Get rich with a breadmaker

The three biggest expenses the average family has are food, transportation, and housing. Savings in one of these three categories will have the biggest effect on your budget, and consequently your ability to get rich.

A loaf of whole wheat bread costs us about $4 at a grocery store, maybe $3.50 at Costco. With two small kids, we go through two loaves a week.  Assuming we shop at Costco (we do), that’s $364 per year on bread.
Enter the breadmaker.

We got this Black & Decker breadmaker for $5 at a yard sale down the street a few months ago. Since then, we haven’t bought a single loaf of bread from the store.
We modified one of the recipes in the manual to make a nice honey wheat with a 2:1 bread flour to whole wheat flour ratio.  The only ingredients are flour, water, honey, butter, salt, and yeast. It’s delicious.
Bread flour is about $8 for a 25 lb bag at Costco. 

Buy a jar of yeast at the grocery store, a 5 lb bag of whole wheat, and the normal honey and butter you have around the house.  Set the timer and you have a fresh baked loaf of bread in the morning at a fraction of the cost.
As an added bonus, it makes super easy pizza dough for family dinner on Sundays, again at a fraction of the cost of ordering pizza.
Saving $300 per year may not seem like much, but little things like this add up.  That’s $300 extra to be invested, producing an extra $20-30 in annual income.

No Comments

  1. Bruce Godfrey on August 1, 2013 at 10:44 AM

    Additional benefits include fewer trips to the store, since bread is one of the main reasons to go to the store for a core staple. Also, for those who are disinclined to pay taxes (i.e. motivated to reduce the incidence of taxes), DIY remains the best way to reduce tax incidence. The Internal Revenue Code does not tax as "income" the fruit of one's own tree eaten at the dinner table, unlike the "fruit" of one's financial investments or the fruit bought at the grocery store with taxed cash money (i.e. taxed when earned and taxed to the seller when swapped for groceries.)

  2. Anonymous on September 9, 2013 at 8:56 PM

    Do you have a timer on your bread maker?

    Who makes the bread, you or your wife?

    What else do you save money on?

  3. Mr. X on September 11, 2013 at 3:57 PM

    The breadmaker does have a timer that can be set up to 13 hours in advance, so I usually load up the ingredients before bed and use the timer.

    I make the bread.

    We try to save on whatever we can. I've stopped buying lunch most days at work, we don't eat out as much, try to do activities that are free or low-cost with the kids.

Leave a Comment