4 Tips to Save Money on Food
Does the cost of feeding your family make you more than a little stressed? If you need tips and encouragement to save money on food but still feed your family healthy, nutritious meals, you’re in the right place.
I’m going to give you the tricks I’ve used over the last 30 years to cut how much money I spend on food. Some tricks I used in my early 20’s as a struggling student with little time and even less money. Others I started after I moved farther from town, had small children and going to the store was a large chore that felt costly in sanity and money. These are fairly simple tips but will make a big difference in the money and time spent on shopping for food.
Reduce Shopping Frequency
My first tip on saving money at the store is to reduce shopping frequency. How frequently do you go grocery shopping? Daily, weekly, sporadically, whenever you realize you need something for dinner? Now this is an item that can change significantly depending on your season of life. The best ways to reduce time at the store are to shop not more than once per week for perishables, not more than monthly (preferably quarterly) for everything else and keep a good inventory of what you have and how much you use per month.
Weekly for Extreme Perishables
I go to our little local grocery store about once per week. This shopping depends entirely on our milk usage. I’ll usually buy about 5 gallons of milk. (I haven’t taken the dive into getting a dairy animal yet) This will last us about one week. Basically, this weekly shopping is for milk, but I might also buy bananas or some other perishable item that can’t be grown or raised here. I always go with a list and I stick to the list! No strolling the isles. Go directly to the items you need and get out.
Now if you don’t have a family that drinks an insane amount of milk, this “perishables” shopping could easily be pushed out to once every 2 weeks. I would gladly do that myself, except I don’t have space to store 10 gallons of milk. If you buy something like bread, you can buy two weeks’ worth and freeze half for the second week. Many fruits and vegetables will last if you care for them properly when you get them home. Amy Cross has tons of outstanding instructions on the best way to store your fruits and veggies at www.thecrosslegacy.com/category/food-storage-hacks/.
The point here is to reduce the time you spend at the store. If you go less often, you’ll spend less money on things you don’t really need or that are too expensive. You know what I’m talking about. The stuff you buy when you hit the store after work, when you’re starving. The snacks your kids can’t live without. The super easy bag of chicken nuggets and deli potato salad. Yuck! That stuff is not good for your health or your budget.
Quarterly-Stock the Pantry & Freezer
To stock up on non-perishables and things that freeze well try to push your shopping out further. Try monthly then try to push it to every two months. Get this to a point where you are comfortable. Depending on the size of your family and your available space you might not be able to push it out quarterly. The point here is to always have the things you need to make meals at home and to learn to watch your inventory and not run out of anything essential.
Every three months (quarterly) I do a large shopping trip to our closest city which is about 90 miles away. This is where I’ll buy anything that has a long shelf life or that freezes well. I’ll also stock up on all the household supplies that aren’t food like toilet paper, laundry soap, etc. My goal is to never run out of anything essential so that I’m not forced to pay more than I have to for anything. I don’t want to shop at an expensive store, buy an expensive brand or buy an expensive small size of something I use frequently.
I’ve done this quarterly shopping for about 10 years, so I’ve got a good inventory list and know how much we use of most items. This is instrumental in making my weekly grocery run easy. I basically buy the same perishables every week, so I don’t need to rack my brain on what we need on a weekly basis.
Buy Ingredients not Meals
This is the concept of buying the ingredients to make a meal from scratch vs. buying some or all items premade. Not only is it cheaper to buy the ingredients, it’s also a lot healthier. If you read the labels on premade items, you will find a lot of ingredients that are not real food. Instead of buying a can of beef stew or chicken soup for $3, buy the ingredients for $10, make a huge pot and freeze at least half in portions for a quick meal later. Instead of one serving for $3 you’ll get about 12 servings for $10. You get the idea.
One thing to be aware of: watch out for recipes that have some fancy, expensive ingredient or spices. If there’s something on there you won’t use in another recipe and it’s expensive, find a different recipe or look for a substitute. If you’re pinching pennies ditch the fancy, hard to find, expensive ingredients. Keep it simple, healthy and affordable.
Eat Seasonally
This tip applies mostly to fruits and vegetables because, after all, they are seasonal. Biggest tip is to buy fruits and vegetables in season. It’s not rocket science that ears of corn are 12 for $1 in August but are 1 for $3 in May. Seasonal produce is cheapest when it’s in season and currently being harvested somewhere fairly close instead of in the other hemisphere. When it’s out of season, buy frozen or canned.
Now for full transparency here, I don’t buy many vegetables these days because I grow almost all the veggies we eat. I preserve what I grow for the winter months and we eat seasonally. So, in January we don’t really eat salads or have BLT’s (I refuse to buy tomatoes at the store) and we absolutely don’t eat watermelon in winter. If you’re really wanting to save, buy or grow vegetables in season, in bulk and learn to preserve them. Freezing is the easiest method for most people. Instructions for that are a post for another day.
Avoid Expensive Stores & Delivery
If you’ve spent time on any homesteader or from scratch cooking blogs, you will have seen talk about certain grocery delivery stores such as Thrive Market and Azure Standard. I will tell you that while I have not ordered anything from either, I have shopped their sites to compare pricing. I know they have organic products that are healthier options, but many of the products they carry can be bought elsewhere for significant savings. For example, I priced out a 50# bag of MorBread unbleached flour. On Azure it was $47.19, at Chef Store it was $23.89.
I absolutely understand that having groceries delivered is very handy and having options to pick from that are “vetted” to not contain crummy ingredients is also a time saver, but…if you are having a hard time with grocery prices and are trying your best to cut your grocery budget, these stores are not a way to do that.
Grocery stores vary by region
In Northern California, I shop at Winco, Chef Store, Costco and Walmart quarterly. Different items are available at better prices at these stores. Find four stores in your area to price the non-perishables for long term pantry filling. Make notes of where those items are most affordable. You might be able to get everything your family needs at one or two stores. In the years before kids, animals, canning, etc. I shopped at Winco almost exclusively.
There have been times in my life when it was difficult to afford food. I minimized meat and ate a lot of soup because it’s cheap to make. If you are really looking to be frugal, don’t shop expensive stores. This includes stores like Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Sprouts. You do not need to shop these stores to feed your family real, healthy food. Buy whole ingredients, like raw vegetables and meat and cook at home and you’ll be doing better than eating out or buying premade meals.
Start Saving Today by Making Small Changes
Begin saving money on your food budget by doing these four things: shop less frequently, buy ingredients, eat seasonally, and don’t shop at expensive stores. Start by taking an inventory of your cabinets, list the different meals you make & their ingredients and pay attention to how often you make those meals. At the same time quit shopping at expensive stores and buying anything premade. In a short amount of time, you should see savings enough to do a monthly or bimonthly shopping trip.
I realize buying all the food & household supplies your family needs for two or three months in one shopping trip is a big shock to the bank account and would seriously impact your household cash flow situation. This is not something you can just jump right into if you’re strapped for cash. But if you make the other changes like only going to the store weekly, not eating out, not shopping at expensive stores and not buying premade meals you can save now. Saving $100 per week by implementing those changes will save you $1,200 in 3 months and that should give you the boost to do a large shopping trip. Start small to work your way up to the larger goal and start saving money on food today.
