How to Save $100 (or More) at the Grocery Store This Month
Published on - March 25th, 2009 (by J.D. Roth) This is a guest post from Erin, who writes about frugal food at $5 Dinners.
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When gas prices were soaring in the summer of 2008, my family was scrambling to find ways to save money. We could not reduce the prices at the gas pumps, we were locked into the lowest interest rate on our mortgage, and our budget was maxed out. I knew the only way we could continue without running into the red each month was to reduce the line item marked Grocery — but I didn’t know how exactly to go about doing that.
At that same time, I discovered the world of personal-finance blogs and frugality blogs. It was through these blogs that I found myself a “job”. It wasn’t a job that earned our family any income; it was a job that involved spending less of the income that my husband worked so hard to earn. My new job? Grocery store savings expert!
My new grocery-shopping techniques allowed me to save over $100 the first month, and close to $200 the second month. Our monthly grocery budget dropped from around $500 to $300. (And sometimes less!) Here are the steps I took to save at the supermarket:
- Get a store loyalty card. Sign up for a card that will help you save money each week at the store (and maybe even earn money back, like with the CVS Extra Care Bucks card.)
- Study your store’s circular. Look through your grocery store’s weekly circular to see what is on sale. Products on the front page are called “loss leaders” and are priced very low to entice you into the store, where you will then purchase the loss leaders, but other items as well. Loss leader prices are typically the lowest prices of the season, so it is worth buying extra items if you know that you will use them. For example: If boneless skinless chicken breasts are on sale for $1.77/lb (regularly $5.49/lb), it is worth purchasing 5-6 packages to freeze for use in the coming weeks.
- Make a meal plan and a shopping list. After studying your grocery store circular, plan a few meals using the products that are on sale that week. (If you need extra help with this, my $5 Dinners blog has a feature called the bargain meal of the week, where different contributors from all over the country post a recipe based on their grocery-store circular.) Create a shopping list based on your meal plan and what you already have in your cupboards. Do not buy anything that is not on your list. You didn’t need it when you were at home creating your list, and you don’t need it when you are standing in the store — even if you think you need it.
- Look for marked-down proteins. Watch for meats, chicken, pork and fish that are on sale. Or, better yet, marked down for “quick sale”. These products can be used right away or frozen for future use. A vacuum sealer or food saver system is a worthy investment if you aim to get the very best prices on protein sources.
- Buy your produce on sale. Purchase produce that is on sale that week. This is often based on what type of produce is in season. This will not only help your pocketbook, but it will also help you explore new foods and experiment in the kitchen.
- Clip coupons from the newspaper or print them from online. “But they don’t make coupons for the products that I buy,” you might say. Do you purchase toothpaste, deodorant and shampoo? I hope so! All of these products can be purchased with a coupon. I don’t remember the last time I paid for toothpaste. When name-brand toothpastes go on sale for $1, you can match a $.50 coupon that doubles to $1 (if your store doubles) to get the toothpaste for free.
- Consider digital coupons. If you’re not up to the paper-and-scissors task of couponing, then load your store loyalty cards with electronic coupons. Shortcuts.com, Cellfire, P&G eSaver, and Upromise are four websites that allow you to save money electronically on a wide variety of products. Sign up at each website and the coupons will be deducted automatically from your receipts. Upromise electronic coupons are deposited back into a college savings account you can set up for your children.
- Resist the displays. Purchase items from the top or bottom shelf, as opposed to the ones at eye level. Manufacturers pay a premium to have their products displayed at eye level, which translates to higher prices for those products! Look above and below for other products that might be similar to what you are looking for. Walk past the large displays for holiday/seasonal items or the cardboard displays that jump out at you as you round from one aisle to the next.
- Leave the kids at home. Shopping with the kids makes it difficult to focus on your shopping list, your coupons and your mission: To get in and out as quickly as possible, saving the most money possible! Leave the kids at home. There’s something to be said for shopping at 10pm! [J.D.'s note: I love to shop late at night. Kris and I used to do that when we were younger.]
- Make it a game. Challenge yourself to save $5 one week, $10 more dollars the next week, $20 more the following week, and so on. Before you know it, your grocery bill could be half of what it once was!
With a little time, planning and extra effort, saving money at the grocery store can be both fun and rewarding. By utilizing these techniques and becoming a “professional” grocery shopper, I prevented our family from running into the red during the months when our budget was just about stretched to its limits. Happy saving!
For more on this subject, check out how to save money on groceries at Five Cent Nickel.
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In my view, saving money on groceries is one of the most challenging jobs you can do if you don’t have time.
My wife and I work outside the home and find ourselves scrambling into the grocery store on our way home from work and grabbing the things we need without taking too much time. My wife in particular is a speed shopper out of necessity. I tend to wander in circles and am like a deer caught in the headlights when I notice how much things are costing. It’s not a pleasant experience. OK you know who does the grocery shopping most.
I think your suggestions are very good but like anything worthwhile, they take time and effort. So you need to put a value on your time and work out the cost benefit of the effort and time to see if it’s worthwhile.
Greg
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For the posters who say they can’t shop in bulk because they lose things in the freezer and then have to throw stuff away because of freezer burn/spoilage, here’s what I do.
I put a dry erase board on my freezer door and list what goes in and when. This way I know just by looking at the door that I have 3 packs of chicken breasts, 2 packs of raw shrimp, 4 packs of pork chops, etc. When I pull something out to defrost, then I cross it off the board.
Now I can buy the super saver family packs, break them up into single servings (another tip: put the marinade in the bag with the meat, as it defrosts the meat is automatically marinaded), and easily plan meals. Prep work takes about 30 minutes when I first come home from the grocery store. Saves me money, saves me time.
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The key to saving money for us seems to be shopping at 4-5 different stores. It’s annoying but still seems to work best. For example, Trader Joes has the best prices (and quality) on many items such as dairy, breakfast cereals, pasta, bread, and dog food. Fred Meyer is the best for slow-churned ice cream, when it goes on sale. Safeway is the best for those frozen dinners which I keep at work as a back-up if I don’t manage to bring lunch. Costco has the best price on the chicken stock I use for soups all winter. (Meat and produce we buy based on quality not price, so we are not saving money there.) We don’t make extra trips; if we’re out of something we do without until it’s practical to get to that store again. (Except for milk and bread, which I will buy at our neighborhood store; though it’s not as good as TJ’s, it’s still reasonable.)
A bit exhausting but it works!
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If people were to look at my budget and what I spend on food for a month I *know* they would tell me I could easily save a lot of money there but it’s a true struggle for me.
I can be frugal in many places but I’m a horrible cook who hates cooking, hates leftovers and finds it hard to follow any of these tips when I share an apartment (AKA little freezer space which is shared) and I’m only at home 4-5 days of the week on a *good* week.
I need to find the blog for those of us without large freezers, cooking for one to two people and enjoy variety.
I think a decent segment of your audience falls into the same area I am. Recently graduated, tight budget and living in an apartment. I’d love to see more ideas for those of us just getting started!
Great blog and thanks for the guest article!
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People always tout farmer’s markets as the best place for inexpensive produce, but I don’t find this to be true. At all. I did a comparison, just for grins, once of in-season produce at both the regular grocery store and the farmer’s market. The farmer’s market was 30% more expensive.
I still shop there, but for other reasons.
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Frugal bachelor probably doesn’t know this, but most parents hate taking their kids to the grocery store and only do it because there isn’t anyone at home to take care of them and families need to eat. So cut us parents some slack! Kids don’t really want to be in the grocery store either. At least my 2 don’t.
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KS – It is usually cheaper for me, but not on all things at all times. I often ask farmers’ market vendors if they’ve got any imperfect veg/herb/fruit that they’ll sell at a lower price and am frequently rewarded. Generally this means that the item isn’t as pretty or needs to be used up in a day or two, not that the quality is actually lower. The vendors seem pleased to be able to sell these items, not annoyed by my questions, as long as there aren’t other customers waiting in line to buy at full price.
Another tactic is to shop in the last 15 minutes of the market. The vendors don’t want to cart any unsold items home and are often ready to deal. This saves me the most money, but my trade-off is that I can’t always get everything I want. I balance my budget against whether it’s important to me to make a particular recipe. Generally, when my budget is tight I’m willing to create meals from what’s available rather than insist on particular items.
In any given trip, I do think I spend more at the market than in a grocery store for an entirely different reason: I buy more produce because the overall quality is so much higher there.
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@Chiefcaba – I keep trying to answer you thoughtfully, but the truth is that the only way you’ll save money and meet your budget is to bite the bullet and learn to cook better. Cooking from scratch is the cornerstone of frugal eating.
You don’t like it? So what! I hate to clean toilets but I’m not going to hire a maid or buy a new toilet every time mine gets gross.
I learned to cook better when I was just out of college – I like good food but I couldn’t afford to eat out without debt so I learned to cook. I too had roommates, shared fridge, little freezer space, but I just treated it like an engineering problem: These are the mission parameters, how do I succeed? (I’m channeling that scene from Apollo 13 right now.)
It’s your life, your time and your money – you get to choose how to spend it. I suspect that right now it’s more important to you to not cook than it is to save your cash. There’s nothing wrong with that unless it’s causing you to go into debt.
I spend more on wine than I can ever justify in a frugal budget, but I’ve never had a car payment and my wardrobe stinks (not literally, I do laundry, too, though I hate it). These are my choices and I make them happily. If you want to spend less on food, make the choices that make it possible. If you’re unwilling to make that choice, find another area to save and enjoy your meals out.
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Actually the advice to “get a loyalty card” should be “make sure to use a loyalty card if the store you are shopping at had them or, preferably, shop somewhere without them.”
A number of studies have indicated that these grocery loyalty cards actually just return the price of goods to the baseline costs – those ‘discounts,’ on average, simply bring the cost down to what it is at stores that don’t use those cards.
Sometimes they are indeed used as loss leaders, but more often the resulting price is simply brought into line with what stores that don’t have these cards charge.
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well, crap – neither shortcuts.com or P&G eSaver allows signup for stores in my area, like Stop & Shop, Shop Rite, Kings, Pathmark, Acme, Foodtown, Wegman’s, or A&P
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I find the best way to save money at the grocery store is to leave my husband at home. When we shop together, we spend about 25% more. He has a tendency to pick up a lot of items that we don’t really need.
Too bad. I like his company!
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@post 52 — Your bulletin board idea is a great one. I can also tell you right now it’s one that will never get implemented in my household. I just don’t have the time to give to all that — all that buying and separating out and tracking.
I just don’t have that sort of time. It’s really not worth my time — I’ve tried it. It isn’t worth it. Maybe if you’re trying to feed a lot of people. Cooking for a single person, not really.
I also don’t have the time to go hunting down food bargains between 3-5 different stores, or schlepping off for a 10+ mile drive out to the suburbs to go to Costco.
I have a Safeway and a King Soopers within 1/2 mile of me. That is where I shop. Usually by dropping in after work around 8-9 pm when I’ve run down my current supplies. There are no Aldis or Trader Joes here.
I should also say — I’m not having any problems with my food budget. I’m fine with what I’m spending. I have zero interest in getting down to a $90/month grocery bill.
This whole issue is quality of life — squeezing your food budget to the last cent isn’t always practical. You can do it — but then you sacrifice time.
There is only me in my household — only me for food prep, for cooking, for consuming what is prepared, for cleaning up, for shopping, for planning.
I generally work from about 9 AM to about 7-8 PM Monday through Friday. I also work on average two weekends a month. On top of it I’m nursing along a fledgling home business. Time is precious.
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I have some additional advice (that require extra time though). Both allow me to save 50% on products concerns (I’m in France, the price difference might not be the same where you live).
A) beans, lentils, chick peas and so on, I buy dry (you can buy them bulk, too, they keep for very long) rather than canned. It takes a bit longer since you need to soak the beans or peas overnight (the lentils are good to go, though), but the price difference is huge.
Compare the price per weight, and remember the beans and chick peas will likely weigh double once they’ve been soaked. The taste is also a lot better. It does require a bit of time to put them to soak before you go to bed (or to work) but then you don’t need to watch over them.
B) I went even further with bread. By buying the flour directly, I can get whole grain for half the price of white bread (here again, mileage may vary in your country).
I can’t bake well, but both tortillas and pitas can be cooked on the stove. It takes some time to prepare the dough, but then it keeps 3 days in the fridge, and you can freeze the tortillas/pitas.
If you buy white flour, I can imagine you’d save even more. And if you can bake (or have a bread machine that you do use) you can make your own bread and add whatever you want in it.
In both cases, it sums up to “buy less processed, and then do it yourself”. But in the case of A, I find the effort relatively small compared with the economy that results. (I do B mostly for taste reasons, although the saving is nice too).
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#Avistew: totally agree with you.
Besides the more process is the food the less nutrients you will get from it.
So try to get basic food.
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“Watch for meats, chicken, pork and fish that are on sale”
Why not just meats?
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@Jim – One of my friends, in all seriousness, said he didn’t eat meat at every meal, “Sometimes I eat chicken.” We had to explain why we laughed. I think the writer was just trying to be clear.
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I will say that I always sigh when I see the “save money on groceries” posts on financial blogs, because the advice is usually the same: make a plan, stick to the plan, utilize coupons/store cards/bulk items. I would much rather see a price comparison, such as whether or not I save money buying at Costco? I buy a $100 membership every year (that gives me 3% back on my purchases) and sometimes I think I’m paying more, but a real comparison with real numbers would be great. Other questions I wrestle with include:
Which is cheaper in the long run, fresh or frozen vegetables?
What kinds of healthy recipes are the “cheapest” to make?
Are there reliable coupon sites, and where are they?
Where is the cheapest place to buy personal items like toothpaste, contact solution and deodorant — a grocery store, a box store or a drug store?
What stores treat their employees the best? Which stores have a poor record treating their personnel?
How do you purchase bulk meat (such as half a cow)?
Our grocery bill is our single biggest expense, and we spend about $500 a month now, after trimming down from $700-900/month for groceries/restaurants. I would love to figure out how to trim it further, but I’m not sure I can with a family of four. I also hate buying “coupon” food, which tends to be super-processed or canned, and in Arizona our produce has to be shipped in (even the CSA farms are about 100 miles from here) so produce is wickedly expensive when gas prices are high (I was paying $4.25 for a loaf of bread and $3 for a green pepper when gas was $4/gal). So, I would love more postings about grocery prices — provided the information was new.
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Supermarkets are predictable. They need to turn perishable stock at certain points. Just getting to know when those points are will save you a small fortune on things like bread and meat.
A single friend of mine prowls the aisles at set times each Monday evening and comes out loaded up with baked stuff at rock bottom prices. He has a large freezer, and essentially buys what he would buy anyway at about a fifth of the price.
Shopping in a local market really is cheaper too.
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If you always buy what is on sale, you always make out fairly well. The tips you wrote will work well, but it’s a lot of work.
There should always been a time vs. cost analysis when suggesting savings tips.
Some people love to find deals and some people really don’t care. For those that don’t care, learning about finding deals can help. However, they will rarely convert to a deal lover.
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@Chiefcaba
I agree with you in that there needs to be more information perhaps out there for those of use singles who don’t have large families, work full-time and thus have less time for planning,cooking,couponing.
One suggestion I have for you is to start just start experimenting with the tips and suggestions you find from the mommy blogs and other frugal websites. Then start your own blog and talk about the results! I’m in the middle of experimenting with coupon clipping right now and it’s tedious. I’m also trying meal-planning even though I hate to cook.
Good luck!
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I have a question, can someone point me to (or author) an article on how to buy meat and bulk and store it in the freezer? I’m interested in the actual repackaging technique. I am very unsuccessful in doing this without the meat getting freezer burnt, crusted with ice, and me rather throwing it out than eating it. My parents had a method that was a combination of freezer wrap and butchers paper, but I cant see to get the same effect they had, and they are not around to ask. For instance do people have some way of draining/washing chicken slime off before freezing?
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you might want to go to WWW Foodsaver.com to see how it goes. A Food saver vacuum thingy will save your food from freezer burn and will last longer in freezer. Quality is better than just putting in a ziplock type bag, too. I rinse chicken,blot dry with paper towels or clean kitchen towel(freeze chicken in vacuum pack)
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@linda
I would rather not pony up for the expense of a food saver. I live in an apartment and have a small freezer. The only way I could see a food saver making sense is if I had somewhere to put a extra chest freezer so I had the ability to go to a sams club and buy in bulk to freeze. I’d be looking to do low volume stuff, maybe a couple packages of meat and a half dozen packages of chicken a year when there is a good sale. The cost benefit of buying a lot and then freezing would be offset or completely removed if I bought a food saver.
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Very useful post. I linked to it in my 30 Quick, Green and Frugal Meal Planning Resources list.
http://www.itsfrugalbeinggreen.com/2009/05/30-quick-green-and-frugal-meal-planning.html
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