At the risk of sounding preachy and all motivational speaker-ish, if you do this right, you won't just improve your grocery budget --you'll improve your health and your life. So, let's get started. There are a couple of sneaky issues that most people don't even realize come in to play when we start talking about menu planning and grocery shopping.
- WE. EAT. TOO. MUCH. Like, A LOT too much. I guarantee that some of you will look at my menu and shopping list and say "There's no way we could live off of that. No wonder she doesn't spend much on groceries." Why? Why can't I live off of that? Why can't you? Will you die if you don't eat meat at every meal? Will your soul shrivel and starve if you don't have a plate so large and overflowing that you fit all of your daily calorie intake in at one time? I promise ya'll, I love cake and convenience just as much as the next person. My menus are mostly homemade, but I give in to temptation and will buy a bag of chicken fingers and french fries or plan a meal of hot dogs and mac n' cheese occasionally. We eat cereal, pancakes, or waffles for breakfast. Leftovers for lunch. On the weekends, my husband and I love to find good-to-eat, bad-for-your butt food in the most off-the-wall places. We can do that because I am planning my meals and portions ahead of time. We save now so we can splurge later.
- We eat the wrong things. Ready-made foods have more sodium, more filler, and less nutritional value than home-made food, in addition to being more expensive. Even "cheat" food that is partially homemade and partially ready-made (e.g. canned biscuits in chicken and homemade broth for chicken and dumplings) is healthier and more economical than fully-prepped food. Use beans to supplement your beef in burgers and taco meat. Use ground turkey instead of ground beef. EAT MORE VEGETABLES.
- We don't drink enough water. Like, WAY not enough water. I mentioned in yesterday's post that we tend to eat to fill the container we are. That is a biologically wrong behavior. We aren't cavemen, not knowing where or when we will get to eat next. For the most part, there will be another meal soon. We plan our day and events around it, so the way we should eat is not "until I feel full, cuz I never know when I'll get to eat again", but "until I don't feel hungry and can make it to the next meal." This means you need to slow down and listen to your body as you eat. I'm not a little woman. I love food and have always struggled to find a way to control my food instead of it controlling me. I am also chronically dehydrated. It just does not occur to me to drink anything unless someone offers it to me, not even when I eat a meal. A lot of times, I'll confuse thirsty with hungry and start snacking. I won't feel satisfied after the snack, but that is the habit I had built. When I stopped buying a lot of snack foods and pre-made dinners and upped my water intake, my urge to snack decreased significantly and it suddenly became easier to control my weight and my budget. Leanne Brown mentions is "Good and Cheap" that buying drinks is a waste of money. She is absolutely right. Your body and budget do not need Coke and Milo's to survive.
Anyway, this isn't a diet post, it's a shopping post. Eat what you want. Buy what you want. Just be aware that the more under control your eating habits are, the more under control your shopping habits will be. On to the good stuff!
I went shopping yesterday!
You wanna know what my total for food for the next two weeks turned out to be? Remember, I have 4 people and 2 dogs.
$135
Wanna know how many coupons I used?
3
When I say that coupons are not what will save you the most money on an average shopping trip, I MEAN IT. Coupons can save you hundreds of dollars on paper goods, on pre-made foods, on snacks, and general health items and toiletries, on LOTS of things. But you have to be aware that items that have coupons have higher prices in the first place to accommodate the usage of those same coupons. Those items are not generally the ones that will help you meet any health goals (especially if you are trying to cut out sodium and extra sugars.) So, DON'T try to excuse yourself from puttign forth the effort to save by saying that you "don't know how to use coupons". You don't have to know how to use to coupons to save money. You need to know how to plan ahead and be willing to invest a little bit of time in preparation. You can't even use the excuse of "I don't know how to prepare" anymore because I am going to show you exactly how I got to those numbers.
Step 1: Plan a menu
Guys, we talked about this yesterday. It may be a pain in the butt to get creative, but isn't hard. If you have the inclination, you can plan your menu around what is on sale that week and in season that month to save even more.
Step 2: Create a ingredient list
Write down every ingredient of every item on the menu and write it down. Now combine the items that appear more than once. 1 pound chicken needed for each dinner on Monday, Thursday, and Tuesday? Chicken = 3lbs. Simple. Go in your food storage locations and mark off what you have. This seems like a super obvious step, but so many people just work off of memory here, but is where you can really mess up when it counts most. I have 5 cans of baking powder that remind me of just how important this step is every time I go in to my pantry. If it isn't important that you stay under a strict budget, this is also where you can stock up. Take note of what is running low. If you can afford to and need to start stocking back up, begin keeping an eye out for deals (if you haven't been already).
Step 3: Search for each ingredient in your local ads
Forget searching through every paper that comes in your mailbox, collecting all the newspapers that contain different ads. Just use a circular collection app. I'm partial to Flipp and Key Ring. Each app allows you to type in an item; it then searches through ALL the circulars they have loaded for your area. and displays any instance of that item occurring. I've found Flipp to be more complete and easy to use. KeyRing has the added benefit of storing all your loyalty cards, but does have pop-up ads along the bottom of the screen. The only limitation of both is if you have a community local store that puts out ads, their ads will most likely not be collected. You can contact the developers and request it, with varying results. Don't stress too much. If you are price matching at Walmart, submit your receipt to the Savings Catcher. Anything you've missed will be caught for you, unless it was on sale at Walgreens, CVS, or Rite Aid, which are not counted among Walmart's competitors in the app.
Note that this step is most helpful when you know base prices for the items on sale at the stores you shop at most (mine are Aldi, Publix, and Walmart). I cover this in my workshop and include a page to get you started in the Sensible Savings and Rational Rewards Booklet. Knowledge is power and money.
Great, now you have all of this information about prices, what should you do with it? Write it down, of course. If you are already going to that particular store where the item is on sale anyway, then buy the item there. Otherwise, just price match it at Walmart. Personally, I do my best to not buy ANYTHING from Walmart without a price match or coupon attached.
Note that this step is most helpful when you know base prices for the items on sale at the stores you shop at most (mine are Aldi, Publix, and Walmart). I cover this in my workshop and include a page to get you started in the Sensible Savings and Rational Rewards Booklet. Knowledge is power and money.
Great, now you have all of this information about prices, what should you do with it? Write it down, of course. If you are already going to that particular store where the item is on sale anyway, then buy the item there. Otherwise, just price match it at Walmart. Personally, I do my best to not buy ANYTHING from Walmart without a price match or coupon attached.
Step 4: Check your coupons
You may have all your coupons memorized and tightly organized and be the most efficient person there is - a real Coupon Queen. I'm not. I'm constantly confusing which coupon I saw online with which I saw in my book with one that probably existed 5 years ago, but not now. Instead of all that memorizing, I use coupon databases to check for me. SouthernSavers.com, Living Rich With Coupons, Hip 2 Save all allow searching. A quick online query of "coupon database" will get you even more. Just search the item or brand that you want to match a coupon to. If anything pops up, go check that insert or follow the instructions to print. When I am printing coupons, I prefer to use SwagBucks, which features the same coupons as coupons.com, but credits me an extra 10 cents for each coupon that I print and redeem in store. Scout out I <3 Publix or Krazy Koupon Lady or Passionate Penny Pincher for coupon deal matchups.
Step 5: Check your rebate apps
If you don't have Ibotta yet, get it. There are hundreds of eligible items at lots of stores (Not ALDI yet, sadly) that will earn you anywhere from 20 cents to $5 or more per item. If you need to stick to a strict budget, just search the generic name for the item (e.g. "cheese", instead of "Kraft") on your list and write down any corresponding deals. Same thing for Checkout51 and Snap by Groupon. Any apps that I find and have a consistently positive experience with, I will post on my Resources page.
Step 6: Crunch the numbers
The rest of this may take a little time (the more you do it, the less it takes). This step takes a little know-how. If you don't know how to calculate price per unit, go watch the video. Once you have the final price and or unit price calculated, you can decide whether you are purchasing an item on unit price or overall cost. The type of shopping you are doing is what makes the difference here. If you have $20 to shop with, you may not necessarily go with the cheapest unit price if you have to buy the $15 jar to get it that low. Then you'd barely have enough money for bread, let alone anything else. You'll have to balance what you need to have vs what you want to have. Are you stockpiling? Then lowest unit cost is the way to go. Sometimes lowest unit and lowest overall price align. That's when you can stock up guilt-free. Sometimes they don't. That's when you may want to give it a pass. I can give you the tools and steps. It is up to you to study them enough and to ask questions to create a workable understanding and strategy that fits your lifestyle.
Is it kind of hard to imagine putting it all together, just reading it on the screen? Here's my shopping list drawn up in excel, with all of the calculations I've used. Keep in mind that I have done more work on this sheet than I usually do so that you can have a good, thorough example.You may notice that I told you I spent $135 on groceries, but that the total on the bottom of my sheet says $101.29. That's not a mistake. In my personal shopping, I already had some things on hand, which would have lowered the cost. I also bought doubles of some things and added some personal items that I wanted that raised the cost. In order to give you the best example possible of how you can shop for your family, I omitted some things that most people have on hand (flour and sugar) and added back some things I already had that may have made the example misleading (like the $7.39 fish).
Here you can see that for most items, I compared the price across some combination of Walmart, Aldi, and Publix. If there is another store mentioned, I have price matched it at Walmart. If it is something that I already have in my pantry but you may not, I have struck through it to reflect that. The lowest unit cost for each item, I've highlighted in yellow. Final numbers are on the last slide at the bottom.
Just a quick note: Remember that Publix doubles coupons up to 50 cents, so when you are performing your calculations to compare prices, make sure that you account for the fact that your coupon may be worth twice as much at Publix as it is at Walmart.
Is it kind of hard to imagine putting it all together, just reading it on the screen? Here's my shopping list drawn up in excel, with all of the calculations I've used. Keep in mind that I have done more work on this sheet than I usually do so that you can have a good, thorough example.You may notice that I told you I spent $135 on groceries, but that the total on the bottom of my sheet says $101.29. That's not a mistake. In my personal shopping, I already had some things on hand, which would have lowered the cost. I also bought doubles of some things and added some personal items that I wanted that raised the cost. In order to give you the best example possible of how you can shop for your family, I omitted some things that most people have on hand (flour and sugar) and added back some things I already had that may have made the example misleading (like the $7.39 fish).
Here you can see that for most items, I compared the price across some combination of Walmart, Aldi, and Publix. If there is another store mentioned, I have price matched it at Walmart. If it is something that I already have in my pantry but you may not, I have struck through it to reflect that. The lowest unit cost for each item, I've highlighted in yellow. Final numbers are on the last slide at the bottom.
Just a quick note: Remember that Publix doubles coupons up to 50 cents, so when you are performing your calculations to compare prices, make sure that you account for the fact that your coupon may be worth twice as much at Publix as it is at Walmart.
Disclaimer: I am not perfect
Nor do I want to be. Perfection is lonely. We all make mistakes. There may have been coupons that would apply to something on my list that I missed. There may have been an ad that applied. I could have gotten a better deal somewhere else last week or next week. Let me know if there something I could do better or if you have a suggestion. But in your own life, don't stress over it too much. If you miss a sale this time, keep an eye out and catch it next time. Give yourself permission to make mistakes and to learn from them. You'll get better and faster the more practice you put towards it.