How to Stretch Your Grocery Budget

There are many ways to stretch your grocery budget. The first thing you have to do is define your budget. Whether you plan to shop weekly or monthly, you need to determine a set amount that you can reasonably spend each period on groceries. You can figure this out by looking at your total budget and seeing how much is available after essentials such as mortgage and electric are deducted. The amount will also depend on the number of people you are feeding. In addition, you need to determine what your grocery budget will contain. For example, will it only contain food from the grocery store or will it include restaurants as well? Will it include items such as pet foods or toiletries and medications? Once you determine how much you will spend and what you will spend it on, it is time to figure out how to get the most for that money.

The first and most obvious way to save is with coupons. You can get coupons from a variety of sources. The most thought of source is from the Sunday newspapers. For $1.50 or $2.00 that your local Sunday paper costs. you can often save $50 or more. Additionally, many magazines have coupons that can prove useful. Other sources for coupons include the Internet. You can check a product's website and often find coupons or you can go to one of the many coupon websites. Several that I really like are www.smartsource.com, www.redplum.com, www.grocerycouponupdate.com. If you do a search on "grocery coupons" you will find many more too. My advice is not to pay for any coupon sites because there are so many free ones available.

In addition to coupons, you can save money by shopping the store sales. Likely that you have several grocery chains within a reasonable distance from your home but even if you only have one, you can make the most of it. The first thing you need to know is when each store starts it's weekly sale. On that day, you can go to the store's website and check out the weekly sales that that store is running. Depending on the deals, you can decide if you need to go to one or more stores that week. Even if you only have the time to shop one store, you can make the most of that store by getting the deals that store is offering

Make a list! This is very important! Based on the sales, you should write down what you are planning to get. Write down the sale prices so that you know that you are getting what is on sale. Check sizes and shelf tags to make sure that you are picking up the right stuff! Some items only go on sale occasionally and as you work through this budgeting game, you will figure out what those are for your store. You will know that when the item DOES go on sale, you should stock up if you can. Other items go on sale frequently and thus you don't have to stock up as much. For example, in my local store, canned vegetables go on sale very infrequently. When they go on sale for 25-33 cents a can, I grab up several cases. Chicken breast goes on sale every third week or so and thus I buy enough to last me about 3-4 weeks.

But how do you know how much to get and how long it will last? Make a menu!!! You should have at least a weekly menu plan but if you can, you should really plan a month ahead. Some things you may need to be flexible on for example if you want to have steak but the cuts you want do not go on sale as you expected, you may decide to postpone that and have something else instead. It will, however, give you a pretty good idea of how much pasta and rice items to purchase and as you get into the groove, you can purchase that steak when it does go on sale so that when it comes up in your menu, you will only have to pull it out of the freezer.

Keep an eye out for clearance items in your store. I know my stores tend to use a red tag for clearance or discontinued items. There are often deals on just ripe fruits and vegetables and sometimes even on meats. If you use fruits and veggies right away or cook them or freeze them, they are just as good. Meats, as long as they are not expired, can be put right into the freezer and will be just as good as if they had a week before expiring. Just remember to take care to get them right into the freezer or cook them right away. Other grocery items may simply be discontinued because a new package is going to be coming out. I just got half off shampoo but only certain scents were this price. I'd wager that the company is going to come up with a new scent and does not want excess of this scent hanging around! So, I got a deal!

Be a smart shopper. Look all around you and you will find deals and ways to save!!!