8 Tips To Save Money On Groceries
Image of grocery cart in front of wall of grocery items by Tumisu from Pixabay
Updated 2024.07.24
Groceries can be a large portion of your budget.
In June 2024, USDA put out a new cost-based food plan that found that for the average household of two adults, groceries can run around $545 USD a month. That’s the thrifty estimate.
The liberal estimate is around $860 USD a month.
If you currently make minimum wage at a full time job and you’re a sole income earner for that household, this amount accounts for quite a lot of your take home pay.
Even if you make more than the minimum and have additional income streams, with the costs of fuel on the rise, you may be looking to trim your budget categories, starting with one of the biggest: groceries.
The good news is that with a bit of creativity, some research and resourcefulness, you can trim your grocery budget.
Below are eight tips to reduce the cost of your grocery bill:
Image of grocery cart in front of wall of grocery items by Tumisu from Pixabay with text overlay 8 Tips To Save Money On Groceries
1 - Shop Your Inventory First
Before going grocery shopping, either in person or online, take note of what you already have in your home. If you don’t know exactly what you have, ask a household member who does or peek into the cabinets.
Make sure to double check, especially if you shop online for groceries.
Fill your cart with everything you need but before you hit “Place Order,” head to your pantry and do one final check to make sure you don’t already have cinnamon, chili powder or enough rice on hand.
Reviewing your inventory list before placing the grocery order can usually save you the purchase of 1-3 goods, sometimes more.
2 - Find Your Lowest Price Store By Doing Test Buys
The results may surprise you.
To get a good gauge on the store that offers the lowest price on what you stock, do a test buy at three stores you are considering buying from.
Start by heading to your regular store’s online shopping catalog.
Put five equitable items that you always buy, your basics, in your cart and then head to check out to get a final price with taxes and fees. Do not enter your card information.
Repeat this process by opening two more browser tabs for the other two stores.
Put your comparable five items in your final cart for each store. Compare the totals at each store side-by-side. The lowest priced cart is your lowest price store and this is where you should shop for the most cost-efficient trip.
You can also do this manually, too. Go to three stores and buy your basics, and then look at your receipts. This sample buy can give you an idea of how low you can really go, plus who is offering it, and where.
3 - Embrace Manager’s Special Tags
Most stores have a markdown (Manager’s Special) system for their perishable items, which include any item with an expiration date, and obsolete items, goods that they are discontinuing.
In some stores the markdowns are placed on a specific cart near a back end cap. In other stores, the markdowns have bright yellow or orange tags and are placed on top of the other goods in their normal area.
Find out where the markdown items are placed in your store and when markdowns are done. Then, scan these areas right when you enter the store to snag great prices on your basics.
4 - Head To Farm Stands First
Farm stands save you the cost of hiring the middle man, the grocery store itself. Depending on where you live, you can find farm stands near you in spring, summer, fall and winter.
Typically, you can shave a few dollars off grocery store prices, maybe more, for every item that you buy from your neighborhood farm booth instead of from inside the grocery store.
If you love grocery sale prices and coupons, keep in mind that farm booths can be quite savvy, too. They will bundle, offer freebies and discount items they want to clear.
5 - Create A Price Book
Record your best buys. In a spreadsheet or a hard copy journal, create a price book.
List the date, the item, the average current price for the item, the best price you got the item at, where you got that price, and the strategy you used to get that price, if any.
Periodically go back to this price book when you come across similar items on sale or for a “good deal,” to make sure that it is really the best price you can get.
The price book helps you pause before leaping on things that seem like a bargain, but they aren’t the best yet. Cross-checking your price book can also confirm action on a deal, by verifying it is the best price.
Having your price book be on a digital spreadsheet, like Google Sheets can be helpful, because this way, you can pull it up on your smart device anywhere you encounter a potential bargain.
Bonus: periodically scan your price book and keep track of any patterns you see. You may find that you are getting your best prices at 1-2 shops, and these would be places to keep an eye on.
6 - Do A Clean Out The Pantry Challenge
On the day you first desire to go grocery shopping, check your pantries.
If you still have a bag of rice on hand, cook it. If you have a can of chili sitting in the back, crack it open. If you have frozen corn in the freezer, make it with the rice and chili for lunch.
For years, we’ve called this the “night before paycheck dinner competition” in our household, making it a fun challenge to see if we can cook a meal with five random things from the corners of our kitchen.
See if you can go just one more day before re-stocking your pantry. The goal of this tip is to simply challenge yourself to get your groceries to last longer and to really, truly use up what you have.
7 - Follow First In, First Out
If you have a tendency to let leftovers go bad, vegetables rot, or find that half opened containers of yogurt regularly mold, read on.
Before you use that fresh new head of lettuce, what about last week’s lettuce? Use that first.
When you get new dairy products, check the expiration date, and aim to use the ones that were opened first or are expiring soonest.
Go so far as to place the older items in front of the new packages in the fridge, just as they do at the grocery store.
8 - Shop The Flyers
Find them in the mail, at the store or online. If the stores are within a reasonable distance from one another, it wouldn’t be too hard to shop the sales at different stores and get the lowest price on all items.
Don’t forget to ask about price matching. Some stores will match flyer prices from competitors allowing you to make fewer stops.
Image of grocery aisle from an overhead view perspective by ElasticComputeFarm from Pixabay
These eight tips can help you reduce your grocery spend by maximizing the use of what you have and minimizing the expenditures on your bill.
Some of the tips above work by simply stretching out the purchase until the next trip, others work by allowing you to avoid the desired expenditure altogether.
To begin saving money on groceries, simply try whichever tips above sparks your interest the most.
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