Pink Motor Scooter Week: The Powdered Milk Connection

I’ve been having a little bit of milk angst.

Liquid milk prices have gone down quite a bit here in Texas.  At Kroger, the new regular, everyday price for their store brand non-fat liquid milk (the kind we like) is $1.99/per gallon.

While liquid milk prices have gone down, powdered has not. My powdered milk works out to $2.10 per gallon.

I hope that dry milk goes down soon, but in the meantime I was thinking about switiching back to liquid to save that .11 per gallon.  We drink about 4 gallons per month, so that would save me a whopping .44 per month or $5.28 per year.

Hee hee, that’s not a lot, and probably not really worth any mental anguish.  But it’s just the way we Frugals are wired.

For one thing, the truth is that I like dry milk better.  I like the way it tastes, and more importantly it’s more convenient all around, though it’s easy to bulk buy liquid milk and freeze it.  I did that for years.

But at the moment, I don’t have very much room in my freezer what with all the cheap turkeys and cheap chickens hanging out in there.

A couple of days ago, though, I finally came to terms with my angst and decided, heck, I wasn’t going to let that .11 extra bother me ANYMORE.

Here’s how that transforming moment happened:

I ran out of dry milk.  It was the only thing I needed from the grocery store, so naturally, I saved a bit of gas money by using my motor scooter to do this errand.  When I got to Kroger, I was just about to buy that cheaper gallon of liquid milk.  It would be easy to put it in my backpack, and scooter home with it.

But then I had an epiphany.  Wait-a-minute, I thought.  A box of powdered milk makes 5 gallons of milk.  There is no way in heck I could cart home 5 gallons of liquid milk on my motor scooter. Where would I put it all?

So I bought my box of milk, put it in my backpack, and scootered away.  I figure I come out a little ahead by using my motor scooter to transport the more expensive dry stuff.

Since the cost of gas is so cheap with my scooter, it’s more efficient to bring home the 5 gallons of dry milk, thus bringing down even further the cost of my gas for the trip. (I would have to make that trip 5 times to bring home the equivalent of liquid milk).

Well, maybe I’m just rationalizing, because I like my scooter so much, and also because I like dry milk a lot too.  I like to think of myself as a hard-headed cheapo, but I have my sentimental favorites, too.

Here are two of my Frugal favorites: dry milk, and my awesome pink motor scooter.  A match made in heaven.