Becky- Use a grocery price book/spreadsheet
A price book or price spreadsheet is a great place to start when it comes to grocery shopping on a budget! Nothing is worse than going grocery shopping and seeing a sale and thinking to yourself, “is this a really great price to stock-up?” You then buy half a year’s worth of said product on “sale” only to get home and realize that really wasn’t a decent stock-up price.
Or even worse, the reverse happens; you find out that was the stock-up price of the YEARRR and you only bought a few instead of stocking up for the year! This is where a good grocery price book/spreadsheet comes in handy.
Every time you buy a product, track the price you paid on a spreadsheet or a piece of paper. After roughly 6 weeks, you should be able to track when the product is truly at its lowest price or when it’s a decent enough sale to buy.
2. Follow your stores rotating sales
You may notice certain products go on sale more than once throughout the year. This is because stores generally rotate their sales every 6 weeks or so. Butter will be on sale for $1.99 at your local Kroger’s/Fred Meyer and then you won’t see the price drop again for another 6 weeks.
If you follow the rotating sales at your grocery store, you’ll know the best time to stock up. You can really take advantage of these rotating sales by watching for coupons and piling those on top of the already discounted product for an even steeper discount.
3. Make a list
Take Santa’s lead on this one and “make a list and check it twice!” I remember growing up seeing my mom walk around the grocery store with her list in hand. It’s amazing how much time a person can save by making a grocery list prior to grocery shopping.
Check your refrigerator and pantry for items you might need in the coming week. When you make your list, STICK TO IT! Don’t deviate from the plan. Buy only what you have written down on that list.
4. Meal plan prior to grocery shopping
Meal planning goes hand in hand with making a list. Meal planning has been a game changer for our family! Before having a baby, my husband and I could make meals on the fly or decide to use our “eating out” fund on a whim. Now, post-child we’ve had to be more methodical with our meals. Insert meal planning. This has been a Godsend as far as saving us money.
We’ve been very consistent with our meal planning and list making the past 15 months and gotten it down to a science. Think of how much money you can save when you’re not worrying about excess groceries, excessive grocery runs and even eating out when you know exactly what you’ll need for any given meal or snack during the week.
My trick is to make a list of meals that we enjoy making, our family likes to eat and are fairly simple. This can be spaghetti with a salad and garlic bread, burgers with homemade sweet potato fries, enchiladas with chips, guac and salsa. The list is endless.
I have a running list of meals. Each week, before the weekend arrives, I’ll sit down and plan out meals for the coming week. I’ll go through our cupboards and check what we have on hand and what I’ll need to buy at the grocery store. Armed with my meal plan and list of grocery items, I’m ready to take on grocery shopping.
5. Buy in bulk, when possible
Buying in bulk is another great way to save money on groceries when you’re starting your beginner’s budget. While it’s true that buying in bulk is more of an investment in the beginning because of the upfront cost, if you do the math over time you’re saving more money in the long run.
Most of us are aware of the great savings found when shopping for bulk items at Costco. Things like toilet paper (remember the struggle to find ONE roll in 2020?!), paper towels, cleaning supplies, milk, eggs, produce, energy drinks, spices, baking items, candy and more. However, there are also other great stores throughout the country that offer great bulk options at a fraction of the price.
If you live on the west side like I do, I’m sure you’re familiar with Winco Foods, which originally stood for Washington, Idaho, Nevada, California and Oregon, but has since branched out to Oklahoma, Texas and Utah. Winco Foods is an employee-owned grocery store prized on it’s money-saving prices. I grew up on those green-tag sales prices!
Like Costco, you might have also heard of URM Stores (formerly United Retail Merchants) originating in Washington and branching out to Montana, Oregon and Idaho. They too are prized for their deals on bulk items sold at wholesale cost.
Regardless of where you do your bulk shopping, make sure you go the extra mile and confirm that you’re really getting a good deal when buying in bulk. The main purpose of buying in bulk is to save you money that you normally spend at retail price by paying half the cost when buying it at wholesale price.
6. Shop generic brands
This is a no-brainer, but I’m astounded when I see people’s shopping carts full of name-brand items. Don’t get me wrong, I have my favorites of name brands just like anyone else and truly some of them do work and/or taste better than the generic brand. Still, when you’re pinching pennies, you’d be shocked at the amount of money your beginner’s budget can save just by switching to generic store brands.
According to Wall Street Journal, typically generic items cost 29% less than name-brand items. I don’t know about you, but all I see is dollar signs! You can save 30% of your money by shopping generic brands alone?! I’m sold!
Again, some name brands are far better than the offered generic brands, but check out these examples of store brand items to the name brand items!
Diced Tomatoes
Kroger (14.5 oz) Hunt’s (14.5 oz)
$0.79 $1.79
Tampons
Target’s Up & Up Tampax Pearl
$5.29 (50 ct) $9.79 (47 ct)
Remember, this doesn’t only work on groceries. You can buy generic brands on things like medicine/prescriptions, pet supplies, etc. Shop generic items when you can and watch your receipt balances shrink!
7. Use coupons
Finally, use coupons where you can. I’m a sucker for stores that offer their debit rewards card. Target and Kroger both offer great deals when you sign up for their store cards. I always choose the debit card option so that it comes directly out of my checking account.
I have Target’s Red debit card and it saves me 5% on every purchase I make at Target. Not to mention, their digital deals. It’s nearly impossible to find bigger stores that DON’T have an app for your phone these days. Target, Kroger and Walmart are no different. Target will have deals on their app like, “Free $10 Giftcard with $40 Health Care purchase” or “15% off children’s shoes”. When you add those digital coupons on your app and then purchase those items, the digital coupons will be redeemed at purchase.
Kroger is notorious for their ad savings that reads “with card”. For example, their ad will show something like, 2 for $3 on avocados “with card”. They’ll have sales on specific grocery items that you can only get when you have their rewards card.
Similar to Target, Kroger has coupons on their app that can be added to your account and redeemed at purchase. Think of savings like BOGO (buy one, get one). If you’re already buying an item and there’s a BOGO deal going on, take 2 and pay for the price of one! Save $1 on 2 Silk Almond milks. The skies the limit!
Last, but most definitely not least, manufacturers coupons and store coupons really add up. We shop frequently at our local Fred Meyer (Kroger’s) and they send us coupons for items we regularly shop for. If you stack store coupons on top of say P&G coupons, you can get some items for darn near free!
As you can see, there are many options to paying less on your groceries. Test it out for yourself! Grocery shopping on a budget doesn’t have to be so overwhelming. You can find some good money saving hacks when grocery shopping on your beginner’s budget. Sometimes just the chase of a good sale makes it worth it! Now that you’re on your way to saving money on your groceries, you can allocate that saved money to your debts or other areas that need a little extra cushion for the month.
[…] week ahead and we’d have no game plan as far as getting dinner on the table. As I mentioned in THIS post, meal planning gives your grocery budget a boost while giving your weekly meals a little more […]