Grocery Shopping on a Budget: 17 Sure Tips to Help You Save
With or without a recession, grocery costs have been rising continuously year after year. This is not good considering we spend a good deal of our money buying groceries. We cannot function in our daily lives and even live if we do not buy groceries.Although you cannot avoid buying groceries, there are a few tips you can follow to save on your grocery costs:
Note: These information were derived from my family’s years of owning a small grocery shop, our family’s grocery buying knowledge, as well as tips found online.
17 sure tips to help you save on grocery shopping:
1. Plan your grocery shopping2. Be aware of ‘shrinkflation’
3. Use Coupons
4. Use grocery Rewards Cards
5. Buy nonperishable items online
6. Buy perishable foods you’ll use completely
7. Buy in season fruits and vegetables
8. Buy in bulk and portion them yourself
9. Avoid buying ready-prepared foods
10. Reuse leftovers
11. Buy at discount shops
12. Shop with a full stomach
13. Shop when you’re not worn out
14. Organize your grocery storage cabinets and cupboards
15. Try new products
16. Shop around
17. Buy small
Final Words
The Details:
1. Plan your grocery shopping
Grocery stores are designed to encourage people to buy more than and impulsively than they originally intended. This is the reason for example, why the checkout section is stocked with plenty of impulse buy products.
In order to avoid these grocery temptations, you should make a grocery list and stick to it. This prevents you from buying non-essentials and duplicate items you still have stocked at home.
You should also as much as possible bring only as much cash needed for your grocery list. This helps you to prevent overspending if you are using bank cards to pay.
You should only shop once a week. By buying in bulk, you would realize just how big you are spending for groceries.
Buying small quantities of groceries is not only wasteful in time and transportation cost, but it fools you into thinking that you’re only spending a small amount of money each time you shop.
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2. Be aware of ‘shrinkflation’
Many companies have been reducing the portions of their product without changing their packaging. This method fools you into thinking that you are still buying the same portion of product at the old price.
Companies usually do this instead of raising their prices to cope with inflation. Since inflation always happens, over time the portion of the product you are buying becomes considerably small or have very inferior quality as compared to its older version.
Even if you are loyal to a product/company, don’t let yourself be taken for a ride by them. Change to competitor products that offer better quality or bigger portions. This not only saves you money, but could maintain your health and wellbeing as well.
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3. Use Coupons
Grocery Coupons have been around for ages, but many people don’t use them. This is because coupon users are generally looked down by many people who categorize them as cheap people who probably don’t have a lot of money.
And many people don’t want to be branded as such. A lot of people don’t want to be known as being poor. But coupons are actually a great way to save on grocery costs.
The days of cutting coupons from newspapers or supermarket brochures are now almost over. Grocery coupons have gone hi-tech thanks to grocery coupon apps like Ibotta and Rakuten if you are in the US.
Both Ibotta and Rakuten grocery coupon apps work in such national chains as Walmart and Target whether you shop in-store or online.
There is even the Flipp app, which allows shoppers to enter their location and find coupons and sales for grocery stores in their area.
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4. Use grocery Rewards Cards
Many banks also offer grocery rewards cards which allow you to save on your grocery costs. There are also credit cards that offer higher rewards on grocery purchases like the Blue Cash Preferred Card by American Express.Back To Summary List
Buy nonperishable items online
Groceries bought online are generally cheaper than groceries bought in-store. This is because e-commerce companies don’t have to spend on a physical store and its maintenance. They use this savings to offer cheaper product prices.You can even buy your food grocery items online. For example, you can buy your canned foods and processed foods online as if you were buying in-store. You just need to check that the food items are in good condition and not way past their expiry date.
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6. Buy perishable foods you’ll use completely
Perishable foods only have a short shelf life. So make sure that you only buy what you can eat. You could also try eating frozen fruit, vegetables and other types of frozen food.Frozen food usually lasts months instead of days which not only saves you money because they don’t spoil easily, they also serve as emergency food.
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7. Buy in season fruits and vegetables
Designing your meals around in season fruits and vegetables not only allow you to save money, but in season fruits are usually much healthier because they’re freshly grown.Do a bit of research and place a calendar on your fridge which has a listing of the in season fruits and vegetables, this way, you’ll always be in the know.
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8. Buy in bulk and portion them yourself
It costs you money everytime you buy smaller portions of meat, vegetables, fruits and other groceries. This is because the grocery charges you extra for cutting and packing your groceries into smaller pieces.Buy such groceries like meat, fish, poultry, fruits, vegetable, cheese, butter, bread, shampoo, soaps and so on and cut & package them into smaller pieces yourself. This way, you don’t have to pay the grocery for doing it for you.
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9. Avoid buying ready-prepared foods
Grocery stores now offer many ready-prepared food. From frozen tv dinners, ready made sandwiches & desserts, pizzas, pies and so on. But even though they are expensive, many shoppers still buy them.This is because they are convenient: at most, all you need is to put them in the microwave for a few minutes and they’re ready to eat.
There is nothing wrong with eating them from time to time, but if you have a habit of eating them always, they could put a dent on your wallet as they’re meant to be emergency food and not everyday food.
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10. Reuse leftovers
Many people hate eating leftovers, but leftovers from your previous meal are most of the time, still perfectly edible food that just needs a little bit of prepping up.In fact, there are even celebrated tv chefs who teach their viewing audience on ways they can make their leftover food into a completely new delicious meal.
Imagine how much money you would save by not having to cook three meals a day, but only two. You’ll also get to save the environment by not creating waste.
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11. Buy at specialist discount shops
There are specialist discount shops that only stock essential grocery items, like heavily discounted bread, dishwashing liquids, detergents, garbage bags and so on, some as much as 50% off.The reason why they are able to offer such big discounts is because they specialize and resell in bulk. These specialist discount shops are not usually advertised, so it might take a little bit of searching to find them.
But once you find them, they can greatly help in lessening your grocery costs. For example, dishwashing liquid is used more than three times a day and easily runs out. Stocking up on them by buying at specialist discount shops is a good move.
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12. Shop with a full stomach
Shopping while you’re hungry causes you to buy snacks to eat while shopping and even eat at the food section of the grocery store. Both activities add to your grocery cost.Also, by shopping while you’re hungry, you have a tendency to buy more food than you originally planned to. This is because your hunger is affecting your shopping behavior.
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13. Shop when you’re not worn out
Shopping when you’re worn out makes you likely to choose the most convenient to get grocery items. Usually, the most convenient to get grocery items are pricier and are not the best choices.For example, grocery stores stock the products they like to push most to shoppers at eye level in their stock shelves. This is because these products are predominantly what the shopper sees when they shop.
Usually, you can find better grocery item deals above and below the eye level of grocery stock shelves.
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14. Organize your grocery storage cabinets and cupboards
If you don’t know what’s in your grocery storage cabinets and cupboards, you are likely to guess what you are going to put in your grocery list.You can end up buying duplicate grocery items that already exists in your grocery cabinet. You can end up buying so much of the same item that they stay unused well beyond their expiry date.
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15. Try new products
New grocery items are being introduced on an almost weekly basis to compete with the established grocery items that you already buy regularly.Usually, these new grocery items are better than the established ones. Otherwise, they would have a hard time making shoppers switch brands.
It would be a good idea to try these new grocery items in small quantities just to see if you are getting a better deal buying them than the old brands you already buy on a regular basis.
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16. Shop around
Grocery stores also compete with each other on a regular basis, usually by offering cheaper prices than their competitors.It would be noteworthy to check out grocery stores to see who offers the lowest prices and offer the most “on sale” items.
However, don’t buy a grocery item just because it’s “on sale”. An unused grocery item although it is “on sale” does not save you money at all, rather, it costs you money.
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17. Buy small
Though it rarely happens, there are grocery items that offer the better deal when bought in small portions rather than big portions. Do the maths using your smartphone and compare what a smaller grocery item offers over its bigger version.Back To Summary List
Final Words
Grocery costs are getting pricier and continues to do so. It is time to assess your shopping behavior and see if you can improve it by saving on your grocery costs.
Using coupons and grocery rewards bank cards can greatly help in reducing your grocery costs.
To save on grocery costs, you need organizational skills in creating your grocery list. You should also organize your grocery storage cabinets and cupboards to ensure that you are not buying duplicate items.
You should also shop when you are not worn out or hungry. A weak mind and an empty stomach makes you buy more than you originally plan or need to.
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