Stretch Your Grocery Dollars with These Tips

These are tips I've gathered over the years from various sources to lower my weekly grocery bills. Whether you are a family of 4 or a family of ten, these tips will help you, too!

Plan, Plan, Plan. You've heard it all your life. Planning is key! When I started planning weekly meals, I found that I was able to cut my grocery bill nearly in half. Why? Planning allows you to focus in the grocery store, buy only the things you need, and curb impulse buys. In our house, we usually eat the same few things for breakfast everyday, and lunch is usually leftovers from last night's dinner, so I really only need to plan dinners for the week. My favorite go-to guide for meal planning is Everyday Food Magazine.

Inventory Your Supply. Closely related to planning, doing a quick inventory of your pantry and freezer eliminates unnecessary purchases and helps you plan meals around what you already have in the house.

Stock Up! My good friend keeps her eyes peeled for specials in the store for her family's favorites and stocks up. These are items that have a long shelf life or can be frozen. My friend stocks up on string cheese, jarred sauces, pastas, english muffins and microwave meals, to name a few. If you have a deep freeze (lucky if you do!), you can stock up on meat as well. Consider buying into a meat share, if your family eats a lot of meat.

Join a Price Club. Even if you don't have a large family, joining a price club such as BJ's Warehouse or Costco can translate to big savings over the course of the year. I stock up on such pantry staples as chicken broth, canned tomatoes of all kinds, canned sauce, oatmeal, frozen vegetables and frozen seafood. Stocking up at the price club a few times a year reduces my weekly grocery bill greatly, since I always have ingredients on hand to prepare meals, even when "there's no food in the house."

Buy Local and Seasonal. Here, in the Northeast, I'm lucky to have a variety of fresh vegetables available, season by season. When planning my weekly menu, I take into consideration my region's produce availability. More and more supermarkets are selling local produce. These are usually cheaper, in season. Your local farmer's market is another great option, as long as you come prepared with a game plan. It can be easy to blow your budget at the farmer's market but as long as you buy only what you need, you can have fresh produce for a reasonable price.

Curb Unhealthy Habits. I used to spend a lot on soda and juice. Grocery items that are devoid of nutrition are also devoid of value. I switched to water, and the occasional orange juice purchase. This reduced my grocery bill by at least ten dollars every week. It's tough to not buy juice or soda when the kids are asking for it, so instead of eliminating it completely, you can ration it. It's amazing how quickly juice disappears from the fridge! Try saving the juice or soda only for dinner time, and for smaller children, you can cut the juice with water.

Eat Healthy. When my husband and I committed to eating healthier, due to his high cholesterol and my efforts to lose weight after my daughter was born, one of the first things I did was cut as much processed food as possible out of our diet, and prepare meals with fresh ingredients. One of the benefits of this lifestyle change was reducing the grocery bill, since I was buying less food overall. As a SAHM, I usually have the luxury of time in preparing dinner but even so, I find myself busy with little time to prepare meals, so I do prep work throughout the day, I use my slow cooker and I prepare meals that are quick to cook, or can be left to cook on its own.

Try out these tips and see your savings add up! Feel free to share your own tips in the comments below.