Milk Prices Continue to Rise
June 26, 2007 by Karen Weideman
Filed under financial matters, frugal living, money saving idea, shopping
I managed to get away from the family for a little while last night and do some grocery shopping. I was shocked when I went to pick up a gallon of milk. The Food Lion brand milk was $4.09 for skim!!!!! This called for some research.
According to The Star-Ledger, the price paid to farmers will have increased 50 percent this year — driven by higher costs of transporting milk to market and increased demand for corn to produce ethanol. We are seeing the rising cost of gas affect just about everything we purchase.
University of Illinois dairy specialist Michael Hutjens forecasts further increases of up to 40 cents a gallon for milk over the next few months, and up to 60 cents for a pound of cheese.
So, what’s a Thrifty Mommy to do?
1. You could buy all your milk from a wholesale store such as Sam’s or Costco. I haven’t checked the price of milk at Sam’s lately, but last time I looked, I believe it was around $3 a gallon.
2. Water down your milk. Some people may think I’m crazy for suggesting such a thing. I actually did this for about a month because my son was drinking so much milk. I would buy whole milk and dilute it about 25%. He was still getting plenty of milk for his growth and development. (BTW, diluted milk is not good on cereal.)
3. Buy milk on sale. I rarely see milk on sale, but it does happen. When the sale comes, stock up!
4. Take advantage of milk promotions. Right now, my Food Lion has a promotion going on. Buy 6 gallons of milk and get 1 free. You have to have them scan your MVP card to get the coupons to save. With all the milk we go through, it won’t be hard to collect 6 coupons.
Please tell us if you have any ways to save on our milk spending.
Image from life-human.net.
One way I cut down is by using powdered milk for all my baking purposes. Just added water and I was away. No one even noticed the difference and if I can save a little bit here, I have it to spend somewhere else.
What I am about to suggest may not be to appealing. It wasn’t appealing to my ex-girl friend atleast.
How about powdered milk? It is cheap. Does not expire. Less fattening. Add more powder for flavor.
I used to make this a lot but fell out of habit. Now, after seeing these milk prices (almost like gas prices), I may reconsider powdered milk.
My .02 cents/euros or whatever….
Years ago, I got a copy of the Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn. Amy’s solution then was dry milk- you can warm up your family to dry milk, by mixing regular milk with milk you have made using dry milk. Dry milk on it’s own tastes best too if you can make it at night and then it has a chance to get cold over night in the fridge. I have not done the dry milk/regular milk solution in years, now that we are going to be a family of 7 soon, I might think about it. However, since I live in Wisconsin, I probably am able to get milk cheaper then most of your readers and we drink skim too (which is typically the cheapest milk per unit). I get a gallon of skim for $2.19 for now- that was actually a price increase from two months ago of $1.99.
Powdered milk from Aldi is my cheapest option. We buy the half-gallons of real milk at Kroger when they go on sale 4/$5–my husband and son drink that straight.
Otherwise, I use powdered for all cooking and baking. At the very least, it saves gas for that last-minute milk run when you realize you’re out.
Here in Germany I buy sterilized milk in tetra boxes for 49 Euro cents a litre. I think that works out to about $2.59 US a gallon.
Milk is too cheap on the common market and it means the farmers are suffering, but it’s good for us. The other advantage of sterilized milk is that it doesn’t have to be refrigerated until you open the box and it lasts for about a year. Most families keep about a dozen boxes on hand all the time.
Small convenience stores like Lil’ Peach, Store 24, Tedeschi, and 7/11 carry milk very cheaply. Our local Tedeschi has 1% at $2.39/gallon. It’s a loss leader to get you into the store and buy all the other outrageously priced crap, but if you’re like me, you just go for the milk. It’s cheaper than anywhere else, even Trader Joes.
Thanks Margalit. I’ve thought about checking at convenience stores. Some will advertise their price outside the store so that you don’t have to stop to check.
Is there a really big taste difference in powdered milk and regular milk?
Powdered milk tastes more like skim milk, so if you’re used to that, it probably won’t taste too bad. If you use it in cooking (mac+cheese, creamy soups, whatever), you prob. won’t notice the taste difference at all.
Pay attention to milk prices at CVS or Walgreens, too – this week, here in Chicago, CVS has milk for $1.99/gallon!
Powdered milk??? Interesting…
I’m curious… do you freeze your milk when you buy it on sale? If you do, how does your family react to the taste? I’m afraid that they won’t drink it if I freeze it.
Interestingly, since we only drink Organic Milk (or at least milk that is rBGH free), and these cows are (by law) allowed to graze rather than being fed purchased grains, etc. the price of our milk has not (at least yet) gone up as dramatically as the “regular” milks have.
Granted I was paying more to begin with, but I considered that a necessary evil to avoid giving my daughter something that contains hormones. But I digress.
I guess by not having to transport the feed, and not being quite as subservient to the corn industry since their cows are field grazers, the organic milks are not yet suffering the same problems.
I guess what I am getting at is, that if you are going to have to pay higher prices anyway, it would probably be beneficial to consider the healthier, organic alternatives.
(Side Note: My grandmother used to use Powdered Milk… a leftover habit from the days of the Great Depression. I don’t care how much milk costs, I could never go back and drink that stuff again. Baking and cooking… maybe. But in my coffee? Cereal? Yuck)
I have been giving thought to switching us to organic milk. I have not found a place here that has reasonable prices. Here a 1/2 gallon of organic milk costs the same as a whole gallon of regular milk. I’ll have to keep looking. Maybe a convenience store has it at a good price.
Organic milk consistantly runs 2x the price of regular milk but I still buy it ONLY for my daughter.
Okay, I can add my thoughts on both the powdered milk and convenience store comments.
My mom used to make our milk go twice as far by combining 1/2 gal. of whole milk with 1/2 gal. of powdered milk. I never did like the taste because I can’t stand skim milk. However, since my girls drink so much milk, I give them powdered milk.
They love it. I guess it depends on what you are used to drinking, so I would say to try it. If you don’t like it, it does work for cooking purposes.
Our Walgreen’s is the cheapest place to buy milk. It is PEt brank – not even store brand like I would buy at Wla_mart, etc. Even when it is not on sale, it costs about 30 cents less per gallon than Wal-Mart, the next cheapest place. When Walgreen’s does put their milk on sale, it costs about $1/gal less than Wal-Mart, and Walgreen’s alternates between putting gallons and half gallons on sale, so I almost never have to pay their full price.
Oh, I have frozen milk before. The trick is to let it thaw completely and then to shake it up before using it the first time. Something about freezing the milk makes it taste like buttermilk unless you follow the above process. Otherwise, it’s fine.
Hope that helps.
Maybe I’ll try freezing it when hubby gets my freezer set up.
Does anyone do the Grocery Game? I use it mostly for household goods and it makes the price of things like milk and gas not so bad on my budget.
http://www.thriftymommy.com/50-ways-save-money-on-your-grocery-bill/
Nichole, You may want to check out the link above. I have a friend that uses the grocery game. I never had time to use it because I was working so much. I’m not working now and I’m trying to get caught up on my housework and clutter, but maybe soon I can try it.
I vote for powdered milk, too. It just makes sense.
I grew up on powdered milk and let me tell you, it tastes like white water! Real Skim Milk tastes much better.
When I was in college I started drinking “real” milk and I never went back!
You can use powdered in recipes though, and you’ll never notice the difference.
I was about to suggest powdered milk too, but obviously I’m not the only one to think of it! We used to buy organic milk in a case at Costco, 3 – 1/2 gallon cartons for $6.99, which beat even the local stores’ sale price of 2 half gallons for $5.00. However, our Costco now carries only the full gallon jugs, and we don’t drink it fast enough. The smaller cartons lasted a lot longer while unopened.
Now we buy milk on the military post we live on – it’s not certified organic, but it IS rBGH free, which is my main concern with dairy. It’s $2.15 a half gallon at the corner shoppette here, which still comes out less (especially with gas added in) than the local grocery stores when they run a sale. Plus we can walk the 1/4 mile, eliminating gas and adding to the health benefits.
I buy my milk at the BP gas station. It’s only $2.99 a gallon. I’m not sure if its like this at all BP’s but it wouldn’t hurt to check. And its Moala milk too ! The same milk in Food Lion or Wal-Mart is over $4 a gallon.
It all goes back to the price of gas. The prices on all groceries have gone up. We had to increase the grocery budget after feeling guilty for months because we kept going over. The price of everything from garbage bags to milk is increasing. Anything that has to ride in a truck to get distributed will see prices rise as gas rises.
As per milk – we switched to soy because of the baby, then I didn’t like the idea of the hormones in cows milk so that’s all we buy.
I do use fat-free skim powdered milk in our coffee as a healthy alternative to creamer.
Stop the war it’s making it to hard to buy basic stuff.
Tracee
I’ve used powdered milk before, and since I only use it to cook, …eh, it’ll do.
But now that milk prices are so high, last week I bought a comparably-priced soy milk. It is a bit sweeter, so perhaps kids will buy in?
It’s not thriftier, but perhaps since the market is changing, we could look at it as cheaper for a possibly healthier alternative?
I use powdered milk regularly. I choose not to own a car and it is easier to carry on my bicycle.
I was shhhhockeddt! to see the price has nearly doubled since I stocked up a few months ago when I had a rental car for camping and at that time it was up and down from $12-$15 for a 20 quart box. Sunday I saw the 20 quart box priced at $21.99, that’s more than $4 a gallon!, isn’t it? or am I not understanding something? Well, I will be pedalling my milk home in plastic now……..