Grocery shopping can be a time-consuming, stressful and expensive experience. And that’s why there are so many tips out there on how to save money at the store. Here are six ways to get your grocery budget back on track.
Grocery shopping has always been a challenge for me. We are a family of five (teens and adults) with an average weekly grocery budget of $225. With recent price hikes, our grocery bill began increasing to almost $325 per week, and the saddest part is that our refrigerator and pantry were never full. After three weeks of this trend, I decided to buckle down and take some action. I’ve managed to come up with a system that has kept our bill at around $250 per week while keeping us fed.
If you are faced with a similar challenge when grocery shopping, keep reading. Maybe one (or more) of these tips can help.
1. Take inventory
Before grocery shopping, I start by taking inventory of what I currently have in my pantry, refrigerator, and freezer. This allows me to see what is hiding that can be used for future meals as well as what needs replenishing. While I do this, I also clean, which is an added bonus.
2. Check the sales
You can check your market sales by going online or reviewing any ads that come in the mail. I find this helpful when planning my meals and creating my list.
3. Plan your meals
To be honest, I am not a huge meal planner so I create a general plan for the week, knowing that if I buy the right ingredients, I can switch it up. If you are more of a strict meal prepper, this should be easy for you. If you want some tips for meal prepping, check out this article I found for prepping meals. I plan to give it a whirl.
4. Don’t go grocery shopping when hungry
You’ve probably heard this before and I totally agree with this. For me, it leads to lots of snack foods in the cart. I also tend to add more than I need of produce, which sometimes leads to waste later in the week.
5. Don’t always bring your kids grocery shopping
Of course, if you have no choice in the matter, then bring your kids. I started to leave my teens at home periodically and found the bill reduced greatly. I love getting them the foods they want to eat, but their impulse buys were killing my budget.
On the flip side, bringing them is a good way to teach them shopping strategies, so bringing them once in a while is probably just fine.
6. Be flexible
A list works well for me. However, sometimes the items on my list are way more expensive than they were the week before. When this happens, I ask myself if I really need to have that item this week and if not, I look for alternatives.
These are just a few tips that help me keep my grocery bill as close to normal as possible. It takes some creativity and a little discipline, but it is worth it. Hope you find them helpful. If you have not yet created a budget, or need some inspiration to do so, check out this article I wrote about budgets. It may help.