Grocery bills might normally seem like something too minute when trying to cut down your monthly expenses. Sadly, impulse buying gets the best of most people when shopping for groceries. It starts with adding one unnecessary item, and you will eventually have a pile of non-essential items before you know it.
While you might have some level of control on your impulse buying, it is still possible for your grocery bills to pile up beyond normal. In some cases, the rate that kids love eating will need you to cut down your bills to accommodate them. Luckily, you only need a few tweaks to make grocery shopping a budget-friendly task.
Here is how to cut down your monthly grocery expenses:
Always Use a List
The fact that you shop without a list might be the start of your inflated spending habit. A list ensures that you know the boundaries of what you should buy. Create a list of what you need and how many of such items you should purchase.
When it gets to shopping for them, only shop for anything on the list. Other than making you are responsible in your shopping choices, it ensures that you won’t forget to buy anything essential. Otherwise, you risk spending more time and gas money going back to the store to purchase the item.
Buy In Bulk
In most cases, small items might be relatively more expensive than larger ones. For instance, while a 100g of pepper might go for $1.50, 400g might go for $5. This means that buying four 100g pepper sachets might be more expensive than buying a single 400g packet.
The math behind it trickles down to the cost of packaging, which is higher for smaller items. Instead of buying small packets of items that you need to use in your everyday cooking routines, buy them in bulk. The margin of saving money might be minimal at first, but once you consider the number of items you don’t buy in bulk, you will feel the difference. Furthermore, bulk buying limits the amount of trash you can have once you throw away the packaging of your groceries.
Use Loyalty Cards and Coupons
Coupons can help you save cash, especially if you buy items that are currently on sale. Pile up and organize your coupons to be on the lookout for deals that can help you save some cash. You should also only use the coupons for items that you really need.
Also, consider signing up for a loyalty card in your favorite grocery store. Often, grocery shops offer their most loyal customers discounts and give them access to the best deals around. However, combining coupons and loyalty card will best work for you if you choose a grocery shop that fits right into your meal plan.
Grow Foods At Home
The costs of getting groceries to you from where they were initially planted tend to pile up. Since these foods need to incur transport and packaging costs, the costs reflect on the final prices of the product. However, if you can grow your food, you get to eliminate these extra costs.
Even better, you will barely need any chemical additives to grow or preserve the foods, which exposes your family to healthy organic meals. The trick lies in learning how to best grow the plants in your home. In case you do not have enough land or space is at a premium, there is a variety of ways for planting your food indoors or in containers.
Work With a Menu
Before the start of the week, create a menu of exactly what you want to eat. This will make it easy to create a list of the groceries that you need to buy. Furthermore, you can prepare all the similar main dishes on the first day and freeze them for use during the next one. This reduces the idea of eating out when bored with cooking.
To save some more cash, consider meal planning around the sales cycles of your favorite grocery shop. Buying items when they are being sold at a discount will free up your budget for other items in your meal plan.
Shop Online
Impulse buying will get the best of you when shopping physically, but not online. As long as you have a list of all the groceries you need, you will only need to fill an online shopping cart and check out. If your store allows, you can have the items delivered right at your doorstep. This will help you save time and gas money that you would have spent getting the items. If they do not have a home delivery option, you can still shop online and pick the items from the store.
Cutting the cost of your groceries shouldn’t mean foregoing necessary ingredients. It trickles down to how you take advantage of discounts and plan your meals. Consider the tips above to create a healthy meal plan for your family without eating too deep into your monthly budget.
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