10 things I'm doing to save money on groceries
10 things I'm doing to save money on groceries
Everyone is reeling about US grocery prices these days, especially the carnivores. We are fortunate to be vegetarians and I've spent the last 3 decades finding and creating non-meat recipes. Still though, everything costs more under Trump than under the last President and certainly more than before Covid. I've always been the grocery shopper in the family and the meal maker so I can honestly say Things are bad and they are getting worse.
When the children were small I played a game to keep my mad math skills alert. (Babies are zombies, btw. They eat Mom brains!) At the grocery I would keep a running tally of the prices in my head while comparison shopping and also aiming to keep the average price at under $1 per item. My goal was to get within a dollar of the final price and get as much as possible. In addition I always had the babies in tow and usually a very distracting husband too. Not an easy task with mom brain.
To start the game, I'd begin in the kid's section and get the essentials. That always put me at a disadvantage which forced me to focus on getting the best deals later. Imagine having $100 and you have to spend $25 on the baby essentials. You are left with $75 and your goal is to get 100 items or more for that $100. Back in the 1990s, I was able to do that. Mac and cheese at 0.25 and 0.33 a box was a staple, sure. But frozen veg could be had for well under a dollar so we ate a lot of mac and cheese with frozen spinach stirred in as the pasta boiled. We also ate a lot of pasta and homemade sauces. But most importantly I bought raw ingredients to make our meals which brings me to the number one thing I'm doing to save money in 2025:
1. Avoid processed and pre made food. Buy the raw ingredients and make meals from scratch.
But I don't have time! Make the time. Take the time. Do that old mom trick mothers do the world 'round. Put the kids to bed and when it's time for the parents to hit the sack, do what we moms always do, follow the husband to bed 30 minutes to an hour later. We always get stuck washing up, cleaning counters, doing laundry last minute. Instead, turn off the TV earlier and do those chores then. Better yet, assign chores to family members. When the hubby is falling asleep, get cooking. Use a crock pot, an instant pot if needed. Start a batch of beans boiling and let them sit overnight. Mix the dough and let it rise overnight. Take the time to plan meals.
Most people have a day or two off each week so use a three hour block on a Saturday or Sunday morning to chop the veg all at once (10 carrots chopped for three meals), make a casserole or three, start two batches of beans going, make a pot of soup, more if you have second soup pot. Make cookies and freeze them. These meals will keep 3-4 days in the frig and a week or more in the freezer. After work, start a batch of rice and heat up the beans from the frig. Thaw a casserole the night before. Heat and eat the next day. Plan ahead. Cook ahead.
2. Buy in bulk if you can afford it.
We are lucky that we can afford to spend a chunk of money at a time. When we had two in diapers and pull ups, we would rather spend $15 on zinc oxide and other baby needs than a bulk size of rice, sugar, flour, or beans. We were also living on a much, much smaller income at the time. Now we can get 20 pounds of rice or beans, 25 pounds of flour or sugar, or a bulk order of other items shelling out $15-$20 for a single mega size item.
Unfortunately when you have to make $30 last the week, for groceries and a few gallons of gas, that $15 bulk item isn't always what you need at that moment. But when the choice includes a $7.50 1-pound container of ground beef, you should consider better options. A 4-pound bag of pintos is 3.76. Add in 1.37 for a pound of carrots, get a head of garlic and an onion, and all of it comes in under $7.50 at my local WM. Even small substitutions with a better price per pound win out. The four pounds of pinto beans will make more meals than a single pound of ground beef. Plus you get some veg and fiber too along with your protein.
3. Substitute likes for likes. I can't always get the right beans or vegetables or fruits I need for a recipe so I substitute similar items. A simple google search will give quick substitution ideas.
White Bean Soup. I swapped the navy beans for cannellini beans
4. Buy in season. Focus on in-season fruit and veg. Find fruit and veg that can be frozen and stock up. Compare prices on what is available in dried fruits when they are in season.
Berry Upside Down Cake. I use the fruit that's in season for this versatile recipe.
5. Buy frozen veg. For us, our go-to veg includes peas. Fresh are impossible to find and then rarely affordable so we default to frozen. They taste better than canned and are generally cheaper by the ounce when you discount the can tare weight. Frozen veg is often picked fresh and frozen within hours. Best, it'll last through the off season.
6. Opt for store brands. Walmart.com has an option for NO SUBSTITUTIONS. Use it and stick with the store brands. But don't be so blind that you miss the brand name sales. This happened with yogurt last month. The brand name went on sale with a digital coupon through WM. It was 0.50 less than the store brand for the same 2 lb size. And don't forget the per ounce price comparison when shopping.
Another weird area that pops up are produce bulk versus regular prices. I have to check the prices of potatoes regularly in 5 pound versus 10 pound sizes because WM will randomly drop the price of regular 5 pound bags to less per pound so I'll switch from a 10 pound bag to two 5-lb bags to save money.
7. Wait it out. Just don't buy it if it isn't on sale and necessary, if the price has gone up, if it's out of season, if it has become unaffordable.
Why are you spending 7.50/lb on ground beef when pinto beans average $1 a pound, as little as $0.75/lb in bulk 15lb bags at WM? See #3. Substitute protein for protein. Why are you spending $5 on a bag of potato chips? Buy a 5 pound $5 bag of potatoes instead.
Why are you buying juice at $4 in an 8 serving container when you can buy 12-15 bananas and get the fruit and fiber in a convenient, compostable banana peel. Or maybe a 2-3 lb bag of apples, plums, or mandarins instead. Fresh is better and comparable or slightly cheaper in this example.
8. Leave a review only when Walmart pays me to do it. On my next order will be a $5 credit because they asked me to review something specific, one of their store brands, in exchange for a $5 credit. This only happens every two months or so, but $5 is $5.
9. Use my credit card at Aldi for the next 10 days.
Why? 5% off my order. It's a limited time deal from my credit card company. I always shop with my cash back credit card and we earn from $15-$75 a month in cashback. I just have to weigh whether there is a card use fee. For example, we paid our car insurance with this cash back card. It cost us a $4.95 flat fee to use the card but I gained $15+ in cash back after the fee. * I also use this card for everyday groceries, etc. because it pays a flat 1.5% back across the board. My CC also offers quarterly and monthly discounts through the year.
For this Aldi deal, there is a limit to how much cash back I can get back, $3.00 total. So I need to limit my purchase to $60. I shop at Aldi occasionally, but only for specific things, with WM as my default store. Yet this little store has some deals and unique items which consistently beat WM. You can't ask this girl to give up her childhood memories of German sweets. Here's my strategy for making this deal work even more for me:
a. No special trips. Make only one visit when I'm running another errand. Plenty of doctor's appointments coming up so we'll be in Athens anyway.
b. Check Aldi's sales page online and find loss leaders. Loss leaders are items drastically reduced in price to lure you into the store so you'll buy other stuff. These are things the stores are willing to lose money on so they are usually good enough to tempt you. Aldi's good at slashing in season fruit & veg well below even Walmart's prices, which are online for comparison. THEN I'll ask myself, do I really need to buy these sale items? With fruit, it's usually a resounding YES!
c. Go in with a list and stick to it.
d. Focus on stocking up on items that may be targeted for increases due to tariffs. Since the stupid Trump stupid tariffs (both are stupid) affect steel and aluminum and because cleansers have components from abroad, I am getting canned items and Aldi's store brand laundry detergent. Aldi's store brands hold steady at 0.01 to 0.05 cents a can cheaper than Walmart but I will still check prices online at WM the day I shop to ensure getting the best prices. Saving 0.06 instead of 0.01 on several dozen cans is worth a stop on route.
10. Shop WalMart.com pickup to save time and money. Time is money and WM does not charge me to shop as long as I pick it up. The site has a running grocery cart which I add to as needed. THEN, and most importantly, I savage that list as the day approaches for pick up. Yesterday Lance and I did a 20 minute inventory of our larder and pantry and he saw stuff I had missed when I glanced it over earlier. I took a few things off the list and then he begged for a frozen pizza :) Oh, well. The grocery list allows me to keep what I need and reassess what will be used and how.
BTW, the grocery stores within 20 miles of me are online mostly. All the biggies have sales fliers online and some have digital coupons. Kroger, Publix, and WalMart have all their prices online. Aldi has sales online and the Instacart feature has some of Aldi's items listed with their usual IC mark ups included. WM comes out on top 90% of the time.
I usually avoid the small store in our county because they just can't hold a candle to WM. Yet the vegetable sales are worth following in their online sales pages. They buy directly from local farmers and WM just doesn't carry triple bundles of collards or turnip greens ("turnip salad") and rutabagas outside of sealed plastic bagged offerings at huge mark ups. Discounted fresh veg and fruit is always worth the trip.
I wish you the best navigating this disastrous economy that only benefits the wealthy. We're all in this boat together. Ahoy! I spy Long Pig! May I recommend we aim for that yacht over there and board it. Eat the rich! They're well fed, yet lean, and often soaked in brandy. They owe us; they've been feeding off the poor for ages.
***************************************
*Credit cards: We never pay any annual fees or interest because we are committed to paying off our credit card every two weeks. Other than genuine, unaffordable, unexpected emergencies, pay off your credit card balance in full. Even then, most credit card companies will offer easy pay down options for set terms with much lower interest rates. Things have been so bad that our credit card company routinely asks us whether we want to break down our larger grocery charges into easy, low interest payments. Egads! BESIDES, paying off your credit card every two weeks to coincide with your payday also gives you excellent credit. It also forces you to review where the money is going.
