Back when Tim and I were rolling along on the debt snowball (paying off debt if you don’t know Dave’s lingo), I was a great grocery bargain shopper. I would shop all of the sales, clip coupons, and travel to about 4 different stores each week to get the best deals. Then a few things happened: we had a kid, finished paying off debt, Covid hit, and then had another kid. Suddenly, we were debt-free (not really suddenly, more like years in the making) and didn’t have to pinch pennies quite so hard. We moved into a new home, and a week later quarantine took hold. Bye-bye frequent grocery trips. Hello, Kroger pick-up, no contact, don’t look into anyone’s eyes, “why yes, I will pay $37 for that last pack of toilet paper”. Three months into that whole mess, we had Rose. With a covid-baby (and honestly just a newborn in general), we were mostly homebound and the time to search for the great grocery bargains of the week was spent in a myriad of over survival mode sleep-deprived activities……like napping….or showering….but never in the same day. At this point, Kroger with its free pickup became my best friend….best price, highest price, whatever…it was the easiest.
I’ve basically been trucking along with this method for the last three years, until a new magic thing happened……grocery prices suddenly decided to increase to obscene heights! I found myself speaking like a pioneer elder about how “back in my day, the price of coffee used to be $.05 a can”. A few years back, I actually kept a list of what item was the cheapest at what store so that I would know if a sale at another store was worth it. (Y’all, I was dedicated to this debt pay-off!) It was when I recently revisited this list that was last updated circa 2016 that I realized how much prices had increased. So, I have dusted my pinchers off and want to share with you my tried-and-true methods for saving money on groceries while still eating healthy.
- Make Restaurants a Treat. If you don’t follow any other suggestion on my list, heed this one. Restaurants are always more expensive than eating at home. Yes, even fast food. Need another motivator? You will lose weight if you eat at home thanks to massive portion size and crazy-ass random ingredients. Now, I love restaurants as much as anyone, but I love them even more in moderation. It makes it a treat instead of just a convenience. Aim for having a restaurant meal once per week. It gets easier with practice, and it will make you really think about what you want: a nice sushi date night for instance vs grabbing a drive-thru burrito.
- Shop Sales. I no longer go to 4 or 5 stores for my weekly shopping, but I do shop Aldi, Kroger, and Publix almost every week. All of these offer pick-up and delivery, so there’s really no “I don’t have time” excuse available anymore. Each store has weekly deals and often you can pair the digital coupons with the sale to get an extra saving. I used the site SouthernSavers for years to see where the best deals were each week. (Not endorsed, just a useful tool.) Publix has BOGO deals that rotate each week. So I will often go in and buy just those items. Tip: you don’t have to buy two. You can buy one of something and get it half price.
- Meal Plan. Meal planning is beyond simple & truly makes my life so much easier. Pick one evening and plan out your meals for the entire week. Make it fun by dusting off the old Pinterest board and trying out new recipes or stick to a schedule: Meatless Monday, Tuesday Taco Night, Wednesday is a Crockpot Meal, Thursday Leftovers, Friday Pizza Night, Saturday is Takeout, Sunday is Pasta. Whether creative or systematic, find a groove that works for you. The great thing about now is that you can literally create your online pick-up order as you plan. I then like to write the dinner for each night on a dry erase board and stick it on the fridge. This takes all of the guess work out of “what’s for dinner?” and keeps you from grabbing fast food as a default.
- Track Prices. Aldi and Costco are great for cutting back on costs….but not on everything. Don’t fall into thinking one store always is cheaper. The best way to know where to get the best deals is to write down what you spend on staples. Online shopping makes this soooo much easier as you can compare costs before you add them to your order. We tend to buy the same things over and over, so this gets much easier after the first couple of months.
- Stick to Real Food. There’s a misconception that healthy eating has to be expensive. In my opinion, this is simply a cop-out of convenience. Now, organic food is more expensive. No argument there. I still pick and choose which items I consider important enough to purchase organic. The EWG’s Dirty Dozen list can help you with which produce to prioritize. To be fair, junk food is also not cheap. In my area, a bag of Doritos will run you $5, a 12 pack of soda is $8, and a 6 count box of Pop Tarts is $4. Compare this to a can of mixed nuts: $4, a 12 pack of seltzer water: $3.50, and a canister of plain oats: $2.70. The healthy swaps are better for your wallet as well as your waistline. Plus, good quality fats (think olive oil, real butter, and avocado oil), protein (chicken, turkey, fish, nuts, eggs, quinoa), and fiber (beans, broccoli, apples, lentils) keep you full much longer than highly processed “foods”. You will actually eat less which equals less spending. Think quality over quantity.
- Budget. If you don’t know where your money is going, you will never gain control over it. Creating a budget was the first step I took to changing our finances forever. You can read more about my adventures in budgeting in this post. Truly seeing how much you spend on groceries and restaurants can be an unwelcome kick in the gut…which is a useful predecessor to a kick in the ass to get yourself in gear and back in control of your moolah.
- Waste Not. Channel your elders, and stop wasting food! Throwing things out is the same thing as burning your hard-earned cash. When creating your meal plan each week, make sure if you buy an ingredient, you use any excess in an additional meal. Shop your pantry and see what needs to be used up before buying more. Another tip I learned from my mother: almost everything can be frozen! Eat as much of that homemade chili as you can stomach, and then freeze for an easy dinner in a few months. Learn to love leftovers. This will save you money and time. A yummy casserole can carry you through two dinners, or be taken to work tomorrow for lunch. My fridge is hardly ever “stocked”. Meaning, I only keep on hand what I will use for the week. Especially when it comes to fresh fruits and veggies that expire quickly.
What do you do to cut back on the monthly food spending??
