One thing about vacuum sealers - the bag material is expensive. I found a bunch of YouTube videos about using regular freezer bags with vacuum sealers, though. One guy made a clever little plastic device (easy to make) to adapt a vacuum sealer for use with freezer bags. It looks like it only works with a sealer with a fairly wide vacuum chamber, but I think most are wide enough.
I've looked at some of the FoodSaver units. Nesco makes one that looks good and is slightly cheaper, but I haven't seen it in stores. It would be ideal if you could control the amount of vacuum, but that doesn't seem possible on the units in my price range. Seems like they just have vacuum, extra vacuum, or no vacuum.

I'll file away the jar idea. Probably better for quantities larger than I'm likely to use, though. My food planning tends to be last-minute, I'm afraid.