Feast on These Thanksgiving Savings from Nancy Twigg

With the Thanksgiving holiday just a few days away, Kregel wants to help you have a wonderful meal without breaking your budget! Here are some cost-saving tips from Nancy Twigg, taken from Celebrate Simply: Your Guide to Simpler, More Meaningful Holidays and Special Occasions. We'll have more fiction news for you next week. Happy Thanksgiving!

Besides adding meaning to your Thanksgiving, you’re probably also interested in ways to trim down the cost. If you’ve ever planned a Thanksgiving feast, you know that the cost of buying all the food and decorations can add up faster than you can say, “Gobble, gobble.”

Because it’s a special occasion, we tend to think, “Oh, why not splurge a little?” Add this splurge component to the fact that most holiday meals include extra mouths to feed, and before you know it, you’ve got a major expense on your hands. Here are some practical ideas for saving money on your holiday celebration.


• Serve ham or turkey, but not both. Choose one meat or main dish and plan the rest of your meal around it. This saves not only the cost of the additional meat, but also the cost of special side dishes that go with it. The cost of electricity for cooking both meats is reduced, too.

• Go potluck. If it isn’t already a tradition in your family, make Thanksgiving dinner a potluck meal. Why should one person do all the work and bear all the expense? Besides, everyone will have fun tasting favorite recipes of several different cooks.

• Balance expensive and cheap dishes. Mashed potatoes are less expensive to make than a creamy vegetable casserole; a pumpkin pie is generally cheaper to make than a homemade cheesecake. Limit the number of dishes requiring expensive ingredients. Choose your family’s favorites and serve inexpensive dishes to complement them.

• Trim down extras. Do you really need four different vegetables and three different desserts? Usually there’s too much food at Thanksgiving dinners anyway. Who’ll miss that extra casserole or choice of bread? From each food category, try to cut out at least one extra that no one will miss.

• Serve inexpensive beverages. Sodas and fruit juices can be expensive add-ons to your Thanksgiving shopping list. Water, coffee (approximately 3 cents per 8 oz. serving), tea (4 cents per serving) and Kool-Aid (6 cents per serving) are very economical beverage choices. Soda and juice generally cost between 11–37 cents or more per serving.

• Dispose of disposables. Disposable plates, cups, napkins, and utensils are an added expense to your holiday meal, especially if you buy the decorative variety. Carefully consider if the convenience is worth the extra cost. If everyone pitches in, doing the dishes might not be so bad after all.

• Maximize oven use. Try to do as much of your baking at one time as possible to cut down on electricity use. Conserve electricity also by using the microwave oven whenever possible.

• Decorate naturally. Use natural decorations such as dried autumn leaves and pinecones. Fall fruits and vegetables, acorns, and tiny pumpkins also make for a festive look. Look in magazines for ideas, then adapt those decorating ideas using things you have on hand. With some advanced planning, you can even grow your own pumpkins and winter squash for the occasion.

• Watch those giveaways. Grocery stores often run promotions in which they give away turkeys with the purchase of other items such as hams. Don’t let the idea of getting something free cause you to cook a bigger meal than you actually need. That free turkey isn’t really free when you factor in the extra items you bought to go with the ham you didn’t originally plan to purchase.

• Plan in advance. Decide on your menu and make your shopping list several weeks in advance. Then watch for sales on those items you need. Remember the old saying, “Haste makes waste”? You’ll probably spend more when you buy at the last minute.

• Take advantage of loss leaders. A loss leader is an item offered below cost as a sales promotion to get you in the door. In the weeks before Thanksgiving, grocery stores typically run loss-leader specials on traditional holiday foods. They hope that, while visiting their stores to get the specials, you’ll also buy a shopping cart full of other things. Be a savvy shopper. Take advantage of each store’s specials without falling into the extra-spending trap.

• Look for substitutions. Many holiday recipes call for ingredients you don’t normally keep on hand. Before buying special ingredients you’ll only use once, check the substitution guides in your cookbooks to see if there’s anything else you can use. For example, 1 cup minus 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour can be substituted for 1 cup of cake flour; 1 cup of sugar plus 1/4 cup of liquid can be substituted for 1 cup of honey or corn syrup.

• Fresh is not necessarily best. Experts say there’s no real difference in taste between a fresh and frozen turkey. It’s all a matter of preference and convenience. Therefore, watch for sales and go with whatever is cheapest.

• Don’t waste. Stored in the refrigerator, cooked turkey should be eaten within three to four days. Kept in the freezer, it’s good for up to six months. Be realistic about how many leftovers your family can eat in the days after Thanksgiving. Freeze the extras right away so you won’t end up chucking them.

• Choose the right size bird. The turkey experts at Honeysuckle White recommend an 8–12 pound turkey for 2 to 4 people; a 12–16 pound turkey for 4 to 6 people; a 14–18 pound turkey for 6 to 8 people; an 18–20 pound turkey for 8 to 10 people; and a 20–24 pound turkey for 11 to 13 guests. These estimates allow for some leftovers. If your family doesn’t like leftovers, nip the problem of wasted leftovers in the bud by choosing a turkey on the low end of the suggested weight range.

• Love those leftovers. Some of the greatest Thanksgiving savings occur after the holiday if you know how to put your leftovers to good use. A family can be expected, however, to eat only so many turkey sandwiches. Look for interesting new recipes to give that leftover turkey a lift.

• Enjoy turkey all year round. Here’s another idea for saving money on groceries in the months after Thanksgiving. If your family loves turkey and you have plenty of freezer space, stock up when turkey prices hit rock bottom. A frozen turkey is good for up to a year in the freezer.

For tips on other holiday savings or information about Celebrate Simply, click here.