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One of the most effective ways to reduce your monthly expenses and save money is to buy your own groceries and cook meals at home. To get the most out of your grocery budget, here are a few recommendations for how to shop for groceries on a budget.
Table of Contents
How Much to Budget for Food
Not everyone’s budget is going to be the same because people have different values and there are varying sizes of families.
However, the USDA does publish a report that goes into the average amount spent by families based on members of family (1-4 members) and age. They break the report up into 4 different meal plan pricing categories: thrifty plan, low-cost plan, moderate-cost plan, and liberal plan. To see the most recent report, visit USDA Food Plans: Cost of Food Reports.
You can use this report to give you a rough baseline of how you’re doing compared to the average American family.
Track Your Spending on Food
To get started on your grocery budget, first determine how much you spend already. You can do this with a simple monthly budget or you can use programs like Mint or You Need a Budget (YNAB).
Once you know how much you spend, look through where you spend the most on food. Do you eat out a lot? Are there items you are buying from the grocery store with regularly that are really expensive like lobster, steak, etc.?
Consider What’s Important to You
Next, consider what budget items are important to you. Do you highly value your health and feel it’s necessary to buy organic or grass-fed? Are you a coffee connoisseur?
When deciding on what areas to cut expenses, practice mindful spending. Consider whether each item makes you happy, fits your values, and is the best use of your money.
Review Your Spending and Look at Areas Where you Can Cut Spending
Next, consider what items you typically buy or have bought in the past and consider what groceries you could do without. Consider the quantity and quality. Also consider where you are buying these food items.
Are there opportunities to buy generic where you were buying name brand? Have you considered not eating meat at least one night a week? Is there a Walmart or other discount grocery store you can go to instead of the grocery store you’re using?
Finalize Your Monthly and Weekly Food Budget
Once you’ve determined how much you’ve been spending and have cut everything from that budget you feel can be cut, you have the basis for your food budget. Plug this into your budget and start working toward your monthly grocery budget.
Continue Tracking and Updating your Budget as Necessary
Keep tracking your budget at least monthly and make changes as necessary to your monthly grocery budget. The longer you do it, the better you’ll become at sticking to it and identifying additional ways to cut spending along the way.
Create a Meal Plan
Once you have a monthly food budget, break it down into weekly amounts and start creating a meal plan for the week (or two weeks depending on your shopping frequency).
Assess What Food You Already Have
To get started, assess what food you already have. Do you have leftover beans or rice? Do you have meat or produce from a previous grocery shopping trip that need to be eaten soon?
Create a quick list of the items that need to be used soon.
You’ll most likely always have a few staples leftover from your previous shopping trip like eggs, milk, butter, bread, etc., but the more you shop for groceries on a budget, the better you’ll get at using the items you buy from the store and the less food you’ll have left over.
Check Sales at Your Local Grocery Stores
Next, check the sales at your local grocery stores. Usually, they’ll have items on sale that are related to a certain theme (i.e. Mexican, Italian, grilling out, etc.) or are seasonal (i.e. turkey at thanksgiving, hamburgers approaching July 4th, etc.)
Try to Select Meals for the Week Based off of What’s on Sale
Using the items you already have and the items on sale, look for recipes that utilize those ingredients. Usually you’ll find a variety of recipes to choose from. Consider what recipes will be for which meals. Make sure to have something chosen for each meal (i.e. breakfast, lunch, and dinner).
Recipes can be as simple as a sandwich or scrambled eggs, or as complex as Boeuf Bourguignon.
Make a Shopping List
Using the recipes you’ve chosen, write down the ingredients you’ll need to pick up at the grocery store.
When you’re creating a list, consider whether it’s a recipe that you would like to make in bulk and freeze a portion of for later.
Either Order Ahead or Bring the List with you to the Grocery Store
Using your shopping list, either order ahead or bring a copy of the list with you to the grocery store. Check off the items as you put them in the cart.
Don’t waste all the time and effort you spent making the list by either leaving it at home or just ignoring it altogether.
Be Flexible
When you’re at the grocery store, be a little flexible. If you have asparagus on your list and notice that broccoli is 1/3 the price and will still work, consider buying the broccoli.
Because you did research by preparing a recipe ahead of time, you should know what items you can substitute if the opportunity presents itself.
Substitute with Frozen
If you’re recipe calls for fresh fruits or vegetables, but it’s not in season, consider using frozen fruits and vegetables for your recipes.
Often times, fresh fruits and vegetables that are out of season are both more expensive and of lower quality because of the distance it has to travel to get to you.
Eat Less Meat
In most cases, meat is going to be the most expensive part of your grocery list. If you need to save money on your groceries, consider going meatless for one or two meals a week.
Shop in Bulk
For items that have a long shelf life and are used with regularity, consider buying in bulk. This includes items like beans, rice, pasta, canned items, cereal, nut butters, etc. Buying in bulk will typically be cheaper than the counterpart.
If you do buy in bulk, make sure it’s something you’re going to eat before it spoils. As a rule of thumb, try not to buy anything in bulk that’s going to take you more than a month or two to eat.
Cook Meals in Bulk and Use Your Freezer
To make your life a little easier and to save some time, consider picking recipes that can be made in bulk and frozen into separate meal portions. This allows you to cook once, but have access to leftovers for weeks.
As a rule of thumb, try to eat your frozen leftovers within a few weeks of freezing them to ensure the highest freshness.
Keep a Rough Tally of How Much You’re Spending
When you’re at the grocery store, try to keep a rough tally of how much you’re spending. A good rule of thumb is to round up to the nearest dollar. If you do this, you’ll ensure the final checkout price is less than what you estimated.
Pay attention to the prices at the store. If they don’t match up with the prices advertised in the sale, find out why. You don’t want to get to the checkout line thinking that you were going to get the sale price only to find out there was a problem with the advertised sale price (i.e. wrong item, new sales, etc.)
Stay on Budget While in the Grocery Store
Since you’re keeping a rough tally of how much you’re spending on groceries, you should know whether you’re staying on budget. It’s tempting to add items to the shopping cart that aren’t on the list. To stay on budget, you need to fight this impulse.
Develop the habit of being intentional with your grocery purchases because if you’re not, grocery stores and supermarkets use various marketing tricks to encourage you to spend money.
Why I Don’t Typically Use Coupons
From time to time, we utilize coupons when we go to the grocery store, but for the most part, we don’t bother with coupons. Most of the recipes we cook involve fresh produce, meat, and simple sides. Many of the items we buy aren’t brand name and/or just don’t have coupons available for them.
If you’re interested in saving money on your groceries outside of coupons, an app that we’ve used is Ibotta. It’s an app that earns you cash back on your grocery shopping (as well as other retailers). The way it works is you add your shopping list items to Ibotta, go shopping, and take a picture of your receipt to redeem the cash back. It’s a few more steps than just going grocery shopping, but it’s worth the little extra effort. If you’re interested, you can sign up here.
It Gets Easier with Time
The more you go through these steps, the easier it gets with time. You’ll develop a good feel for what recipes you can make with different sale items and a rough idea of how much each meal will cost.
Staying on a food budget doesn’t have to be painful or feel like you’re depriving yourself. Mix it up from week to week and treat yourself from time to time and you’ll have no problem being healthy and happy, all the while staying on budget.
How do you shop for groceries on a budget? What is your budget for the month?