For many people, the grocery bill is one of their largest monthly expenses. Fortunately, you can easily save money on groceries this week — and every week after that — with a little pre-planning and a lot of creative frugality.
Nix the Takeout
Life is busy; so, for many singles and couples, eating takeout is almost a given. And if you have children who take part in extracurricular activities, eating out often seems like a necessity.
One 30-something estimated she are her fiance were spending far too much on meals several times a week. On top of that, they were wasting even more cash every weekday on lunch. However, when she planned out her meals and prepped them for the week, she saved more than $100 – every week.
The takeaway: Establish a monthly restaurant budget and, once it’s gone, stop eating out.
Plan Your Meals
Once you decide to cut out all the takeout and late-night pizzas, it’s time to figure out your meals for the coming week. Planning ahead saves you time and money; it also helps limit your restaurant bills.
Think about your favorite foods and how they relate to one another. For example, consider having a chicken week where you make chicken in a variety of ways. You can then use those leftovers for salads. This will allow you to buy in bulk and save even more.
Stock Up During Sales
Grocery stores have sales cycles where they offer different items at a discount at different times. They also have loss leaders, which are amazingly cheap deals meant to get people in their store. For example, supermarkets usually offer turkeys at ridiculously cheap prices during the holidays, hoping that shoppers will buy enough regular-priced items to make up for it. Not you, though; you’re smarter than that.
With that in mind, if you know that chicken goes on sale every first Sunday at your local grocer, you can save a significant sum of cash by purchasing enough chicken to last the entire month. And by Using coupons and rebate apps for items you’d buy anyway, you’ll save even more.
Utilize a Food Prep Day
Set aside a day you use for food prep. Even if you simply start by taking your lunch to work, use a day to prepare those meals and separate them into grab-and-go containers. Food-prep containers are available at Groupon or Amazon that are perfect for this purpose.
Many people come to love cooking on one day and then reheating throughout the week — just keep in mind that some items will not keep all week long. For example, you shouldn’t eat chicken that’s been refrigerated longer than three days. So, if you cook chicken on Sunday and want to eat it through Friday, you’ll have to freeze some and thaw it midweek.
If you’ve planned your meals, then you probably already have similar meals grouped together, so you may only need to cook chicken, rice and some veggies on meal-prep day. Then, put together salads as a side dish, and heat and eat throughout the week.
Plan Ahead
Having simple foods on hand will allow you to eat at home even on the busiest of days; some even help you reduce the $1600 in wasted food a family of four averages each year. For example, when you cook a meal and have leftovers, you can freeze them for use later as lunch or individual meals, or you can cook double and freeze a complete meal.
Your slow cooker is your best friend for those days packed with activities. Simply put your meal in the crock pot and go to work or activities. When you return home, enjoy the delicious smell of your meal, which will be ready to eat at your leisure. Even better, slow cookers tend to make meats more tender — even the cheapest cuts! You can also use more than one slow cooker and have the side in one and the meat in another.
Try creating a variety of freezer meals that you can toss in the oven. Many people invite friends and family over to create batches of meals that they swap with one another.
You can easily save money on groceries. Just be sure to plan your meals around what’s on sale. Then stock up when prices are at their lowest. Doing so will provide more options so you eat out less. In fact, meal planning is a smart budgeting move for everyone from singles to families.
Photo Credit: Jay Phagan
All great points !
I’ll add #6: Grow some of your own food.
If you live in a typical home on a lot, you can grow food. Our first home was on a small lot, but we turned about 1/2 the back yard into garden space, and learned to grow a portion of our food.
Not only can you grow way cheaper than you can buy, you get fresher, healthier food (you know how it was grown). Our area has large tomato farms that grow for a late fall crop sold up the east coast. They are picked and go in boxes in the trucks dead green. Last thing before the truck door is shut, some canisters of ethylene gas are thrown in the truck and the doors sealed. When they get to market, they are nice shiny red “vine ripened” (says so on the box…ahahahaa) tomatoes.
Since we moved to our current property, we continued and expanded the practice of food growing to include meat, eggs, fish, etc and now grow about 80% of what we eat.
That is awesome, Andy! And nothing beats a homegrown tomato. There is no comparison to store bought.
I will also add that if you meal prep it is best to put everything in glass containers. Food and glass containers will stay fresh longer. Your instant pot if you own one is also a great way to save time and money on food. I make soup quite often and I freeze portions out of every batch. I have a freezer full of many different frozen soups by using this method. Every week I pull out five different meals for my lunches at work. I also meal prep breakfasts which is easy since I just do smoothies and a piece of fruit. Lastly learning how to can with a pressure cooker is a huge Money Saver and time saver. Last weekend I can 18 pints of soup.
Wow, Michelle … I didn’t know that glass keeps food fresher than plastic – but it makes sense if I think about it (the glass is inert, unlike plastic). Thanks for those tips!