Ways to Save on Groceries
The following was a guest post submitted to beingfrugal.net on March 5, 2008.
Food, you have to buy it, you have to eat it, but you don’t have to spend a fortune on it. It’s estimated that an average family of four with two kids and two parents, will spend around $800/month on groceries. How does your family fit in to this estimate? If you find yourself close to, or way over this amount, take some of the following cost saving examples into consideration the next time you’re shopping.
Plan Meals Based On Sales.
We mentioned this method of shopping in our post Take Your Lunch to Work. We know that for many parents shopping is something they simply don’t have time for, so shopping through the grocery store for bargains doesn’t seem realistic. However, a little planning before hand, either by browsing through the weekly ads, or shopping each aisle will pay off.
If you make an effort to purchase what is on sale and base your meals around them, you will see about a 30% reduction in your monthly grocery bill. This is also a great method to help you think of meal ideas. Browse the aisles and do your best to have at least one on-sale item incorporated into each meal.
Make Sure you Have Enough Food for the Entire Week.
Before you leave the store make sure you have enough food for seven nightly meals and lunches. This is important because the temptation to go out to eat is substantially reduced when you know there is food at home that you must eat before it goes bad. In addition, this will save you from having to run to the store a couple times during the week.
Don’t Shop on an Empty Stomach.
Everything looks good when you’re starving. Shopping on an empty stomach will lead to impulse purchases, especially snack foods. This may seem like an unnecessary item to add to this list, but you would be surprised at how many items get thrown into your cart and how much your final purchase price increases when shopping on an empty stomach.
Plan to Make Meals with Leftovers.
Growing up, I hated eating leftovers, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, but now leftovers represent a majority of lunches at work and snacks at night. Plan to make meals that will provide a lunch or a dinner the following day, at least once a week. If you can do this once a week, you’re saving yourself from buying and preparing food for four nights throughout the month, which represents almost an entire work week.
Dust off your crock pot and put it to use. Working parents, especially those with commutes, should be taking advantage of their wedding present crock pots. Throw a roast or chicken in before you leave and walk into a house smelling good and a meal ready to eat. Not only will this save you preparation time, these types of meals will also provide great sandwich meat for lunch the next day. $
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Great post! The “don’t shop on any empty stomach” is a good one for me. I tend to find everything looks good if I go in hungry.