1. Make a well thought out list and do not deviate once you get to the store. The faster you move through the store, the less you will spend. It is wise to check sales and look for coupons online to print or buy from ebay before going to the store, or you will grossly overspend. Almost everything goes on sale in a patterned way and most items have coupons, even produce. I rarely buy a labeled product, food or non-food, unless it is on sale with a coupon.
2. Use coupons only for things that you need, don't just use coupons to use coupons or you are wasting money. Your phone most likely has a calculator--use it! Make sure you are getting the bottom price per unit on whatever you are buying. Sometimes the brand or store brand without the coupon is cheaper. (Note cheapest price in your price book!). Remember to to thoughtful about wants and needs are you fill your grocery cart. And keep in mind your goal...I hope you have one by now, to motivate all this fabulous thriftiness!
3. Be flexible on brand. Yes, I prefer organic food. Yes, I prefer specific organic food. But dry goods like toilet paper, I'm much more flexible. I will buy non-organic food if it is close to free. I'd be crazy not to, especially now, when my goal is large and the end date is February! Check your price and figure out how much more you are truly willing to pay for the premium of specific brand, organic, etc.
4. Buy produce in season. I cannot emphasize this enough. And know what stores consistently have the best prices on certain produce. I will not pay more than 69 cents/lb for organic bananas. I know I can get them at this price at Wegman's and Common Market. Ripe organic fair trade bananas are 39 cents/lb at Common Market. When they are there, I buy every single one available and bag and freeze them--smoothies or muffins later. I buy organic apples locally in bulk at 38 cents/lb. If you pick your own, you can get organic strawberries at $1.50/lb most places and fill your freezer. If you buy strawberries in December, you will pay $5/lb! Of course I prefer to buy at the farmer's market for weekly produce, but for stock up produce and winter produce, I think BULK. For non-organic apples, you will pay $1.29 or more per pound in the grocery store! Eat 1/day in your family and you've just spent $235.43/year. Do a little work and for that same amount of fruit, you've spent $63.88, a savings of $171.55...mmm a domestic plane ticket to somewhere fun! Imagine the savings when you do this with multiple foods!! (You can go to Wisconsin or South Caroline on Southwest for less than this currently and surely other places, too.)
5. Watch as you are checked out at the grocery store--very often things ring up incorrectly. After checking out, scan your receipt, make sure everything rung up correctly and they deducted coupons correctly. More than 50% of the time, there is an error in my receipt costing me $5-10 or more! That is an average of $260/year, if you shop once a week. That is huge.
6. Plan meals for the week and start with food you already have from the pantry. This will ensure you lose nothing to spoiling and you spend as little as you need to. When I do this, it frees up money to buy things in bulk--last month I went slightly over my $400/month food budget (this includes grocery and all food purchases), but I got 100 lb of organic whole wheat flour for $68 (Thanks, Noelle!) and 80 lbs of apples for $28. Worth it. And we will just be more careful this month. I can't emphasize planning the menu enough--write it out! This saves me so much money. And I'm organized so we rarely choose to eat out.
No comments:
Post a Comment