One Time Changes to Save Money

There are several one-time changes you can make that will save you money over and over every time you shop for food!

First, shop at a discount grocer. If you’re used to shopping at a high-end grocery store, you’ll be shocked by how much money you can save by shopping at an Aldi or Walmart instead. You don’t have to buy all of your food from the discount grocer, but even just shopping there for staples like bread, rice, pasta, and canned foods will save you money. If you’re not ready to give up your regular grocery store, just shop there for produce, meats, and specific items you can’t find at your discount grocer. This is the single biggest change that reduced our grocery budget to just $250 to $300 per month for two people.

Additionally, get a loyalty card for your grocery store. Some grocery stores’ loyalty programs give you access to exclusive sales, coupons, and discounts, and they’re free to sign up for! Others provide gas rewards every time you buy your food. You can also get a rewards credit card that pays you cash back or points for grocery purchases.

I also recommend watching as your items are being scanned at the checkout counter. Sometimes a sale that you saw on the shelves won’t register, and if you’re not paying attention you might end up paying full price. At the end, scan your receipt before you leave to make sure everything was rung up at the price you saw on the shelves when you were shopping. One time, a jar of spices I bought rung up to $17. I saw it on my receipt even though I had missed it when it was being scanned, and I was able to go to customer service right away to ask about the price or return it.

Plan Ahead

Meal planning can save you a lot of money on your groceries. By planning recipes that use the same kinds of ingredients, you can make sure nothing gets wasted. If a recipe needs an obscure ingredient you’re pretty sure you’ll only use once, google a more common substitute.

Also plan to use up leftovers from meals by repurposing them into new meals or eating them for lunch the next day. If you go out to eat, take any leftovers home and eat them later. This will help you cut back on food waste and save money.

Inventory your staples, such as pantry items and frozen foods, so you know what you have. This will keep you from over-buying and will prevent food waste. You also don’t have to follow expiration dates to the minute. Often, expiration dates are very conservative, and the food is still good for a little while after it expires. Use your judgment before throwing something out like frozen broccoli that is a day past its expiration date.

Once you plan your meals and see what you already have on hand, you can come up with a detailed grocery list. Going to the store with a grocery list will help you stop impulse purchases and buy only what you need.

By knowing what you have and what you need, you can also go on fewer shopping trips each month. I’ve found that shopping once a week ends up being much more expensive than shopping once a month. This is because the more you shop, the more opportunities you have to be tempted by the candy in the checkout lane, or junk food you don’t need, or an item you see that you want to try on a whim. If once a month is too extreme for you, try going to the grocery store every two weeks.

Change How You Shop

Make sure you pay attention to the prices when you’re shopping. This way, you’ll know when you’re getting a good deal. When you know that, you can stock up on items when they are on sale or at a particularly good price. It can help if you keep a price list, which is a list of what the cheapest prices for common items are, and what stores they are generally the lowest price at. For example, we know that our preferred brand of peanut butter is about a dollar cheaper at Walmart than our local grocery store, so whenever we are in Walmart, we make sure to grab a jar or two.

Another great way to save money while grocery shopping is to go alone. Don’t bring the kids, or your partner, unless they are an accountability partner. My partner is actually a great grocery store companion because he reminds me that we don’t want junk food in the house because then we will have to spend the willpower to not eat it. It’s easier to have willpower once a week at the store than every night in your kitchen. So when I pick up the pack of nutter butters he makes me put it back down. When you don’t have multiple people adding unnecessary stuff to the cart, it makes it easier to only shop for what you really need.

Finally, don’t shop when you’re hungry. Most of the time when I come home with a bunch of snacks that weren’t on my grocery list, it’s because I walked into the grocery store hungry. Take a minute to eat a small snack like a granola bar before you head to the grocery store, or try to go shopping right after you eat a meal.

Cook Easy Meals at Home

One obvious way to save money on food is to eat at home more. I’m not saying you need to completely cut out restaurants, but by limiting restaurant meals to special meals that you can’t make at home, you’ll get much more bang for your buck.

Breakfast and brunch are often much more expensive at restaurants than at home. Eggs and toast cost less than a dollar, and pancakes are cheap and easy to make at home.

Instead of spending $10 on a salad for lunch at a restaurant,  you could pack a salad for $2. Sandwiches or soups are other easy and cheap lunch ideas.

Even for dinner, it’s easy to structure meals around cheap basics, like pasta, rice, potatoes, or beans. Find a few easy recipes to make at home that your family loves, and then when you go out you can spend money to get meals that aren’t simple to make at home. 

Make it even easier to cook at home with these 49 kitchen hacks that will save you time. By cooking easy meals at home, you can cut down your restaurant visits and takeout orders to once or twice a week. Eating at home more instead of eating out can save you a lot of money!

Shop in Season and for Store Brands

Have you noticed that it’s really expensive to buy strawberries in the winter? They’re also not as great quality as they are in the summer. That’s because they’re out of season in the United States, and so they have to be shipped really far from South America for us to have them in the winter. This means more fuel is spent getting them to our grocery stores, and the prices are higher. You can save money by buying produce when it’s in season and locally abundant, like watermelon in the summer, peaches in the fall, and squash in the winter.

By buying store brands of the same items you usually get, you can save money without sacrificing quality. Did you know that the store brand and the name brand items are usually made in the same factory – and are therefore the same EXACT thing? At the Domino sugar factory, they put the Domino bags on the assembly line and fill them up, and right after that they put the store brand bags on the line and fill those. There is no difference in quality for many staple store brand foods.

You’ll also save money by avoiding pre-cut and pre-prepared foods. Chopping peppers and onions yourself can save you 50% on the pre-cut stuff. Additionally, purchasing pre-cooked foods from the hot bar is going to be more expensive, because the store has to pay someone to prepare it. Instead, get frozen food that can easily be thrown in the oven or microwave to make a quick meal.

Finally, cut down on junk foods. Not only are junk foods unhealthy, but they’re also just not cost-effective. You can buy more quality calories in the forms of fruit and vegetables than you can that $3 bag of chips or a bottle of soda.