Thirteen Ways to Save Money on Your Food Budget
1. If you want to get take out food to take home, don't buy drinks with it. Depending on your family size and where you are buying your meal, you could save a decent amount of money just by having drinks you already have at home. (Or, order water with a meal from out.)
1. If you want to get take out food to take home, don't buy drinks with it. Depending on your family size and where you are buying your meal, you could save a decent amount of money just by having drinks you already have at home. (Or, order water with a meal from out.)2. Check out grocery ads (you can even see most of them online) before planning your meals for the week. Make changes based on what's on sale.
3. If you're a soda drinker (we are at our house!), stock up when they are on sale at your local grocery store. Sure...we don't NEED cans of soda. But, if we're going to drink them anyway, I would rather spend $2.00 - $2.50 per (12 can) case than $4.50 per case. Even if you are making a choice that might not be frugal, you can make that choice frugally.
4. Clip and use coupons, especially at stores that will double or triple their face value.
5. Don't buy things just because you have coupons for them though. If you won't really use it, then you aren't saving money by buying it.
6. Don't go to the store hungry. Just don't do it! Even if it means that you spend money to run through a drive through so you can eat a quick snack or meal first. Grocery shopping while hungry is dangerous.
7. Pay attention to prices on various sizes of items, particularly when one size is on sale and another is not. I have had many times when I went to buy a smaller size of something, only to see that it was cheaper to buy a larger size because of a sale. I'm not talking about cheaper per unit price, I am actually talking about final cost. (Example: the smaller box of cereal is $2.89 but the larger box is on sale for $2.50. It's a no brainer! But, it's easy to not notice, if you're not looking for it.)
8. Menu plan! Whether you plan a week at a time or a full month at a time, it will help your budget if you plan.
9. Shop from your freezer, fridge, and pantry before you shop from the grocery store. When I menu plan, I check to see what I can make from things we already have in our house. It also saves me from buying duplicates of items.
10. Buy meat in larger quantities and break it into smaller packages yourself. During my last grocery shopping trip, I bought two "tubes" of ground beef -- each 3 lbs in size. We then broke them up into 1 lb increments and put them into freezer baggies. I saved over $7 by doing this. In all actuality though, if I had purchased six packages of ground beef, all of the ones in my grocery store are actually package a bit over 1 lb. So, it saved me even more.
11. Now, speaking of meat -- it can be a great money saver to try to eat some meatless meals. Even just one meatless meal per week will save your family money. (If you can't fathom having a meatless meal, try just two meatless meals in a month, instead of one each week. Every little bit helps.)
12. Buy produce that is in season. Plan your meals around them. Your produce bill will be cheaper if you purchase produce that doesn't have to be shipped half way across the world.
13. Better yet -- start planning now for your garden for next year!
What are some of your favorite ways to save money on your food budget?
What are some of your favorite ways to save money on your food budget?
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photo by J-P F
8 comments:
thanks for the tip,we all need to find ways to save.
Great Job!
Going to the store hungry: I've made that mistake before, to my later regret!
All great tips!
great list! thanks for the tip.coe by to see my fave movies here
Great tips, Angie. Thanks! :)
I thought doing meatless meals would be such a challenge. I dreaded it. Once we found a good 3 or 4 we like, though, we found we didn't really miss the meat.
In fact, some of our favorite dinners are meatless. :)
Menu Planning has saved us a ton of money, too. (I do the Menu Plan Monday-great motivation!)
I'm a vegetarian, but do many of these ideas. Particuarly bulk buying, not going hungry, using coupons, and checking prices on all sizes.
"Even if you are making a choice that might not be frugal, you can make that choice frugally." - I love this. Your money saving list is really great! I frequently follow many of the tips (i.e. opting for water, going meatless) and it saves me a lot of money.
I actually work for a campaign called Meatless Monday and we advocate going meatless one day a week because it's a relatively easy adjustment to make and it also cuts back on your saturated fat intake by 15%. This reduction will lower your risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes, four of the leading causes of death in the U.S. If you're looking for some great meatless meals be sure to visit www.meatlessmonday.com/recipearchive.
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