4 Ways to Save Money Grocery Shopping

🛒Groceries are sky-high right now, so I have put together four tips and tools I have used over the last five years.

✨The tools together and in isolation work well to help you be more strategic with your time, save money, and provide healthy and good food for your family.

👀Identify Your Family Staples

Knowing the staples your family uses will:

1. Save you time
2. Save you money
3. Make sure you have a foundation to cook a good meal at any time

💬 Staples are food items you use regularly to prepare and cook.

For example:

• Staples in my household include tomato paste, chicken broth, rice, black beans, brown sugar, oatmeal, turkey bacon, shrimp, minced garlic, sour cream, etc.

Things to keep in mind:

• Your staples list is on what your family eats regularly, not what you wish you would eat.
• Your staples may rotate during seasons.
• A family’s staples are personal, don’t focus on what others do.

🧠 Choose Your Store Wisely

It is so important that you know the typical cost of specific staple items at the different local stores you shop at so that you can get the items most cost-effectively.

✨Keeping a list of the typical cost of your staples will help you know where the best place to buy something is, which will save you time and money. It takes more leg work up front but saves you money on the back end. 

✍️ wRITE IT ouT: wHAT ARE YOUR STAPLES?

For example, I’ve learned that:

• Aldi has the best prices for meat in my community
• Walmart has the best prices for dry goods
• Kroger has the best sales for dairy, chips, butter, and ice cream

Things to keep in mind:

• You can stock up on specific items from one store once a month to save the time of going to multiple stores regularly.
• You may decide that you are trading convenience for money, so only go to one store. If so, I recommend choosing the best store based on your research.

💰Buy Food In Season

🍓You can buy food and store it in preparation for its future use.

✨For example, I cut fruits and veggies my family uses regularly and then freeze them for later consumption. So, a step I will be taking in the upcoming weeks is buying, cutting, and freezing strawberries, peaches, and other produce that’s in season (and cheap) so that we can save money in the fall time.

Side note: My family drinks smoothies every week and it is cheaper to buy fresh fruit from my local fruit market and cut it than buy frozen, so I choose to trade my time with convenience.

🥫Buying Food Promoted During Certain Seasons

Each season, there is typically seasonally promoted food you can buy cheaply.

For example:

• Right now, hotdogs are super cheap, which means it’s a great season to stock up if you/your kids eat a lot of them. 
• In the early fall, beans, chicken broth, diced tomatoes, and sauce tend to go on sale, which is when I will stock up on them. 
• During the fall and winter holidays, butter tends to go on sale. 

✍️ wRITE IT ouT: Are there any items you need to grab?

🧺 Waiting on Great Sales

Once in a while, there is a great sale, which provides a great opportunity to stock up on items.

For example:

• Arm and Hammer 50 oz Laundry Detergent goes on sale to buy one, get one free at Kroger every few months.

• At face value, it doesn’t seem like a great sale, but getting 100 oz (50 +50) for $5.99 is a STEAL because 105 oz is almost $9. But if you stock up, you can save money in the long run. 

✍️Plan Around Your Income

✨Monthly, you may not have the same amount of money to spend on groceries. Or it may be best to buy most of your groceries during certain times of the month. By strategically planning grocery shopping with the future in mind, you’re able to:

• Stress less
• Make wiser decisions
• Balance the type of food you’re providing

For example:

• It’s easier and wiser for my family to set aside money the first week of the month but spend it the second week. 🧡
• If we have an expense coming up next month that will dramatically impact our budget, like a ticket (😭 REAL LIFE), we may decide to spend a little bit more money on food this month because we may not be able to afford to spend a lot of money on food next month. 

💬 Do you have any tips to save money grocery shopping? Please share them below!💖 ↓