Anderson Cooper’s recent show features money-saving families that live comfortably in tiny houses, stopped shopping for a month, and more.
I’ve always loved Anderson Cooper, but now I just adore him! He aired a recent show on saving money, and many clips can be seen at this link.
But this one clip — I just love. It’s about how one family saves money on milk using a quick, simple trick–add water. (I do this with juice, and you know, I never even thought of doing this practical trick with whole milk! Not only that, there are endless posts from other blogs and sites about this trick, yet I never tried it.) The way the dad describes why and how he learned this is quite endearing.
Update: Just bought a gallon of whole milk at Trader Joe’s. I poured a half gallon into a pitcher. I filled the milk jug and the pitcher up with cold water and had my husband taste the milk with added water. He loved it. Couldn’t tell the difference. He’s sold. Tomorrow morning….we’ll see what the kids say, and I don’t think they’ll notice.
Another update: My kids didn’t know the difference this morning when they had their cereal. Success! (Or, maybe they were just half asleep…)
Yet another update: A month later, and we are still successfully stretching our milk with excellent results!

(disclaimer — one day TFF will figure out how to embed videos into our posts, but for now, click on the links above to do directly to the videos.)
~Marilyn, TFF
We grew up on powdered milk – another savings, however, yucky!!
Yuck is right. Powdered milk isn’t even inexpensive anymore (it takes energy to make it and those costs have skyrocketed). This trick isn’t as yucky, thank goodness. ~Marilyn, TFF
Yes- have a wonderful day!
Actually, powdered milk at Shoprite, bought on sale @ $11.99 equals $2.4/gallon (the 5 gallon box). I stock up and use it in baking, cooking as it’s significantly cheaper than fluid milk.
$2.40 a gallon isn’t cheap enough for me to buy powdered milk, even for baking/cooking ;–)