5 Ways Amish SAVE MONEY (Food & More)

so with the cost of food being through the roof inflation other expenses up over the past year or two I wanted to share some money saving ideas from the Amish that I think can be useful for non-amish people as well so the first one would be shopping at bent and Dent stores the Amish are not self-sufficient you know they don't grow all their food they definitely have to buy things from stores they will frequently patronize bent and Dent stores these are also known as salvage stores discount grocery stores banana box stores if you're not aware these are basically stores which sell food and other products that may be in damaged packages or a discontinued product or the food may actually even be close to or past the expiration date and because of this you can get things at really good discounts you may be paying a half price for the food you may be paying even 80 off so these are naturally popular among the Amish and Amish often run these stores themselves if you saw my video on take taking Amish Friends shopping this is actually the first place we stopped on that trip so you may very well may find one of these in your area Amish often run these but certainly not always but especially for certain products like I like to pick up things like nuts and trail mix drinks you know other things that are going to have a long shelf life and you can be more confident about eating them past the expiration date so next way the Amish saves money wearing simple clothing the Amish don't follow fads they have a pretty standard style and type of plain clothing that they wear sometimes these clothes are bought off the rack like shirts for men more often they're made the mother of the home or Daughters of the house will will make dresses trousers those sorts of things this has got a double benefit because you know generally the clothes are pretty inexpensive themselves but the other thing is that if time is money you know you're saving time both in choosing what to wear every day which some people can spend a lot of time at that and also in the shopping part you know Amish people and they're not spending a lot of time in stores searching for stylish clothing now Amish will certainly I mean they'll spend money on things like good pairs of boots uh shoes that you know they're going to get a lot of use out of and you can certainly buy nicer fabrics and you know in wealthier Amish communities they will spend more money on clothing in some cases but generally this is a way this is an area where Amish are definitely saving money compared to non-amish people so next back to food and this would be buying food in bulk just like that in Dent stores bulk food stores are very popular businesses in Amish communities often run by Amish people this is where you can buy you know a huge bag of flour or sugar or large amounts of baking supplies and so forth Amish will also shop at large supermarkets like Costco in Walmart and this is really a natural fit for the Amish because with their large families the food is going to be eaten and not wasted you know maybe not the best choice for smaller families and single people but buying in bulk especially for some items can be a smart strategy so next reusing and repairing things since the Amish are generally not as consumer or consumption oriented As non-amish Americans part of that is practicality you know it's not as easy to just go to the store when you're a horse and buggy people so you tend to just even by default rely more on repairing things rather than throwing them away and buying something new back to shoes shoe repair for instance is something you'll see in Amish communities and you know a lot of times this is out of necessity another one would be the Maytag ringer washers so Amish will find these old washers and there's definitely a market for these old washers and Amish communities the other place this comes into play is of course hand-me-downs that of course fits well again with the large Amish families but on the whole with the Amish you'll find more of a mentality of not throwing something away but rather finding a way to repair or reuse it but there's also a clear focus on not being wasteful that's that's a pretty deep value that you find among the Amish so finally one more relating to food having large Gardens and doing a lot of canning now Amish tend to have large Gardens and likewise they tend to do large amounts of canning and in some communities this can be even up to a thousand courts per year as the authors of the book nature and the environment in Amish life discovered in a study so the Amish will of course can you know your typical garden vegetables green beans beets corn carrots pickles and so on they will also can fruits now they typically tend to buy the fruits like I've gone along with Amish friends where we've gone to a peach orchard and she bought some peaches for canning they don't all have peach trees or fruit trees on their property so that's when they'll tend to buy and then can and they'll even can meet from say slaughtering a hog in the Autumn or meat from hunting you know deer venison some of that they'll Preserve in the form of jerky but back to the book I just mentioned the authors there note that canning is the cheapest most effective way to preserve a large supply of a perishable resource and that makes sense if you think about canning something that can sit in a can for months and months versus say freezing that meat takes all that energy to run the freezer for all that time you can see why that would be a much more practical way of preserving food and why it would appeal to the Amish if you do have access to land where you can have a garden of size that's another great option for saving money you know we can't copy the Amish in everything they do it's a different culture different Community they have large families but I still believe you can take certain ideas from the Amish that makes sense for them also can make sense for non-amish people as well let me know what was your favorite tip or do you have other tips that you've noticed among the Amish that might be useful for people share that with us in the comments if you did like this video hit that like button for me I do appreciate that helps the channel thanks see you next time

Channel: Amish America

Views: 98,525

Keywords: Simple living, Living on a budget, Budget shopping, Salvage store, Bulk foods store, Canning, Home Gardening, Large families, Money tips, Amish & money

Id: mDKAs8YZV5w

Length: 6min 20sec (380 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 01 2023