I never shop when hungry, because I’d end up buying bags of junk food!
The following is a guest post by Frank from Milk Your Money. Frank and his blog partner, Ben, write about making smart money decisions to help you reach your financial goals. They believe that anyone can reach their financial dreams, regardless of income. If you enjoy this post, consider subscribing to their RSS feed.
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.
What are your grocery savings tips? What mistakes have you made that cause you to spend more at the grocery store? Share your experiences in the comments!
Photo by ninjapoodles.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
{ 1 trackback }
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow – $800 a month? I am now ever so happy with our spending…even though I hope to cut it back some. One thing I have learned is to know what my family likes and not deviate away from that. No matter how great a sale, if my family isn’t going to like it there is no point in buying it.
I am a single mom with two boys and I run an in home daycare where I feed lunch and two snacks daily to two additional kids. I spend no more than $250 a month on food, including milk served at every breakfast, and lunch. I buy fruits and veggies to serve with every meal as well. We only buy one junk food item per week each (we each get $3 to spend as we wish at food store, total $9 a week.) We eat healthy, with meat everyday, but as 1/4 of our meal. The other 3/4 is 1/4 starch, 1/2 fruit, &/or veggies. It can be a cahllenge, but following many of the tips you have given make it easier. Especially the meal planning, we do that before we shop each week. Thanks!
@Becky – I LOVE the idea of giving everyone $3 a week to spend on junk. I am going to do that! Just brilliant!
Those are all great advice, however, I can’t plan with too many leftovers in mind. I just cannot eat leftovers more than once. This is psychological damage from having to eat too many leftovers as a child. :) If I have too many leftovers, I will waste them. Sounds bad, but it’s just reality for me.
@Heidi – I totally understand. I get funny about leftovers too. I just feed them to my husband. :)
Do you have a walmart in your area?
I find that walmart has the lowest prices.
We have regular Walmarts, but no Super-Walmarts. I keep hearing we’re going to get one, but that rumor has been going around for quite a while.
Another very effective way of saving money on shopping is to use a price book. I’ve been using one for several months now and have seen a downward trend in my weekly shopping bill. That in spite of food inflation driving the price of everything up. I wrote a piece about it on my blog.
Using a Price Book
I just came from the store and bought $82 worth for the week and had a $8 coupon from the store which is great. But it is awful how much food has gone up too. I am not one to eat leftovers probably because I have had too many as a child I guess.
Is anyone familiar with these places that make the dinners and you help and it all goes into the freezer I think. I went to one website called The Dinner A’Fare