I am not generally known as being a penny pincher. As a matter of fact, my friends’ husbands cringe when we get the rare opportunity to go shopping together, and some actually try to forbid it! But that doesn’t mean I haven’t learned a few things about saving money over the years, thanks to the wisdom of some creatively frugal friends, a moneywise mother who used to be an accountant, and economy that doesn’t seem to want to cooperate with my spending plans. So I am dedicating this entire week to saving money, since it is something that everyone is preoccupied with these days! I am going to cover everything from food to fashion, beauty to stuff for the kids!
Here, my top ideas for saving on groceries:
1. Start with What You Already Have: As I recently confessed, I have way too much food in my house. I am so blessed because, with the amount on stuff stashed in my pantry, freezers and refrigerators, we can eat pretty well for a long time. So I have made it a policy to start with what I have, and find recipes that work with those ingredients. One of the easiest ways to do this is to just Google the ingredients you already have or want to use up, for example potatoes and chicken thighs, or whatever, and you’ll easily find oodles of recipes with those ingredients. Then you only need to buy any supplemental ingredients you may need.
2. Pay attention to the BOGOs: My grocery store, Publix, posts its buy one get one offers online, which makes it easy to plan your grocery shopping. If you can be flexible on some brands, then you can really save a lot of money. For example, I am not enough of a foodie to care about the brand of olive oil I buy, so when Publix has a buy-one-get-one on olive oil, I always buy it, even though I don’t need it right away. It lasts a long time, and I know I will get to it eventually.
3. Stock up when it makes sense: My husband has a few staples that he always likes to have around the house: Triscuits, Cracklin’ Oat Bran cereal, and Tropicana, to name a couple, so when any of these items go on sale, I stock up and stash them wherever I have a little extra space. Just make sure that the items you stokc up on are items you will actually use.
4. Be Judicious at the Big Box Stores: I find that there are very few items that I actually benefit from buying in massive quantities and huge, inconvenient packages. Paper products are one of them, since we seem to go through a lot of paper towels, toilet paper and tissues. But I will never go through buckets of tomato sauce, pounds of pasta, or gargantuan bags of Doritos. Also, if you compare prices, not everything is cheaper at those big-box stores. It’s better to buy smaller quantities of fresher food than to have huge quantities of food quickly going stale on a shelf in your home.
5. Consider Coupons: I haven’t started dabbling in coupons yet, but if you find a good coupon site or guru, and are diligent about it, you can save oodles of money. We’ve all heard tales of women who load up on a cart full of groceries and only pay pennies on the dollar, thanks to some creative couponing.
6. Put Health First: I know this might sound like odd advice when I am talking about saving money, but almost without fail, the most expensive foods are the processed ones, and they are generally awful for you anyway. With a little planning, you can prepare most of these things at home, create healthier meals for your family, and save money as well. If you cut out the fast food and the corn chips and particularly the packaged baked goods, you can afford to splurge where it counts, which in my opinion is organic produce, meats, and dairy.
7. Make a List: You are a lot more likely to overspend, and to wind up with a bunch of junk you don’t need anyway. Create a realistic menu for the week (I usually shop for two to three recipes, and make something simple, like pasta, on one of the other nights), make a list, and stick to it as much as possible. Sure, if you find a great deal on something you use all the time, then go ahead and buy it, but in general, try to stick to your list. You might also go on your store’s website in advance and use the sales and specials to help you with menu ideas.
8. Make Your Own Frozen Foods: No, I am not talking about leftovers, at least not exactly. But since I find that my family tends to eat far less food than I usually make, particularly when I am making a one dish meal or something in the slow cooker, I have started immediately freezing the leftovers, labeling them, and serving them on one of those crazy days when I have no time to cook. This strategy has been a real lifesaver!
9. Avoid the Pseudo-Bargains: These are items that seem appealing but that you really don’t need, and that don’t deserve a place in your home. I recently spotted Chips Ahoy cookies on a Buy One Get One free table, and I walked quickly past. Those are not going to do my clean-eating program any favors. I am not always the world’s healthiest eater, but I do know better than to have tons of junk in my house. If it’s not there, I can’t eat it.
10. Make Your Own Convenience Foods: It doesn’t take long to whip up a batch of healthy trail mix and put it into individual packages, or make some breakfast bars to grab on your way out the door. It would be the easiest thing in the world to scramble a bunch of eggs or egg whites, throw in some frozen spinach and a little cheese, slip it into some whole grain English muffins, wrap each one individually, and have a super-quick healthy breakfast whenever you are in a hurry. It’s easy and a lot healthier and less expensive than the sodium-laden prepackaged kind!
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