How to Save Time at the Grocery Store

We've been sharing a lot of ideas about how you can save money on food by cooking at home instead of eating out. But how much longer does it take to walk up and down the grocery aisles than to order in a pizza? When it comes to grocery shopping, you have a couple of options: you can buy enough food to last you a week or so, or you can make another trip every couple of days. Both can be time consuming, but I opt for buying about a week's worth of food at once so I don't have to go back so often.

Once I'm at the store, I don't have time to browse. The basic solution: make a list and stick to it. I love grocery lists for two reasons. First, they help me avoid impulse buys, which in turn helps me keep my budget under control. Second, they point me to the items I need, so I don't have to spend a long time looking at every shelf trying to remember everything.

At my house, we've found a way to take this supermarket tool even further. We make our grocery lists into spreadsheets.

I know; it sounds super complicated. It's not.

The first column is for our basic list of items (milk, eggs, bread). The second column is for the quantity of each. For staples like milk and bread, we generally don't need to list a quantity because we know how much we need, but this column is important when it comes to ingredients for specific recipes when we might forget how much or many we need.

The third column is the real trick. Here, we list where each item is located in the store. This isn't just about remembering where to find things, either. When the list is finished, it can be sorted by this "department" column, making it super easy to go through the store one area at a time. This way, all the items that are close together in the store are also close together on the list. All the produce is together, all the frozen foods are together, all the dairy is together. You get the idea. Easy.

Here's what a very short grocery spreadsheet looks like:

Calling a department by the term grocery might seem overly broad, but that just means the big section in the middle with all the dry goods on tall shelves. The other departments are self-explanatory, with frozen, dairy, and deli being some other options that aren't listed here. Go ahead and use whatever terms work for you based on your store, and if you know the aisle numbers, even better.

The first time my boyfriend and I used this method, we cut our shopping time down to about 20 minutes for a list that probably would've taken us close to an hour before. No scanning the list over and over to find the items we needed from each department; no doubling back for things we overlooked the first (or second, or third) time. Much faster.

Look! Cheap Cocktail Night.

Keg parties are so undergrad, so why not mix up a few cocktails at home? Oh, right, keeping even a minimally stocked liquor cabinet is way out of my grad-school budget. But there's another way.

Instead of spending money on fifths or even liters of our essential ingredients, my boyfriend and I bought a variety of miniatures. (50-mL bottles, or between 1.5 and 2 fluid ounces. Apparently they're called nibs here in New England.) For the same cost as just a couple regular-sized bottles of liquor, we were able to buy everything we needed to make six different drinks—three for each of us.


Here are the (mostly) classic cocktails we tried out:

• Amaretto Sour
• Tequila Sunrise
• Chocolate Martini
• Tom Collins
• White Russian
• and this crazy thing called a Monkey Gland Cocktail I stumbled across on Forbes magazine online, of all places

A note on the ingredients:
Each 50-mL bottle is about the same as one shot, the right amount of alcohol for one drink. The Monkey Gland calls for absinthe, which was our only budget breaker: we found a 100-mL bottle for $9.99. If you're just looking to try it out or only need a little, though, this amount goes a long way. A full-sized bottle will run you closer to $50 or $60. No thank you.

Did you know you can make your own sour mix and grenadine at home? Sour mix is just heavy simple syrup plus lemon juice, so I bought one lemon for 69¢ instead of spending $4.99 on a whole bottle of the pre-made stuff. Grenadine is just pomegranate juice plus sugar, but I actually didn't save money here. I paid a dollar more for real pomegranate juice than I would have for grenadine. However, the grenadine at the store is almost entirely high-fructose corn syrup, not actual juice. I think this is an extra dollar well spent.

The Monkey Gland and the Tequila Sunrise both call for orange juice, but I didn't want to buy a whole carton just to use about five ounces of it. I bought two oranges and fresh squeezed them. I'm sure this is much tastier, anyway.

Shopping list and total price:

amaretto	$2.99
tequila	$2.49
vodka	$3.50 (for 2)
gin	$5.98 (for 2)
Kahlua	$2.49
chocolate liqueur	$3.99
absinthe	$9.99
lemon	69¢
2 oranges	$1.07
pomegranate juice	$4.99
club soda	59¢
Grand Total:	$38.77 + tax

Sure, buying in larger volumes is a better value, but this was a cheaper overall cost and much greater variety for six drinks than we could've gotten if we'd bought larger bottles. More than 25% of our total was the absinthe, too, so we can make it much cheaper by nixing it next time.

Another thought: we're moving to a new apartment this weekend. This might just be the grad-school answer to the traditional housewarming party. Potluck, anyone?

Top 7 Toughest Interview Questions I've Ever Been Asked

Since I started grad school, I've been on more interviews than in high school and college combined, easily. First, I relocated from Auburn, Alabama to Boston, Massachusetts (where I didn't know anyone) and had to find a job to pay my rent and living expenses. Once I reached a point that resembled financial stability, I started applying for internships and career-path jobs, both full time and part time. Anything I thought I might be qualified for. I went on lots of interviews, and I'm still working on that career-path job thing.

Last week, I went on an interview for an internship at Wiley Publishing. This was my first experience being interviewed by a panel—I sat at a conference table where four editorial assistants and one development editor took turns firing questions at me. That's right, I was interviewed by five people at once. As if the scenario itself weren't bad enough, they asked some seriously tough questions, too.

Here are the 7 toughest questions I remember from that nerve-wracking interview:

• Either in school or in a previous position, what's a mistake you made, and how did you deal with it?
• What about when things were prepared just right, but something went wrong through no fault of yours? How did you handle that?
  
• How have you worked with a difficult employer, supervisor, or client?
• When you're doing menial office tasks or grunt work, what strategies do you use to get through the day?
• What have you worked on at your current internship that has been meaningful or satisfying?
  
• In your previous jobs, when did you have to make a decision or take action beyond what you thought you were allowed to do?
• How did you improve a process or method of doing something?

Uhh . . . I don't know? It's not that I don't know at least one good answer to all of these questions; it's that I was completely unprepared to give the super specific examples they were asking for. When put on the spot, I don't remember the details about how I dealt with a major conflict with my boss last year, and it's difficult to frame such a scenario to put myself in a positive, professional light without preparation.

My advice: write down the toughest questions you've ever been asked in an interview and the trickiest ones you can think of. (And ask for input from friends and classmates, too!) Then, practice answering them. Try to remember difficult situations you've been in at past jobs so you can talk about them with fresh insight.

The less you let them put you on the spot, the better!

How My Hectic Schedule and Tight Budget Feed My Food Dilemma

I never thought it would happen to me—last week, I developed a Starbucks habit. And it's not even about the coffee. Between work during the day and class in the evening, I have to eat. My evening classes completely block out my dinner time too, so I often find myself desperately needing an 8 p.m. snack. I don't have much time to hunt down something healthy and inexpensive, and the options near my grad school's campus are severely limited.

Lately, that means I stop in Starbucks for a quick snack or between-meals meal. A smoothie, some chocolate-covered graham crackers, maybe an egg salad sandwich if I'm really hungry.

This is a terrible habit that has to stop. I have class two nights a week, and eating out this often is terrible for my budget. Last week alone, I spent $18.28 on food I could've avoided buying if I'd just brought enough food from home.

This week, I have a new plan. Packing just a lunch isn't enough food to get me through my work day and four hours of class, so I'm keeping a variety of food on hand all day. Here's my favorite stay-full kit I've tried so far:

• Yogurt. I have access to a fridge at work, and a cup of yogurt is an excellent mid-morning snack. And mid-morning snacks are good because they keep me from getting extra hungry at lunchtime and overspending on additional food.
• Apple sauce. Fruit is great snack, and apple sauce doesn't bruise or smash easily. It also doesn't have to stay refrigerated.
  
• Cheese. Think individually wrapped pieces, like string cheese or those little Babybel wheels.
• Granola. I need something crunchy I don't have to eat with a spoon. Turns out I like granola, and the chunky kinds are the easiest to eat without making a crumbly mess.
• Nuts. If I have some almonds, walnuts, or cashews on hand, I'll probably toss some in with the granola. However, nuts can be expensive, so this isn't an everyday thing.

I've found that the best foods to take to work and class are ones that come in individual servings and are easy to transport in my messenger bag. However, watch out for 100-calorie packs! If you're hungry, you want some calories and plenty of protein, fiber, and carbs. Tiny 100-calorie packs will not make you feel full.

Unpaid Internships: the Tough Questions

Along with specialized coursework, internships are an effective way to gain experience in a specific field. They're very common for graduate students. However, the decision to pursue an internship might be a tough one if you're considering one of the many unpaid internships out there. Here are some key points to seriously consider before accepting:

What's the time commitment?
Some internships require only a few hours each week, while others demand an almost full-time schedule. Most importantly, you should have a good idea of how this commitment might affect your attendance or performance in school. Will you still be able to adequately prepare for each class and get there on time?

Another consideration that particularly impacts graduate students is the time unpaid internships take away from the time they'd normally be working other jobs for pay. Can you afford to take this time away from a paying job to work for free? Unpaid internships often make up for this shortcoming in the form of valuable experience and connections, but you have to establish a financial plan to cover your most important necessities, such as rent and food, before taking on an unpaid commitment.

What about doing an internship for credit?
Not all schools require it, but graduate programs generally allow students to earn course credit for internships they complete. If you're paying for your own tuition, either out of pocket or through student loans, keep in mind that you'd have to pay this rate for an internship, too.

What are your goals for this internship?
All internship programs are different. Are you hoping for hands-on experience and responsibility? Or, even if the internship involves a lot of time in the mail room, are you more concerned with the connections you could make with professionals in your field? Working for free could become a frustrating experience, so you should determine if the benefits will make it worthwhile. This may be true for some internships but not for others.

So, if you're thinking about applying for or taking an unpaid internship, be sure to determine if it's the right fit for you first.