How much money do you spend on food each week? Do you run to the store after work to pick up a last minute feast? Do you eat out or grab food to-go, simply because you need to eat and your fridge is empty? These habits are costing you and with a bit of organization could be happily avoided. Reducing your grocery bill is a really simple process. All you need to do is get started and once you do you will see a difference in no time. Here’s how:
Making your list
Put your food list together and go shopping on a Sunday or Monday; get ready for a week of organized cooking. When you are complying your list plan for five varied meals, for example:
- A curry or casserole with rice
- Fish and salad
- Meat with Potatoes and vegetables
- A pasta dish
- A large salad, such as Chicken Caesar
By putting together a varied menu, not only are you setting yourself up for a balanced diet but you are allowing room to suit your cravings. Sometimes when we vaguely plan meals with little thought, meal times can be a repetitive bore, you may not be in the mood for what is in the fridge, tempting you to grab something else on your way home, by keeping things varied you are more likely to eat what is waiting at home. Saving your cash!
The list above holds a combination of food with different preparation times that will fit within your schedule, if Tuesday night is your busiest week night, salad and pasta is an easy meal. For nights with more available time, whip together a delicious curry!
When you are putting your list together, think of which food items can be overlapped between meals. In this list, there are two meals that contain salad, think about how much you need for covering these two and stick to this. Your curry/casserole will include vegetables, try and use these with the pasta dish or as a side with the meat and potatoes.
For the remainder of your list you may want snacking items. These cost a lot less when bought in bulk, if you tend to regularly snack on cookies or chocolate pick up a multi-pack. Taking food to work makes a huge difference to your weekly outgoings, so plan what you are going to take in and add it to the list!
No more grabbing
Grabbing food in a thoughtless fashion adds weight to your pockets. This is why it is essential to create a list before hand and stick to it! Often us folk walk round the supermarket throwing items into their basket on impulse. What then happens to these items is they sit still, perish and eventually get thrown away, an unnecessary process. Think before you grab, if it is not on the list, do you need it? If you are grabbing through culinary inspiration that you plan to follow through, then grab. If not, keep walking.
Expiration Dates
Pay attention to expiration dates as you shop. Take a couple of seconds to check that the items you are picking up will still be edible by the time you plan to eat them. Also, bare this in mind when you are deciding what to eat, throwing away expired food is an utter waste, stopping this from happening is your responsibility, so plan accordingly. If you have bought some meat but doubt you will be eating it till later on in the week, store it directly in the freezer so that it keeps fresh and there is no risk of it going to waste.
Freezer containers and labels
To make your pennies stretch even further, buy a selection of containers that are suitable for freezing along with sticky labels. Get a couple of sizes that suit a meal portion for one as well as two people (or even more, depending on how many you are!) So, when you have gone to the effort of cooking a casserole/curry you may as well cook enough to freeze a couple of portions. Often when people freeze meals, they will freeze a large batch that once defrosted can not be re-frozen, resulting in waste. Use the sticky labels to name your delicious home cooked delights and add the cooking date.
Do you chuck away condiments and sauces because you are unsure of when you opened them? My grandma taught me a great tip to keeping on top of this: By labelling the items on the date of opening. If the sauce that you have bought expires in a month, you will know exactly when to get rid of it.
When not to shop
Times to avoid shopping the grocery store are as follows:
- Hungry- When we are really hungry we tend to go on shopping binges. Your well-thought out list is not guaranteed to save you when hunger strikes. As a last resort, grab a snack before hitting the shops.
- Full up- Having over-eaten or being in a state of well-fed bliss, tends to be when we are at the height of frugality. Bare this in mind as you move around the shop as you don’t want to get home with nothing but a couple of seeds and an apple!
- Emotional- When going through a period of emotional unrest we tend to comfort eat. $50 worth of chocolate and cake is not going to see you through the week.
Shop online
Shopping online is a fantastic money-saver. With no in store temptations you can keep your purchases limited to the essential and needed. My mother is an extremely thoughtful shopper; every food item has its function. So, I was very surprised that since shopping online she has reduced her weekly shopping expenditure by $60 a week!
Author Bio: Anne Davies is an avid guest blogger, writing articles on a range of topics from bridal sets to travel tips. Anne is the Social Media Consultant for Kranichs, purveyors of mothers rings and more!
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How much do we spend? Too much. We do eat out a lot since we are often running around. With 6 kids going 4 different directions for practice, it is difficult to organize meals. Plus they eat a reasonable amount as well. We go through a gallon of milk a day which is almost $80 per month just for milk. Ouch.
Planning your meals makes all the difference. In our house we plan our meals around various deals and promotions (e.g. lamb dishes when lamb’s half price). We shop online to avoid succumbing to tempting deals and will use comparison sites to see which supermarket offers the best bang for our buck that week (UK supermarkets are in a price war so prices can really vary from shop to shop across the board).
This is a very helpful tip especially for the moms out there who are having a hard time budgeting. For me, I don’t usually bring my kids to the grocery store because they pick junk foods that destroys my budgeting.
Organization and planning do make things better when grocery shopping. It helps to focus us on eating healthy, and less impulse buys when at the grocery store. It also helps get us in and out in about 15mins. Although we increased our grocery bills, we eliminated unhealthy foods from it and increased the quality of the food we buy. Our bodies are the only ones we’ve got, we better put in high quality fuel!
My wife prepares a weekly menu and uses lists to go shopping. She does it mostly to keep herself organized and efficient. Most of the time, we do the menu planning together. One of the extras from menu planning provides lunches with the leftovers on most days.
Speaking of grabbing… in my quest for sales and buying items with coupons, I ended up buying yogurt that had one day left before expiring!
Good thing yogurt can still be eaten (well the taste doesn’t change, anyway) after its due date.
By using many of the ideas in this post, and a few of our own, we are able to spend only $200 per month on groceries for 2 people!
Meal planning is key. We plot out the dinners by combining what’s already in the house with what’s on sale this week. Leftovers cover the lunches. Most nights we intentionally cook extra of some ingredient so we have a starting point and save time the next night. A whole chicken one night, and the left overs become the start of chicken enchiladas the next night. Excess pasta from one night becomes a casserole another night. We are constantly eating “leftovers” but is rarely the same meal rewarmed.
When ground beef is on sale we stock up and prefry and freeze it individually for all those recipies that start off with “brown a pound of ground beef”. You save a ton of time on a busy night if you can just dump a freezer bag of precooked beef into a pan and carry on. We’ve cooked 3-4 whole chickens at once. Some becomes the dinner but the rest is pulled off the bones and bagged for the freezer. When peppers are on sale we chopp up a dozen and freeze it on waxed paper on cookie sheets. Then dump it into a freezer bag. Again, saves a ton of time on a busy night if you can just grab a handful of prechopped veggies from the freezer. Everything is bought on sale, and nothing goes rotten when left too long in the crisper.
Another good cost saver are some very flexible recipies for casserole or one pot type meals. I have a pasta with cream sauce type meal where you follow the same method each time, but you mix and match the meat and veggie combination to suit what’s on sale or needs to be used up. Sometimes it’s ham/peas, chicken/broccoli, turkey/greenbeans, etc. I can’t even remember the proper name of the recipe – we just call it the “pick a meat, pick a veggie” dinner.
I cook for a month. This saves a lot of money and time. I have a number of cookbooks that I refer to, pick my meals, write my list of ingredients (checking my cupboards to make sure I don’t already have some), do my shopping on one day, and food prep on the next. Because the recipes are ones that allow for freezing, my freezer is filled with a good selection. I live alone but this also works well for busy families.
Thanks for all the feedback, I am happy that this has been helpful. Also, some great additional tips!