Knowing How To Fillet A Fish Can Save You Money
Having skills will save you money. Doing your own automobile maintenance, home repairs and even preparing your own taxes saves money over paying a professional to do the task for you. You never know when an acquired skill will save you money. While on vacation, I found myself wishing I would have paid more attention to my father when I was a young boy.
Had I learned the skill of filleting a fish, I could have saved myself some big money.
I’m preparing many of our family’s meals while we’re on vacation. With every meal we make by utilizing the kitchen in our rental house, we have more money in our pockets for other activities. Since we’re vacationing literally blocks from the ocean in Florida, having fresh fish for one of our meals seemed almost mandatory.
I found a fresh fish market a few miles away from our rental home where I hoped I’d find some red snapper. Scanning the different types of fish displayed in the glistening ice, I found what I was looking for; a beautiful whole red snapper for $12.99. When a smiling employee asked if they could help me, I asked if they had snapper already fillet, deboned, and the skin taken off. She led me to a different section and pointed to a sign that listed red snapper filets at a significantly greater cost.
Ready to cook Red snapper fillets were priced at $19.99 a pound.
As the employee weighed and priced my order, I did a little math. I had requested 2 pounds of snapper, which turned out to be one large fillet. I don’t know how much the whole snapper priced at $12.99 weighed, but I conservatively guessed that it would produce two large fillets similar to what I was buying.
- Whole Snapper (guess) : 4 pounds of product for $12.99 = $3.25 per pound
- Ready to cook Snapper : 2 pounds of product for $39.98 = $19.98 per pound
Had I had the knife skills to fillet a fish, I would have paid a fraction of the price for fresh fish.
Granted, I would have had to fillet the fish myself and dispose of the waste. However, that would have been a small inconvenience compared to the money saved.
Have you ever unexpectedly saved money due to a skill you possessed? How much did it save you?
Brought to you courtesy of Brock
Brock is a software engineer by day and personal finance blogger at night. He is a fitness junkie and enjoys grilling and smoking meat. Married with two children, Brock strives to improve his skills as a husband and father, and is always on the lookout to stretch his family’s budget as far as he can.
Good info to know. My son (he’s six) keeps telling me that he wants to learn to fish. I’m not sure he has the patience for it, given that it’s a lot of waiting, but I should tell him that he has to do this to whatever he catches *lol*
I remember watching my father clean fish as a young boy and thought to myself “I’ll never have to know how to do this.” Turns out it would have been a useful skill to have. You’d be amazed at what a 6 year-old can do….. Thanks for stopping by, Money Beagle!
There is a lot of products that cater to busy people or those without the know-how. Look at pre-packaged salad mix. It can’t take but 5 minutes to mix up some lettuce, but a lot of people buy it.
The same is with shrimp, fish, crab, lobster, chicken, you name it.
You can save a lot of money preparing anything yourself…but people don’t realize it sometimes.
Either they don’t realize it, or would rather pay the money for the convenience! Thanks for your thoughts, Eric!
I like McDonalds Filet of fish.
LOL, didn’t you once tell me to eat salads and workout instead of eating pizza? 🙂