The following is a guest post from Alexis Bonari, a freelance writer and blog junkie. She often can be found blogging about education and scholarships for college. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.
Keeping your grocery bill under control can be a challenge for even the most frugal consumer. Just about everyone whose even been grocery shopping can attest to the fact that it’s very easy to overspend. Go hungry, and you’re even more likely to pay too much for tasty convenience foods.
So, what steps can a frugal consumer take to reduce the cost of their grocery bill?
Here are four tips to take the edge off of your weekly food expenditure:
1. Go local.
Local food producers often provide discount prices on their goods. Better still, their products are more likely to be organic, and you’re supporting your local economy. Go to the local farmer’s market to find produce growers in your area. For meat, seek out farmers who will sell you beef and chicken in bulk. Consider buying a freezer for your garage. Organic, grain-fed beef can be bought at $6.00 per pound or less. Non-organic beef and chicken can be purchased for even less.
2. Plan ahead.
Don’t set foot in a grocery store without a list. If you have trouble sticking to a list, consider taking some non-conventional steps to ensure you stay on track. My family saves $50 per week on food simply by ordering online. Sure, it costs an extra $3 to order online and pick up your groceries at the store, but seeing the total summed up on the list before ordering eliminates impulse buys. While many families have no problem sticking to list while shopping, we do what works for us. Identify your weak points and deal with them in a way that works for you.
3. Grow your own.
The cost of high-quality vegetables has never been higher thanks to the long distance most produce is shipped before it ends up on your store’s shelves. Even a small garden in your backyard can provide enough tomatoes and other produce to last your family through the whole year. Canning is quickly coming back in style, and there are many good books detailing the process for beginners.
4. Cook in bulk.
Watch for sales on food items and make large quantities of foods that can be frozen. If eggs are on sale, for example, you can make spinach quiche to freeze and reheat on a night when you don’t want to cook. Most people have work and school obligations that make cooking a full meal on a nightly basis highly impractical. Cooking ahead can eliminate the temptation to eat out, thus saving a substantial amount of money.
Crystal Questions:
I use a few coupons and buy meat in bulk from Sam’s Club. What do you do to lower your grocery spending?
I have written this a million times, but I save a ton by combining store sales with coupons. You can save a ton on toothpaste and other ‘drugstore’ items by doing this, and CVS just rocks at savings.
I also cook in bulk. My crockpot is wonderful for that. Nothing like making a giant batch of soup and freezing some.
I generally shop the perimeter of the store and try to avoid the junk food in the middle. (not a savings tip, but more of a health tip). I buy seasonal fruit and I try to plan my meals ahead of time so I know exactly what I want to buy. I also am not brand-loyal, except on a few things.
@Everyday Tips, CVS does rock! I was pretty happy with myself a couple of weeks ago by using two $25 CVS coupons for bringing in two new prescriptions for Mr. BFS’s $7 medicines after dental work. $14 in medicine became $50 in CVS gift cards.
Woot!
“Organic, grain-fed beef”
Isn’t this a misnomer?
I need to make friends with a farmer. Meat is so expensive at the supermarket even for the regular stuff. Organic is almost impossible to find; they don’t even bother labeling the meat here cause it’s all more or less the same thing.
I really need to get me a SAM Club membership!!!
Currently, I’m thinking of buying some more corn from the family on the way to my house from work
Excellent article on a subject I have been thinking alot about lately.
I raised my own organic beef for years. The price came out to $1.25 per pound last time I checked. Yes, our freezer was probably valued at about $6,000. I will be sharing more about this in the blog in future months. In thinking about saving money on shopping I keep coming back to learning about cooking. If free fruit is available it costs about $1 to make a pie. Love that you are promoting raising your own vegetables. Yes!
@Kevin, we get small steaks from Sam’s for $2.97/lb. They aren’t perfectly tender, but they are very tasty…especially with Mr. BFS’s rubs.
@Money Reasons, I love corn on the cob, love it! Buy some for me too. If you have a Discover card, you can use the cash back to get a Sam’s Club annual membership for $40 (like usual) but you also get a $10 gift card.
@Carol, wow, raising your own beef and vegetables is really impressive! I’m really glad you didn’t lose power while your freezer was filled with yumminess!
We support a local CSA, which is more expensive at the beginning but the amount of money we save in impulse buying makes up for it. Plus all the money goes to support the local economy, a great bonus.
After 10yrs of gardening I became a square foot gardener this summer! I love the clean look of my garden!
I was able to make the biggest dent in my grocery budget when we tracked every item for 2 months. We compared what we spent to how we thought or wanted to spend and saw it was two different stories. More money went to processed foods and alcohol then we wanted. The data convinced us to make changes. I buy cheaper and less alcohol and we make most of our food from scratch now. We spend 45% less on groceries now.
Another alternative for beef is splitting the cow with other families. Depending on where you live you can purchase a ‘live’ cow in early spring, the rancher will deliver it (dead) the following winter to a local butcher and package it up. We’ve done it for years.
Yes, Molly. You got the idea. Home grown beef is the best!
@Jenna, that sounds good to me. I still need to see if I can find a CSA near our side of town…
@Molly On Money, sounds like you have a fantastic system! Watching our expenses down to a penny keeps us from eating out every day…I love budgets.
Now, I haven’t been the best of late with organizing my food purchases, due to a hectic schedule. Not good, in fact! However, I can certainly agree with the idea of planning ahead. If you buy what you need and plan your meals, you won’t waste money on: A) Wasted, expired groceries, and B)Impulse purchases outside. Planning and discipline can save quite a bit, when annualized.
These are some awesome tips. I think the most important thing is to go in with a plan and execute! Don’t go in without knowing exactly what you’ll need otherwise you’ll be anything and everything, especially the stuff on sale. A list is great. And especially don’t go when you’re hungry!
@Squirrelers, yep, I’ve been pretty bad lately too. If Mr. BFS doesn’t tell me he has plans to cook something specific, I end up eating out more or having a heck of a lot of sandwiches…
@Andrew, I made all of those mistakes yesterday. I had a “general” idea and I was hungry and I ended up getting Twizzlers and Ziploc containers that were not on my list (the sales got me, lol).
We buy a few specific items at Sam’s Club and always make a list (and plan our meals ahead) before going grocery shopping. We also grow some basil so we can make pesto (yum!).
@BFS – Check out: http://www.localharvest.org/csa/
@Rob, basil is a good idea. It grows like a weed in our heat and humidity. We use it for our spaghetti sauce.
@Jenna, thanks!
Eat in season. When corn is fresh in season, eat it more often, then not so often til it’s back in season. Even if you don’t garden, plan your meals as though you were using up what is ripe and ready in your garden. Fresh food out of season is usually grown in a hot house or imported from the Southern Hemisphere, at significant expense.
@Cathy, great point – I eat way more fresh fruit during the summer than I do during the winter due to that. It works pretty well for our food budget.
@BFS – Anytime. Let me know if you sign up. I’d love to know your thoughts. We just got a TON of zucchini from our CSA – hello zucchini bread!
Dave Ramsey has great meal plans and “ways to save” on his website. There are also many other nation-wide financial advisers; however, I have personally been through financial peace university with Dave Ramsey. Food budgeting can be great, Dave recommends beans and rice or tuna. To get fluffy white rice, it can only be made with a rice cooker.
[...] Budgeting In the Fun Stuff: Developing a Frugal Food Habit: 4 Tips For Lowering Your Grocery Bill [...]
[...] Developing a Frugal Food Habit: 4 Tips For Lowering Your Grocery Bill [...]
[...] seeing my parents balancing their checkbooks. I remember watching them write the checks for groceries, gas, and a number of other things. One thing that I don’t really remember is ever being [...]
[...] enough of the local peaches and strawberries. During their actual seasons, I can pick them up at local grocery stands way cheaper than usual [...]
[...] of the local peaches and strawberries. During their actual seasons, I can pick them up at local grocery stands way cheaper than usual too. Categories: [...]