you want them to.
09:00Buy three months of it, six if you have the room.
09:05And while you are in that aisle, know that instant is the dearest way to buy coffee
09:11by a wide margin, per cup and by weight.
09:15If instant is your habit and you are trying to save money, that is where the saving is.
09:235. Olive Oil
09:25Nearly all of it comes from Spain, Italy, and Greece,
09:29and it is another thing that costs more to bring across than it used to.
09:34But here I have to be square with you, because this one is different from the rest.
09:40Olive oil does not keep. It goes rancid.
09:45Buy what your house will use in a year and not a drop more,
09:50and keep it in a dark cupboard away from the stove with the lid down tight.
09:56Heat and light are what turn it.
09:59That pretty bottle sitting on the windowsill is being ruined by the sun while you look at it.
10:06And if olive oil is only for frying in your house,
10:10plain vegetable oil has not moved nearly as much.
10:15There is no shame in that.
10:17Save the good oil for where you can actually taste it.
10:21And know what you are actually buying.
10:24A tin of ground coffee and a bag of whole beans are not the same article.
10:31Ground begins losing what makes it worth drinking the day it is opened.
10:35So buy ground in the size your house gets through in a fortnight,
10:39and buy the rest whole.
10:41Whole beans in the freezer, in something sealed,
10:44keep a good deal longer than most people think.
10:476. Dried beans and lentils
10:51These are the cheapest protein there is, and they keep for years.
10:56They do get harder to cook as they age,
10:59so eat down the old before you open the new,
11:02and they want the same conditions as your rice.
11:05Dry, sealed, dark.
11:087. Flour and oats
11:11And this is the pair that wants the most care of anything on the list.
11:15Both keep well enough,
11:17both want the same dry, dark shelf,
11:20and both are wanted by everybody at once in the baking months.
11:25White flour will hold a year without complaint.
11:28Whole meal will not,
11:30for the same reason brown rice will not,
11:33because the oil in it turns.
11:35So buy that in smaller lots,
11:37or keep it cold.
11:39One thing about flour.
11:41Put a new bag in the freezer for three or four days
11:44before it goes in the cupboard.
11:47Pantry moths very often come home already in the bag,
11:51as eggs too small to see,
11:54and a few days cold kills them before they hatch.
11:58One outbreak means emptying a whole cupboard.
12:028. Vinegar
12:04Keeps indefinitely,
12:05and there is very little that can happen to it.
12:08If you watched what I had to say about vinegar,
12:11and what it will and will not do,
12:13you already know we go through a good deal of it here
12:17for more than cooking.
12:198.5, since I am counting loosely.
12:22Tinned fish and tinned meat.
12:25They keep for years.
12:27They are protein that wants no cold,
12:30and they are the one tinned thing
12:32I would tell anybody to have a few of,
12:34regardless of price.
12:36Check the tin before you buy,
12:38and again before you open it.
12:41A tin that is bulging,
12:43weeping,
12:44or badly dented on a seam
12:46goes in the bin,
12:47unopened,
12:48and I would not argue with yourself about it.
12:519. Salt and baking soda
12:54Neither one spoils.
12:57Ever.
12:58Both are wanted more in the baking months.
13:00Both cost almost nothing,
13:03and both do a dozen jobs
13:05besides the one on the label.
13:07And 10.
13:09Honey,
13:10which is the oldest thing on this list
13:12by a very long way.
13:14Honey does not spoil.
13:17It has been found still good
13:19in tombs thousands of years old.
13:22It will go cloudy and hard
13:24in the jar in a cold cupboard,
13:26and that is not spoiling.
13:28That is it crystallizing,
13:30and a jar stood in a bowl of warm water
13:33comes back clear.
13:35A great many people
13:36throw out a perfectly good jar of honey
13:39every winter,
13:40believing it has gone off,
13:42and it has done nothing of the kind.
13:44The one rule with honey
13:46is never to give it to a child
13:48under a year old,
13:50in any form,
13:51cooked or raw.
13:53That is not a matter of freshness,
13:55and it applies to the best honey there is.
13:59Now a word about the packet getting lighter,
14:01because this is the part
14:03that costs people the most,
14:05and almost nobody watches for it.
14:07A company that wants more money from you
14:10has two ways to get it.
14:12It can put the price up,
14:14which you will see and grumble about,
14:16or it can leave the price alone
14:18and take two ounces out of the packet,
14:21which you will not see at all.
14:23The second is easier,
14:26and it is used a great deal,
14:28and the autumn is exactly when it happens,
14:30because a new pack size
14:32going onto the shelf in a busy month
14:34goes through unremarked.
14:37The defense costs nothing.
14:40Read the ounces,
14:41not the front of the box,
14:43and use the unit price on the shelf tag,
14:46that little number telling you
14:48the cost per ounce or per pound.
14:51It is put there so you can compare,
14:53and it is the one number on that shelf
14:56that cannot be dressed up.
14:59Now, two things not to buy a head,
15:03and I want to say these
15:04because everybody shouting about stockpiling
15:07always leaves them out.
15:09Do not buy a head on anything fresh.
15:12That should not need saying,
15:14and it does.
15:15And do not buy a head on a thing
15:18simply because somebody told you
15:20the price was going up.
15:22If your house does not eat it,
15:24the saving is not a saving.
15:27I said it at the start,
15:28and I will say it again at the end,
15:30because it is the mistake
15:32that costs people the most.
15:34And one more that is not a food at all,
15:36but belongs on the same calendar.
15:39Anything wanted for the holidays
15:41goes up before the holidays.
15:44Candles, foil, wrapping, batteries, the lot.
15:48If you know your house will want them in December,
15:51the shop is not going to be kinder about it in December.
15:55Now, where you keep it,
15:57because buying well and storing badly
16:00is money in the bin.
16:02Cool, dark, and dry,
16:04and off the floor.
16:06The high cupboard over the stove
16:08is the worst place in your kitchen,
16:11and it is where a great many people
16:13keep their flour.
16:14Date everything with a pencil
16:16as it goes in,
16:18and put the new behind the old
16:20so you eat the old first.
16:23Without that,
16:24you will have a cupboard
16:25where the front is ancient
16:26and the back is fine,
16:28and you will throw away
16:29the very thing you bought
16:31to save money on.
16:32And keep it in something
16:34a mouse cannot get into.
16:36Paper sacks are not that,
16:39and neither is a cardboard box.
16:41Glass jars with a good lid,
16:44food-grade buckets,
16:45or a tin with a tight fit.
16:47A mouse will go through
16:49a paper sack of rice in one night
16:51and foul four times what he eats.
16:55And keep it off a concrete floor.
16:58Concrete holds damp
17:00and passes it up
17:01into whatever is sitting on it.
17:04A board or a pallet
17:05under your buckets is enough.
17:08There is no scheme in any of this,
17:10and nobody arranged anything.
17:13The money simply runs the other way.
17:16Nobody in that shop
17:18is doing anything underhand.
17:20They set their prices
17:22when their costs change,
17:24and they time the change
17:25for the busiest quarter
17:27because that is when
17:28it goes through
17:29with the least argument.
17:30And every business on earth
17:33would do the same.
17:34It is only that nobody
17:36makes a living
17:37telling you which month
17:38a thing is cheapest.
17:40So nobody says it.
17:41And a thing nobody
17:43has a reason to say
17:44gets forgotten
17:45inside of one generation.
17:48What got lost
17:49was not a trick.
17:50It was my grandfather
17:52filling a barn in July
17:54for a horse
17:55that would not want it
17:57until January.
17:59And I will say
18:00the plain limit
18:01on the whole idea.
18:03This is worth doing,
18:05and it is not worth
18:06losing sleep over.
18:07What you are talking about
18:09across a whole winter
18:11is somewhere
18:12in the tens of dollars
18:13for most households,
18:15not hundreds.
18:16It is a good habit
18:18and a quiet one,
18:19and it adds up
18:20over years.
18:21And anybody telling you
18:23that buying
18:24tinned tomatoes
18:25in September
18:26will change
18:27your circumstances
18:28is selling you something.
18:30The real saving
18:32in a house
18:32is always the same
18:34three things.
18:35What you waste,
18:36what you throw away,
18:38and what you buy
18:40that nobody eats.
18:42So here is what
18:43I would have you do
18:44this week,
18:45and it will not
18:46blow your budget.
18:47Do not go out
18:49and fill the garage.
18:51Pick two things
18:52off this list,
18:54only two,
18:55and pick the two
18:56your house actually
18:57gets through fastest.
18:59For most of you,
19:01that is coffee
19:02and one other.
19:03Buy double of those two
19:05on your ordinary shop.
19:07Then do the same two
19:09next week
19:10and the week after.
19:12That is the whole method.
19:14Two things doubled
19:15three or four times,
19:17and you will walk
19:19into the holidays
19:19already ahead
19:21without once
19:22having spent
19:23a large sum
19:24on any single day.
19:26And here is the part
19:28you can check
19:29for yourself,
19:30which is the part
19:30I like best.
19:32Turn the packet over
19:34before you buy it
19:35and read the ounces.
19:37Then write that number
19:39on your list.
19:40Do the same
19:41in December.
19:42If the number
19:43has gone down
19:44while the price
19:45stayed the same,
19:46you will have caught
19:47the thing happening
19:48with your own eyes
19:50and you will never again
19:52wonder whether
19:52any of this
19:53is real.
19:55So tell me
19:56in the comments
19:57which thing
19:58has moved the most
19:59in your own shop
20:00this year.
20:01And tell me this
20:03as well.
20:04Have you ever
20:05caught a packet
20:06losing weight
20:07while the price
20:08stayed put?
20:09And which one
20:10was it?
20:11I would like
20:12a list of those
20:13from you
20:14because that is
20:15the sort of thing
20:16a person only notices
20:17if they were
20:18already looking.
20:20Next time,
20:21I want to show you
20:22what we do
20:23with the cheap cuts
20:24because the same
20:26thinking that fills
20:27a barn in July
20:28is what turns
20:29the toughest
20:30and cheapest
20:31piece of meat
20:32in that counter
20:33into three meals
20:35instead of one.
20:37It is the least
20:38fashionable part
20:39of the whole animal
20:40and it is where
20:41nearly all the value
20:43is hiding.
20:44Nothing is cheap
20:45when you need it.
20:46It is cheap
20:47when nobody wants it.
20:49The people who built
20:50this country
20:50with their hands
20:51knew that
20:52and we are only
20:53just starting
20:54to remember it.