4 Habits That Help You Save Money on Groceries

We all buy groceries, we all have to eat. It’s something that you can’t avoid, and once you start adding in children those grocery bills can get pretty expensive. There are many ways to save on groceries. No, I’m not going to talk about any of those “get paid to shop” apps where you can buy or scan certain items to get measly points that will get you gift cards. I’m talking about real ways that don’t involve buying or scanning products that you don’t really need. Here are 4 Habits That Help You Save Money on Groceries that you can incorporate into your daily life.

4 Habits That Help You Save Money on Groceries

1. Meal plan. Planning out what you are going to eat for the week or over the next two weeks is going to be your first step. Figure out what you want to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as well as snacks. When you plan you will be able to determine what you need and how much you need before ever leaving the house. You will never need to decide what you want for dinner while at the grocery store ever again! Plus, you get to keep your grocery budget under control.

2. Shop the sales and don’t fear coupons! This goes along with menu planning. You can plan your meals around what’s on sale that week. If hamburger is on sale, plan for a cook out one day and hot tamales for another. Use as much of what’s on sale as you can. Don’t be afraid of the coupons! They are there to help you, and no, it’s not going to be like extreme couponing. You don’t need to go to the extreme. Just print off coupons for things that are already on your list of items to get that week. Keep your sanity and stick to your budget.

3. Stop eating junk food. You hear this all of the time for health reasons, and that is just as valid. Junk food also costs more than healthy food. I promise you that it will be cheaper to buy a broccoli crown than it will be for that bag of potato chips. The broccoli will also provide more nutrients, will fill you up for longer, and can feed more people than that bag of chips will. Switch to eating fruits and veggies as snacks and your body and you wallet will thank you.

4. Don’t let food go bad! We are all guilty of buying foods that we think we are going to eat and it ends up going bad before we eat it. Meal planning will help with this, but you might also want to plan out your snacks and stop at the grocery store for a quick pickup of fresh fruits and veggies midweek instead of buying it all at once. The food that goes bad is money down the drain or in the garbage, so be sure that it stays fresh!