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Cutting your Grocery Budget

 

Food is one of the main areas where people spend more than they could, and often nutrition can be improved as cost cutting measures are employed. Here are a few steps to cutting down your food bill.

 

  • First and foremost, remember that the cheapest food possible isn't a good deal if it leads to poor health and the ensuing doctor bills. Always spend the extra money to purchase high quality fats and dairy, plenty of veggies, pastured meats and get organic where you can. Avoid artificial preservatives, chemicals and colorings, white flour and white sugar.  Eat more fat and less carbs.
  • Log the good sales into a price book so you can keep track of when prices hit their lowest. Once you figure out that a particular meat comes on sale at its lowest price every 6 weeks, you can plan to buy 6 weeks worth of it once it's on sale and save the difference to invest in other good deals. More on a price book is below.
  • Next try to find thrifty recipes or modify the recipes to which your family is accustomed to fit the sale items and the items on hand. Can you reduce and change the amount of sugar? Substitute a cheaper or more nutritious grain? Change the type of meat the recipe calls for? Increase the amount of vegetables? Replace a packaged or processed product? My cooking website has a listing of replacement recipes for packaged and processed items here. Help on replacing poor ingredient choices with healthier options are listed here.
  • Secondly, build a menu for the breakfasts, lunches and snacks for the week to go in addition to the menu mailer shopping list and menu. Anticipate your leftovers and plan them for lunches, and plan a day at the end of the week to clear out any remaining leftovers for lunch or dinner. Having a menu also allows you to have a plan written out when you need to do things like soak beans and grains and pull meat out to thaw. This helps prevent stopping for take-out because you got home late and forgot to thaw the meat.
  • Make the rest of your shopping list off of what you need to buy that you don't have in your freezer or pantry.  If you have anything left in the budget, buy extra items that are on a good sale that week according to your price book, and put into your pantry. You'll know how much to buy based off of how often your price book tells you that particular item comes on sale. Eventually, you will have a well-stocked pantry and will be able to devote the bulk of your budget to stocking the pantry and freezer with the items you use regularly at their lowest prices instead of items needed for that week.
  • Look for unadvertised sales and marked down meats once you're at the store, and change your menu and shopping list if needed for the week.
  • Also, be aware that some stores will match other store's advertised specials that aren't percent off or B1G1F, so you might be able to save yourself a trip if a store has only one or two good deals. You'll also be able to note if they raise the prices for or prior to a particular item for a B1G1F sale, which is a very common but deceptive practice.

 

As you build a collection of healthy recipes and recipes to replace packaged and processed items, you'll find your food budget dropping. Then once your pantry is well-stocked with items that you use on a regular basis, your bill will drop further.

 

If your budget is more flexible, you can stock up on sale items more quickly. You can also plan and cook two or more weeks worth of meals off of the sales flyers for one week. By doing all the cooking at one time, you save on electricity and time and water. It takes about the same amount of time to energy to cook 2 cups of rice as it does 10. The remaining rice can be placed into the freezer for use at a future meal, and you only have one pot to wash instead of washing that same pot 5 times. This saves a lot of time spent cooking and washing dishes.

 

To make a price book I take a pock-sized notebook or a very small binder and write the name of the particular staple food at the top of the page. I then make five columns. The first lists the store, the second column lists the brand of the item, the third lists the size, the fourth lists the price, and the fifth lists the price per ounce/pound/unit. If you are limited to certain brands due to food allergies or intolerances, this allows you to keep track of the same items at different stores. Once you get a baseline price at each store listed, you can stick to looking at the sales flyers and looking for unadvertised sales when you're at a store picking up sale items.

 

Here's an example using fictitious prices for lentils:

Store

Brand

Price

Ounces

Price per Pound

Harris Teeter

Arrowhead Mills

1.75

1 lb

$1.75/lb

Harris Teeter

Goya

.99

1 lb

$.99/lb

Food Lion

Goya

.92

1 lb

$.92/lb

Food Lion

Goya

.89 on sale

1 lb

$.89/lb

Wal-mart

Goya

.85

1 lb

$.85/lb

Wal-mart

Great Value

.62

12 oz

$.8266/lb

Whole Foods

Arrowhead Mills

1.81

1 lb

$1.81/lb

This list can be expanded to keep track of the prices of anything that you buy routinely, from pantyhose to trash bags. This book will be a huge help to you when you find an unadvertised sale or food available in unusual places, or have the opportunity to purchase something in bulk. If your family is large enough to go through a 50-lb bag of dried beans or rice in a year, or you can split it with some friends, this can help you determine if the price is good.