Write a Shopping List, and Stick to It!
Food and groceries can be one of the largest expenses in a family budget. The only regular expenses higher in the average American budget are housing and insurance. It can be difficult to find the right balance, and ways to cut costs. However, it is possible. Here are our tips for reducing and maintaining your grocery budget.
1. Meal planning
Meal planning is the first, and in my opinion, most vital step in planning your grocery budget. Prior to weekly meal planning, we spent probably 30% more each week, buying more than we needed, or not buying enough and making multiple mid-week trips to the store. Instead, we make a meal plan before making our grocery list. We plan out for the week what each nightly meal will be, including if we plan to go out to dinner one night. Saturday-Friday, we make a list of the planned dinners for the night. From there, we build our grocery list. We only buy things that we need for our meals. It has saved us quite a bit of money, and in wasted food, each week. Check out this great post for some excellent ideas on how to meal plan.
2. Make a list.
When grocery shopping, make a list before you leave the house. Plan out what items you need, based on what is in the meal plan for the week. This way, you will save yourself from wandering around the store, and provide less temptation to buy things that are not needed. If you’re really detailed, you can shop with a calculator and your list. As you are moving through the store, you can calculate how much your total bill will be (as an estimate pre-tax), and use this to guide your decision making. This is especially helpful if you are using cash envelopes, or a similar system. You can watch how much you are spending as you go, and avoid over-spending.
3. Stick to the list!
However this looks for you, whatever you need to do to stay organized, do it. Whatever it is that motivates you to stay focused, think about that. For me, it’s about having the freedom from debt and the money we are now able to save towards other financial goals. If I overspend in the groceries, there is money lost from other areas of our budget. Money will have to be cut from somewhere to make up for it. Personally, I don’t want to do that. I enjoy the financial freedom we have with a structured budget, and the freedom from debt as a result of sticking to our grocery budget.
There you have it! Our top tips for saving money on your grocery budget. It is possible, to live on a budget and save money at the grocery store. When you have a plan, and stick to it, you will find success!