Rule #1 You Can't Afford to Throw it Out!

There are a lot of basic principles that can help you to keep a tight budget no matter what you buy.  The most important is the guiding rule of: You Can't Afford to Throw it Out! 
This should govern you from store to table, here are a lot of small things to help you out. 

• Keep your fridge cold.  When your fridge is really cold food lasts longer.  Find the spot that is right before you start to have stuff freeze a bit, while you are finding the happy number on the temp dial keep dairy like sour cream and yogurt towards the front and push things like spaghetti sauce to the back.  Sour cream doesn't come back if its frozen.  I need to be almost to the 8 on my fridge or my ice maker leaks so I have an easy one on this.
• 
  
• Keep cold foods cold from store to home.  When you go to the market, put milk in the cart last.  If it's hot out, go to the store at night.  Get an insulated bag or ice chest to toss in the trunk.  The longer you keep it out the quicker it goes bad in the fridge.
• 
  
• Relax ( a little bit) about food safety.  Be smart but if it looks good, smells good, and tastes good, then it's good.  Or if there is a bad spot on the potato, tomato, whatever and you cut it off and the rest is good, then it's good.  The "managers special" or marked down meat, cook it or freeze it that day, and it's good.  "Yea well what about like 2 or 3 stickers marked down?"  Trust me it's good.  Braving this helps your body build up tolerance and immunity to things.
• 
  
• Portion, portion, portion!  Portion meat into meals and freeze the day you get home, the next day at the very most.   If there are two people eating and the recipe calls for a 11x13 pan make 2 8x8's and freeze one (before baking). 
• 
  
• Beware of leftovers!  People are used to having leftovers in the fridge, but most of us don't want the same meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week.  If you want dinner for lunch the next day make enough for that.  But decide whether you will eat it before making it.
• 
  
• Theme your week.  Friday's roast can be Saturday's French dip sandwiches and Saturday's fajitas or stir-fry.  Similar products can end up being very different tasting. 
• 
  
• Prep, freeze, repurpose, etc.  There are a lot of different ways to 'save' food.  Milk almost at expiration date?  Make home made Mac and Cheese or any casserole with a white sauce and freeze it.  Think Stover's.  Random veggies are great for soups, stocks or just cooking meat.  If I have left over salsa stuff I freeze as 'Mexican base' and use to boil chicken for taquitos or enchiladas or whatever.  Stale bread (or crusts) bread crumbs, crutons or stuffing mix.  Or if you have space to grow stuff, compost bin.