I'm seeing a lot of articles lately on "the 15 best tricks..." / "20 secret hacks..." / "10 killer ways to save money on groceries" / etc. And honestly they're all saying the same thing:
- Use Ibotta or other rebate apps (yeah, they're cool, but not a magic bullet of savings)
- Make a list & don't stray from it
- Buy "loss leaders" (the really good deals on the front page of the grocery circular)
- Use coupons
- Buy on Sale
- Yadda' yadda' yadda'
None of it is new, and there's no magic bullet of savings. You still have to do the work.
When it comes down to it, there are a plethora of ways to get your food. You can buy it, you can grow it, you can hunt it, you can forage it, you can beg/borrow/steal or freegan it.
I'm not a freegan (I don't dumpster dive for my food, although I make no judgments on those who espouse that way of life), and I don't eat meat—so no hunting wabbits for me (although you can raise your own rabbits for food, lots of people do it).
This is what we do to save money on groceries:
- Grow our own food. Some years it's just a variety of lettuce grown in pots on our deck, but we figure out what produce we eat the most—then we try to figure out if we can grow it. Right now we have tomatoes, onions, beans, peas, peppers, garlic, and lettuces growing. Future plans include berry bushes and other perennial vegetables / herbs. Anything we don't readily use up, we will store for later use. The eventual goal is that our rather small garden will grow and feed us throughout the year. (I have a whole nother post on gardening coming soon).
- Make it ourselves. We'll skip the convenience factor and make stuff ourselves. We bake our own bread, forego the frozen or take-out pizza and make it from scratch. We make our own soup and soup stocks as well as salad dressings, hummus, yogurt (and when our yogurt fails, ricotta cheese), nut butters, etc.
- Don't buy Meat. Not even if it's on sale. For some people this is sacrilege. They grew up on meat and potatoes (& they'll die eating meat and potatoes). That's fine. For us, though, fruit, veg, rice, lentils, beans, etc. are all cheaper than meat and all contain enough protein for your body to thrive. It's not for everybody—but you can survive without meat & it's way cheaper.
- Read Grocery Circulars. Every Wednesday, I check the circulars and create a meal plan based on what is on sale this week
- Check out the discounted produce shelf. A couple of the grocery stores I frequent will steeply discount produce that is reaching its sell-by date. Usually the food is still fresh. I'll then bring it home and cut it up and freeze it until I can use it.
- Buy dried foods in bulk. I'm talking beans, lentils, rice, sugar, flour, etc. And it doesn't have to be the 20 lb. bag of rice at Sam's. Most stores still have a bulk food aisle. Even if they don't, go for the packaged dried beans over the canned beans (especially if you have a pressure cooker). Just make sure you have room to store the stuff when you get home.
- Go for generic. This is a tricky one, because you have to read the labels to see if the generic version is truly identical to the name-brand. With stuff like cereal, the generic version might have corn syrup (or gmo beet sugars) as a sweetener rather than cane sugar. There might be more preservatives in the generic, etc. So you have to know what your limits are. For us, if it has corn syrup, BHT, or other bad-for-you ingredients, we'll skip it.
- Use store rewards / loyalty cards. This includes bringing your own bags (as some stores give you a 5¢ discount per bag)
- Use coupons / coupon apps / store saving apps. When I shop at Target, I use their cartwheel app to save a little more money. It's not a lot. Usually less than $1 per trip—but on things I was already buying, every little bit helps. I've also tried Walmart's savings catcher app, but thus far it hasn't actually found any savings for me—so take that with a grain of salt.
- Use rebate apps like Ibotta & Checkout 51 (although not all of the stores I go to are listed in those apps, so it's not my magic bullet of savings)
- Prep food as soon as you get home, so its ready to cook—this helps me waste less food thereby saving me money. There are days when I'm so tired that even chopping up an onion feels hard. So instead of making dinner, I'll opt for take out (or, lets be honest, a bowl of cereal or ice cream). If I can prep my food for the week, I'm more likely to cook & use it all up before it goes bad.
- Keep everything visible. As a sub-note, if I can't see the food I've prepped, I forget about it and it goes bad—so keeping it labeled or visible is a big help. I don't get fancy. Some masking tape and a permanent marker are all I need to label stuff.
Do I make grocery lists and stick to them? Sometimes. But sometimes I come across a good deal that wasn't advertised, so I keep myself open to the possibilities.
Do I shop based on available coupons and rebates? I used to, then I realized I wasn't really saving money that way—it just felt like it because the reward (50¢ off!) was so visible.
Do I still waste food? Of course. I get busy, we get stressed out over life sometimes and things get back burnered. BUT, now that I don't eat meat (& we've greatly reduced our dairy intake), most of the stuff in my fridge can be composted. So even if my food goes "bad," I can throw it in the compost pile to become next year's garden soil.
The four things that save us the most money:
- Not buying meat
- Growing our own food
- Buying dried goods in bulk
- Making it ourselves
These four things have saved us the most money. All of the rest of the stuff, the coupons and rebate apps, bringing our own bags to the grocery store, etc. — probably all add up to about $150-$200 a year, which is no little thing, but we've probably saved 5 times that by growing our food & making it ourselves.
When you consider that one sweet bell pepper costs $2 (on sale), and you just put in a plant that will provide you with 30-40 peppers for the season, and all it cost you was $3 (for the plant) plus another couple of dollars for the soil... well, you can do that math.
Speaking of, I need to get out and get my pepper plants in the ground!
Be well all!
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