OK, I’m going to cover some crazy simple ideas on how to save money on groceries. I have 19 tips to share and no. 5 saves me $60 a month alone!
Hi, I’m Sam. I’m on a mission to help women take control of their finances. How? With some simple tips around budgeting, saving and investing.
How I Saved Money on Groceries
When I was younger and still single, I was living in mid-town Manhattan and working on Wall Street. I was finally earning a decent wage and decided to get serious about saving and investing to make up for years of living on a measly salary.
Once I started tracking my expenses, I realised that after rent and bills, I was spending a whopping $1,000 on food each month! I wasn’t a big spender on shoes and clothes or nights out. I do love to eat; however. It is my number one passion. What can I say, Homer Simpson is my soul mate.
But my kitchen was the size of a shoe box. So I ate out for lunch 5 days a week. I ate out for dinner 3 nights a week. Then I’d buy individual portions of food from a local deli. It was super pricey once you added it all up.
Once I knew how much it was costing me, I was determined to save money on food. Because let’s face it, $1,000 a month is just ridiculous. So I set myself a grocery budget, started taking lunches to work and got to saving some serious money.
Once I started putting some of the tips below into practice, I managed to halve my grocery bill
My food bill was immediately halved to just $500 a month – it was a game-changer. With the money I saved from groceries, I was able to pay off the balance of my student loans after 3 years. I couldn’t believe how good it felt.
Fast forward ten years and my family has grown while the cost of living has spiralled. I’ve still been able to squeeze my food budget even further to just $400 a month. This includes food for work lunches and for entertaining guests a couple of times a month!
With some practice you make savings too. You can use the money to pay off your debts, save, and invest in your future. So let’s dive into my 19 tips for how to save money on groceries.
No. 1 – Meal Plan
The number one way to save money on groceries is to meal plan.
Meal planning is like heading out in the car using Google Maps rather than driving around aimlessly in the hopes that you’ll reach your destination on time.
Once I started meal planning, I saved $300 on my food shop within 2 months
I couldn’t believe how easy it was once I got the hang of it. Plus I wasn’t wasting food that was turning bad before I had a chance to cook it. If you plan what you are going to eat for each meal before you start shopping, you could easily save 1/3 off your grocery bill.
How does meal planning save money on your groceries?
- You won’t be lured by the pretty adverts and ‘special bargains’ that aren’t such great bargains in reality.
- There’s less temptation to reach for impulse purchases – you have the meal plan to ‘support’ you.
- Shopping with your head and not your stomach helps you to feel in charge. Be the boss of your shopping cart!
- You won’t over-shop.
Just head on straight to the correct aisle and grab what you need—no distractions from shiny offers of pre-prepared dishes or marinaded meats.
No. 2 – Shop with a List
If you have a meal plan, the shopping list will naturally flow from that.
When you head to the store, have a list that you made when meal planning and stick to it.
Don’t get side-tracked by things that are not on it and you will find that you’ll save money on your grocery bill
I spend about 10% less on my shop on average when I take a list with me.
Before you head out, go through your cabinets and check if you have run out of coffee, laundry powder etc.
If you haven’t run out, don’t buy any more even if it’s on sale
It will stop you from buying and hoarding things.
People end up buying things they don’t need, and they end up expiring before they ever get to use them.
No. 3 – Stockpile on Offers
That being said, if you have the space, stockpile – but sensibly.
Only stockpile items that you know your household consumes regularly.
Calculate how many items you will consume in the next few months.
Look at the expiry date, and buy according to how much you will consume in that timeframe.
Store the stuff in a clear box, ideally in a place where you won’t lose sight of it
If you have the freezer space – grab those sticker-price bargains when they appear and watch those dollars and pounds pile up! Ching ching!
No. 4 – Look at the Price Per Kilo
Compare prices per KG or Per LB to find the cheapest deal.
I save a lot of money on groceries by comparing prices this way
I never get swayed by BOGOF (buy one get one free) deals and the ‘bumper sticker’ offers.
Instead, I zero in on the price per kilo or price per pound to see what the cheapest food is.
By comparing items by their price per pound I easily save at least $60 a month. That racks up to $720 a year!
No. 5 – Save Money and Buy Generic
Avoid name brands. Try generic brands for everything – just once. If they doesn’t work for you then at least you can say that you gave them a whirl.
Usually, the generic brands are the cheapest price per LB or Kilo. Cheaper brands dont spend money on marketing (that’s often what makes them cheaper!) So you have to re-wire your brain a little bit to ignore the markting gimmicks.
I’ll be honest and say that Aldi brand dishwasher tablets were not worth the saving for us.
The same goes for generic sensitive toothpaste. I’ve suffered too much from sensitive teeth in the past to risk it. I’m sticking with the big brands on those two things.
But for everything else, I’ve downshifted to generic brands. I didn’t notice the difference one jot!
I even had some guests compliment my tea recently, telling me how delicious it tasted. Maybe it was because it was served in a fancy le Creuset teacup! ‘Buwahahaha’. It just goes to show how important visuals are on our perceptions of taste, quality and value.
I’m spending money on what matters to me and trimming the fat mercilessly on everything else.
It’s part of my life choice to save money on groceries so that I can afford a two week vacation in Italy this summer.
: )
No. 6 – Try Frozen
Freshly frozen fruits and vegetables retain more nutrients because they’re frozen right after picking. Fresh fruit and veg start losing nutrients as soon as they’re picked, and It could be over a week from farm to fork. Frozen fruit and veg can also be cheaper than fresh.
I do a monthly food shop because it saves me so much time compared to weekly shopping (and when you work for yourself, saving time is saving money). I’ll buy a lot of frozen fruits and vegetables. I enjoy the fresh fruit and vegetables in the first 2 weeks. Then I switch to frozen in the final two weeks of the month. Frozen veg cooks really well in things like soups, stews and curries.
I love the convenience of frozen veg because there is no peeling and chopping – bliss!
Because I shop less frequently, I’m also less tempted to over-buy food and so I spend less money in a month.
Buying frozen product helps me to save money on groceries
It forces me to use up whatever is in the kitchen, rather than just go out and buy more food.
Did you know that globally, we throw away one-third of all the food that is produced in the world (yikes!).
As an example, vast amounts of bread gets thrown away because it gets mouldy before we have a chance to eat it. That’s why I freeze my bread as soon as I get it home.
Using frozen foods can often be great value for money in this way as well.
No. 7 – Keep Dishes Simple
Focus on meals that use the same core ingredients. Do you really need different versions of the same basic ingredients?
Red pesto AND green pesto? Pasta twists AND pasta tubes?
You get my drift. Picky eaters aside, this will save you a tonne of time when at the grocery store.
It will also save you space in the kitchen. My spices cabinet looks so much neater now that I have removed all the quirky bottles that were gathering dust over the years.
More importantly it will save you money on groceries
By simplying the number of products you stock on your shelves you’ll end up buying less food overall and wasting less as well.
No. 8 – Look Above and Below the Eyeline
Placement is one of the ‘5 Ps’ of marketing. Placing items in our line of sight in the supermarket shelf makes us more likely to see them and then buy them.
One way to catch the cheaper deals on items is just to look above and below the eye line.
Simple!
At the top and bottom of the supermarket shelf are the bargains
You’ll find the brands that don’t pay marketing bosses to tell them this stuff and then pass on those costs on to you…
No. 9 – If Shopping Online, Sort by Lowest Price First
Online shopping tends to sort by ‘recommended’ which shows you the sponsored deals first. These are usually not the cheapest deals.
I always set mine to sort by the lowest price first. Then search for the cheapest items by looking at the price per kilo/pound or price per unit.
It is a borderline genius hack to beat the marketing gimmicks designed to make you spend more when shopping online. It will help you save a lot of money on your groceries, and feel pretty smart while you’re doing it.
No. 10 – Cook from Scratch
It takes more effort for sure. Some convenience foods do make sense, sometimes. But if you meal plan and make use of convenience gadgets like a slow cooker and freezer space then you can reap huge benefits from buying raw ingredients and cooking from scratch.
The money you save on groceries (not to mention the time) is out of this world
I don’t love cooking, to be honest. But I also don’t like the taste of processed food. Nothing beats the taste of a home-cooked meal. It is so much healthier and cheaper as well. Plus my toddler loves to ‘help out’ in the kitchen so it is a great activity for us to do together.
So how do I marry my love of home-cooked food with my aversion to cooking?
I make a monthly meal plan, and then I batch-cook and freeze it. Voila!
I do a monthly food shop online from my nearest grocery store and I spend 4 – 6 hours doing food prep all in one day:
- I use a food processor to chop, cook and puree loads of veggies into different sauce bases, stews soups and curries.
- I brown some mince
- I bag up cuts of chicken and salmon in different marinades
- Finally, I chuck it all in the freezer
When it comes to meal times, each morning I pick out from the freezer what I plan to serve that day. Then I’ll finish it all up in the oven or warm it on the stove about half an hour before dinner. While it heats I chop some salad and boil some rice or pasta to complete the meal.
Once in a while I use frozen veggies to make an easy vegetable curry. I even use frozen garlic to avoid that pesky peeling. It’s so easy, tasty and cheap!
Batch cooking easily saves me $200 a month on my grocery bill. It also saves me about 7-14 hours a week of cooking time. I’m just cruising past the stove and collecting those coins, my friend.
: )
No. 11 – Use the Freezer
For my tip no. 10 to work for a very large batch of meals, you will need a lot of freezer space. If you can fit it in your home, invest in a separate freezer to store the spare meals. It will save you a tonne of money on your grocery bill.
Even if you’re only able to batch cook for 2 weeks or even 1 week, you’ll still reap the benefits of time and money.
I have no idea how busy working people and parents manage to cook a whole new meal for dinner EVERY SINGLE DAY. That’s probably when we’re most tempted to hit the take-out menus. I get it. nothing is worse then being tired and ‘hangry’.
Being able to pick something homemade and defrost it for dinner is just a dream. It costs half the price of packaged foods and it has far less salt sugar and fat.
Win-win!
A marriage made in foodie heaven.
No. 12 – Invest in a slow cooker
A similar concept to making food ahead of time and freezing them is the slow cooker or crockpot. Slow cookers allow you to start the cooking process at the beginning of the day and have the food ready for you later that day.
You don’t need to ‘babysit’ the pot either, you can leave the house while it bubbles away. Slow cookers run on tiny amounts of electricity so they’re super cheap to operate so they’ll save you money on your grocery bill.
There are a bunch of dump-and-go recipes from lentil daals to stews, casseroles and porridges.
They can be popped into a slow cooker first thing in the morning with minimal preperation and be ready to enjoy when you get home from work in the evening.
No. 13 – Get the kids involved in Cooking
They may actually get interested in trying vegetables and fruits and even spices! It also serves to teach them about budgeting and family responsibility.
Another bonus: it brings you closer as a family – spending time together doing family stuff.
My toddler loves to help me in the kitchen so I get her to do the mixing and measuring and lots of other tasks. Granted it is a little bit more of a hindrance than a help at this young age! It is getting her excited about healthy eating and about cooking however so it is worth the effort.
Plus I know that every year she gets older she will be more and more helpful, and in no time she’ll be making family meals on her own, as a responsible member of the family.
No. 14 – Eat less Meat and more Vegetables
Vegetables are so much cheaper than meat and fish. A large bag of carrots costs just 60 pence! 60p a kilo for carrots versus £6 a kilo for beef. That is a no brainer.
I pump my dishes full of vegetables to bulk them up and make them more value for money.
It saves me alot of money on my groceries and it makes them taste great too!
Your heart and your wallet will thank you for this.
No. 15 – Always Shop on a Full Stomach
Never go shopping when you are hungry – you will impulse shop and buy expensive snacks.
No. 16 – Use Quidco
I use the Quidco app whenever I shop online to get cashback. I usually convert mine to Amazon vouchers to get even more cashback.
How does Quidco work?
Whenever you see advertising online, the brand that puts out the advert has paid everyone involved to see that advert.
Quidco pays you a slice back of that commission in the form of cashback.
How to Use Quidco to save money on your food shop?
Find the brand you want to shop at on the Quidco website and click on the Quidco “Get cashback” button to make sure your purchase tracks properly.
You have the use a browser rather than a supermarket app for this to work. I find it is always worth checking Quidco before doing any online shopping because it is basically free money.
No. 17 – Sign Up to Loyalty programs
I save a good £10 – £20 on my monthly food shop at the supermarket near me.
So it is worth signing up for any loyalty program they offer as long as you follow your money-saving discipline.
No 18 Make a Food Budget and Stick to It
How?
Track your food spending for the last 4 weeks and then look through your fridge and pantry and see what is left over.
Did you really get through those four boxes of BOGOF deep-dish mega meaty pizzas? OK, those sound delicious, so you probably did.
But what about that jar of truffle mayonnaise? If it hasn’t been opened in the last three weeks, it’s probably not going to get opened any time soon. It’ll languish in that cabinet until it goes way past its expiry date, becoming a dusty kitchen relic.
What this tells you is that you are probably doing a little bit of impulse spending.
You can save money on groceries by sticking to a budget
See how much food is left over and if you can reduce the quantity of stuff you bought, to reduce your food bill. You are probably buying more than you need and you can save money on your food shop just by buying a little less.
No. 19 – Sometimes it is about Rice and Beans and that’s OK
If money is tight at certain times of the year (let’s say January) then rice and beans or just plain old spaghetti may be the way to go to stretch the budget.
It won’t be forever but paring down the food shop to the basics can be a great way to reduce your monthly spend if you need to.
There are lots of super cheap recipes available using store cupboard ingredients.
That’s a (Food) Wrap on How to Save Money on Groceries
Once you have made the changes listed above like meal planning and shifting to generics, you should be seeing a dramatic drop in your food shopping bill.
After a few weeks and months, you can start to track how much money you have saved and set this new amount in your monthly budget. Commit to this new budget allocation going forward. The amount you’ve saved on your food shopping can now go towards debt repayments, savings plans, investments, and treats.
Pat yourself on the back because you did it! Congratulations!
Comment below on your tips for saving money on groceries. How much do you spend on groceries each month? Are you struggling to get your bill down? What has worked for you in the past?