9 Ways To Save Money On Groceries

Follow these 9 Ways To Save Money on Groceries and make them your habit so you can keep more money in your pocket.

As a seasoned homemaker, I’ve learned some valuable strategies to manage the family budget through the years. One of the biggest weekly expenses in the home is buying groceries. So let’s talk today about how to get the most from our grocery budget without quitting eating, since that isn’t really an option.

You can cook good meals for your family on a budget. See 60 Cheap Meals To Make When The Budget Is Tight

To use a valuable phrase, When we fail to plan, our plan fails. This simple common sense advice will help you use these grocery shopping tips.

Table of Contents

• 1. Make a grocery budget
• 2. Meal Planning
• 3. Dinner Menu Changes
  • Ideas to change the way you plan meals:
• 4. Take inventory of your pantry
  • Free Printables
• 5. Learn Your Grocery Sale Cycles
  • Grocery sales tend to repeat about once every 6 to 12 weeks with the most repetition between 6-8 weeks
• 6. Stockpiling
• 7. Use coupons
  • Electronic coupons
  • Print coupons
• 8. Make your grocery list
• 9. Shop different grocery stores
  • Aldi
  • Publix
  • Kroger
  • Walmart
• More Home Budget Ideas

1. Make a grocery budget

You must make a grocery budget if you are serious about saving money on groceries. What ever amount of money from your budget you have allotted to buying groceries is not something you want to actually cut back on. Certainly not with the price of groceries going up constantly. Therefore, we are going to change the way we plan meals and the way we buy our grocers.

If you are already trying to stick to a grocery budget but always go over, then switch to the envelope system. Put cash in an envelope. Mark the envelope on the outside with the word Groceries. Once the cash is gone, no more spending on groceries.

2. Meal Planning

Meal planning is the very best way to implement your grocery budget successfully. If you have no idea what you want to cook next week, then your grocery expenses will likely be higher than they need to be when you go shopping for food.

Getting organized with your meal planning will result in less impulse purchases and less over-spending! Your meal plan can be as simple as jotting down what you plan to cook this week on a piece of note paper. Take stock of what you already have and decide your meals from there. However, I do recommend an organized meal plan.

I have created a Monthly Meal Planner Set that includes ideas for cheap and easy meals, a calendar filled in and a blank calendar for you to fill in with family favorites. Print the Free Meal Planner Set to get started.

Visit my Meal Plans page for lots of monthly and weekly meal plans to choose from.

3. Dinner Menu Changes

Dinner does not have to be a meat with two vegetables, bread and dessert. That is an expensive meal. It’s nice but not necessary. Breakfast for supper is always good. Soups and sandwiches make good meals. Big meals for special occasions are nice but on a normal weeknight, be flexible so you can save on the grocery bill.

Ideas to change the way you plan meals:

• meatless main meals (Meatless Monday is a thing!)
• involve the family in meal planning (my Meal Planner set, above includes how to do this)
• cook from scratch which is less expensive than cooking prepared foods
• learn to make snack foods instead of buying expensive prepackaged
• purchase less expensive cuts of meat (Slow Cooker recipes make meat tender and tasty)
• grow your own Herbs for seasoning (Print our Cooking Herbs Gardening Guide)

You do not have to give up healthy foods to cut your budget. You simply have to be a bit more savvy while shopping. That may involve shopping at multiple stores and becoming educated about the Sales cycles of grocery stores.

4. Take inventory of your pantry

How many times have you discovered that you ‘somehow’ wound up with about 10 cans of corn? It happens to the best of us. We are not staying well organized in our pantry, cabinet our cupboard. The answer to the problem is to take inventory occasionally before making your grocery shopping list.

Free Printables

Grab these free printable Inventory sheets for your pantry, freezer and fridge. They are easy to use and will help you save money on groceries by not buying what you already have on hand.

5. Learn Your Grocery Sale Cycles

Grocery sales tend to repeat about once every 6 to 12 weeks with the most repetition between 6-8 weeks

This is good information to know when you are budgeting. Of course you shop the sales but you can get more from your grocery budget by stockpiling when certain staple items are at their lowest price.

Example: You can keep shredded cheese in the freezer which is great for Taco Tuesday and lots of casserole and soup recipes. Shredded cheese is expensive but it goes on sale regularly in the normal grocery sales cycles. Buy extra when it’s on sale and keep it in the freezer until you need it.

You can also freeze butter. That is good to know since the price of butter is through the roof these days too. I always buy a couple extra when butter goes on sale and put it in the freezer. Butter is slow to come back around in the sales cycles.

6. Stockpiling

Don’t be afraid of the idea of stockpiling. Let me explain. You will want to stockpile mostly staple items when they are at their lowest price such as toilet paper, paper towels, sugar, flour, and basic pantry staples. I am not talking about hoarding. You only want to have a couple extra of any one thing, not dozens extra.

Be careful not to stockpile too many of an item to the point of the date expiring before your family could use it. That would be counterproductive.

During the holiday season, we do a lot of baking so I try to always have things like brown sugar and powdered sugar in the pantry. I buy extra when they go on sale. I also keep a few cans of green beans at all times since they are the perfect quick side dish for most meals.

7. Use coupons

Electronic coupons

The good old days of extreme couponing at the grocery store are over. Most grocery stores have e coupons these days. Use the store app to add coupons to your shoppers card. Simply register on your favorite grocery store website and download the e coupons to your frequent shopper card. You can use the grocery store app on your phone for this.

Grocery Coupon Tip: Load new coupons once per week. We have Publix and Kroger in my area and both stores add new coupons at least once a week. I load coupons using my phone a few days before I know I’m going grocery shopping.

Print coupons

Yes, you can still clip printed coupons. There is a website called coupons.com where you can download and print lots of coupons for name brand grocery products.

Publix has print coupons in their weekly and biweekly ads available at the entrance of the store.

What are some of the ways you have been able to cut back on your families grocery budget? Let me know in the comments below. I love hearing from you.

8. Make your grocery list

This might be one of the most important things you can do to save on your grocery budget. Wouldn’t you agree that it takes discipline to save money in any area of the budget? Making a list is the a must for saving on the grocery budget.

If you have done your Meal planning, taken inventory to see what you already have to make next week’s meals, and loaded the coupons to the store app the only thing you need now is a list in hand when you go to shop.

You can use an app on your phone for making a list if you like. There are plenty of good apps. Personally, I still write it down and take the list with me. Stick to the list and you can stick to the budget.

9. Shop different grocery stores

Different grocery store chains have different prices. In my area we have Kroger, Publix, Aldi, Walmart and Food Depot. Get to know the best place to shop for the best price on various grocery items.

Aldi

Aldi is a no frills store. Bring a quarter if you want to use a shopping cart. You get your quarter back when you return the cart. Also, bring your own reusable bags or plan to buy some from them. It is mostly self checkout and you bag your own groceries. Aldi is a small store so they do not carry a wide variety and they do have a lot of their own brands which are comparable to any store brand.

They have great prices on bread and their bread is always fresh and good. Aldi is also a good place to buy produce and meat at better prices that the ‘regular’ grocery store.

Publix

While Publix has a reputation for being expensive, they have better sales than most other stores. It’s their BOGO’s you want! (Buy one Get one free) Currently at Publix, you do not have to buy both to get the half price. Therefore, if peanut butter is on BOGO and you need some but you don’t need two, just by one and it will be half price. The BOGO deals at Publix are simply fabulous.

Also, they have print coupons flyers at their entrance. Grab those because you can actually load their e coupons and also use the print coupon together for a good deal. This will take a little extra time for planning but it’s worth it in the end on the family grocery budget.

Occasionally, Publix has a print coupon to get $10 off a gas card when you spend $50 in the store. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty much always going to spend $50 at the grocery store. Where else can you get $10 off when buying gas?

Kroger

The Kroger family of stores includes a whole bunch of different names you might be familiar with:

• Baker’s
• City Market
• Dillons
• Food 4 Less
• Foods Co
• Fred Meyer
• Fry’s
• Gerbes
• Jay C Food Store
• King Soopers
• Kroger
• Mariano’s
• Metro Market
• Pay-Less Super Markets
• Pick’n Save
• QFC
• Ralphs
• Ruler
• Smith’s Food and Drug

If you really want to save money on groceries and Kroger stores are where you are going, you will need to download their app and use it. Load the coupons weekly and watch the sales.

Recently I have noticed that Kroger is offering more BOGO’s but you do have to buy both to get the sale price.

Buy 5 is a big thing at Kroger to get savings. You really do have to buy 5 of any item in that sale to get the good price. They do not have to be the exact same item but they do have to be part of the Buy 5 sale. TIP: Take a reusable bag to sit in your shopping cart and put the Buy 5 sale items in it so you will know when you have enough.

Walmart

Walmart is not trying to woo you in with BOGO’s, e coupons or big advertised sales. They know you are coming anyway. I find their prices better on cleaning supplies and paper products, IF those items are not on sale at another store.

AARP did a price shop comparison in April of 2023 with three grocery stores in the New York area. The stores were; Walmart, Aldi and Stop & Shop which is a regional chain in the northeast. They bought exactly the same 30 items at all three stores with no sales, no coupons and no loyalty discounts. The totals were; Walmart $88.37, Aldi $90.91 and Stop & Shop $114.49.

Use this grocery shopping tips to help you save money at the grocery store and in turn manage your home budget better. These tips will become habits and in time, second nature to you. Teach these grocery shopping tips to your children. Get the entire family involved in saving money anywhere you can in the family budget.

More Home Budget Ideas

Thank you for sharing!