Living on Less: Elisabeth Leamy's Advice

June 19, 2009— -- Brad and Anita Wiggins, of Santa Clara, Calif., were almost $1,700 a month overbudget.

Brad Wiggins, 53, an attorney, father of seven and grandfather of two, has taken a substantial income hit -- 62 percent.

ABC News correspondent Elisabeth Leamy offered them the following advice on how to cope with the situation.

I know our segment is supposed to be about saving money, but save yourself.

There's just so much fat and so much sodium in fast food that you'll be better off, regardless, if you can cut that down some. I think you already know that.

The estimate I heard was that you guys probably go out seven days a week for some meal or other, for fast food, and spend about $220 a week. If you do the math, at $220 a week you guys are spending more than $11,000 a year on fast food.

Let me put it to you this way: If you spend about a $100 a week going to the grocery store -- if you would not go to the grocery store just once per quarter, just once every three months -- if you tried to survive off what you've got in your fridge and in your freezer, you could cut your budget bill by 8 percent per year. That's significant -- 8 percent by basically doing nothing.

I don't know what other expert is going to advise you to do nothing. That's my advice. Do nothing. Don't go shopping four times out of the year. And if you can do it -- you know , If you can do nothing even more frequently -- you can save even more than 8 percent.

There are actually lists online of when different manufacturers put different products on sale. Every year, they do this. It's very predictable, which is kind of neat.

So I went through your shopping list. So for example, in January, Pepsi and Tostitos chips usually go on sale. Those are things your family loves.

Another example: Your family likes ground beef. May is the month for ground beef. I guess they're getting everybody ready for the summer. So the time for you to stock up on your hamburger meat is in May.

August, right before the back to school season, is when cold cuts lunch meats go on sale. So it'd be a great time for you to stock up then.

And then one more example, just because I think this is so interesting: The real shopping experts know that Kraft products go on sale in October. Those particular savings I got from a list at a Web site called besensible.net.