Which is cheaper: prepared foods or cooking your own foods?

It all depends. In general, preparing from scratch is less costly and healthier, depending on the ingredients. Plus it's easier to cook in bulk and freeze additional portions for other meals.

But there are often great sales on prepared foods. Be a smart buyer, use the grocery sales flyer to plan your menus. If mushrooms and skirt steak are on sale, great. Maybe frozen lasagna is on sale.

Pick up the local flier, take it home, then plan your menus before you shop. Don't go in wanting to buy steak at any cost for instance, instead choose what's on sale. You can probably see the sales online too.

You can do a combination of prepared and home-made meals based on what's the best value for that week. Also shop based on coupons. Many stores will double your coupons.

Try store brand condiments. Many are as good or better than the brand-names. Buy your brand name ketchup and mayo only when it's on sale, and stock up, it won't go bad in the pantry.

Try the local dollar store, Walgreen's or CVS for basic spices. There is nothing wrong with their huge one dollar bottles of oregano or cinnamon or lemon pepper, I've tried most of them and they're just fine.

Also look for a section called Badia, which is in our ethnic foods aisle here in New York. It's a spanish brand, and the price of their spices is MUCH less than the ones in the regular spice aisle. The ethnic food aisles sometimes have excellent prices for the same food found in other aisles, like beans, olives, rice, etc.

Regarding spices, many home stores have racks of spice bottles, all labelled, that are already filled with spices. I got a really nice spice rack with 20 bottles of spices in it, for around 35 dollars. It would have cost a lot more to buy all those spices individually. Then I just refill them with the spices I get from Walgreen's or CVS.

Here are some I found at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=spice+ra...

The market where I shop (Von's) puts a big discount on meat when it is near the sell by date, usually 30% to 50% off. Buy these and freeze them immediately; they'll be good for 6 months. Also, fresh vegetables and fruit are always (in my experience) cheaper than pre-packaged, processed dinners. Stay away from the organic vegetables, though. They are a lot more expensive.

Water and Newspaper, Works fine in Colombia!

(seariously)

preparing from scratch is definitely more economical and more healthful