Frugal Tip: Jazzing Up Inexpensive Breakfast Cereals

My grandchildren love to eat cereal for breakfast and at times…as a snack. As a grandparent, I don’t mind them having cereals (in moderation), but I admit, I don’t like the high prices that I had to pay at our local grocery store. Even with a money-saving coupon, I find that the majority of breakfast cereals are way over-priced!

My frugal way of bringing down the cost of cereal is to buy the cheaper “generic” brands and jazzing them up with fresh fruits, dried fruits, granola and/or marshmallow ourselves.

When generic granola is on sale…I’ll buy 2-3 bags of it at a time and keep it in my pantry. When the kids want granola mixed into their cereal or oatmeal, I just pull it out of the pantry and add it into their cereal.

I always have fresh and frozen fruits on hand, so when they want fruit added to their bowls, I can quickly and easily toss in some sliced banana, strawberries or blueberries.

However, up until a few months ago…adding in marshmallows was a huge problem! I could easily find marshmallows that were made for hot chocolate or for baking out in the retail marketplace, but those don’t work well for cereals. Finally, they started making and selling the perfect marshmallows for cereal, oatmeal and ones that could be used in hot cocoa too, and they were selling them at a fabulous price!

For example, stores in my area will sell large bags of the marshmallows made for cereal (think Lucky Charms-type) for $1.00 per bag, but often times they put them on sale for 2 bags for $1.00. That’s when I like to stock up, when they’re .50 cents a bag! I’ll often pick up 4-6 bags of them at a time!

By purchasing generic cereal and adding in our own marshmallows I’m saving BIG TIME as compared to buying those “name brand” cereals that have the marshmallows already in it. I figured it out last week and I’m saving 49% per serving, by doing it this way! If you have several kids in the family (or even adults) who eat cereal, this savings can really add up over the course of a year!

In my particular area, we can find these bags of marshmallows in most of our major grocery stores and some of our farmer’s markets & bakery outlets are also carrying them. Again, look for them on sale to really maximize your savings! The two bags I’m featuring on the blog today I picked up for .50 cents a bag…what a deal!