How to Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half

_{Want to know the secrets to saving more money on food at the grocery store? Spoiler alert –It’s not using coupons! Learn how to cut your grocery bill in half.}

How to Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half

It’s no secret that groceries have done nothing but go up over the past few years.

The average family spends just over 20 – 40% of their household income buying groceries–over $13,208 a year–and even while average wages have gone down, the price of food keeps going up. When you are just trying to feed your family, it can be frustrating and disappointing.

There are, however, still ways that you save money at the grocery store and keep your family full too. And yu don’t have to be an extreme couponer to do it. So let’s talk about some ways that you can save at the grocery store.

Even if you never clip a single coupon, you can still save significant money on your grocery bill just by changing the way that you shop.

Start Meal Planning

If you normally wing it when it comes to meal planning, or find yourself running into the store for last-minute dinner items, you are spending too much.

Instead of running to the store for your dinner supplies, you’ll be able to run to your stockpile–a ready-made grocery store right in your own home.

Weekly or monthly meal planning will help you buy only what you need for that week. Here are 7 Easy Weekly Meal Planning Ideas That Really Work.

Check the Sales

Check the sales papers before you sit down and write out your meal plan and grocery list. Maybe you were planning on having pork this week, but ground beef is on sale for a good deal.

Then it’s time to come up with some meals that have ground beef as an ingredient instead of having pork this week.

Have a Plan and a List

Make sure that you do have a meal plan and a grocery list before you head to the store. Otherwise, you might end up with a shopping cart full of random ingredients that sounded good in the store and no real plan to use them.

Shopping without a list that you stick to is one of the main reasons we overspend at the grocery store.

Coupon Wisely

Remember that coupons are only a good deal if it is for a product that you will use and that you can use that amount of it before it goes bad. Don’t buy a product just because you have a coupon for it if you don’t actually need it. At this point, you are just wasting money.

This is another common way that people overspend at the grocery store. Did you know that every receipt you receive from the grocery store can earn you points toward gift cards?

Fetch is one of my favorite money-saving apps. And not just grocery receipts can be used but all receipts from any store. Try it now!

Buy Frozen or Canned Produce

When your favorite fruits and veggies are out of season or just don’t look particularly great, purchase frozen or canned produce.

It will last longer, and the prices tend to stay steadier too. Frozen products are picked in their prime season. The taste and quality are better than purchasing fresh out-of-season fruits and vegetables.

Check out the Reduced or Clearance Section

Check out the reduced or clearance sections of your grocery store. You can usually find one in the produce section with slightly overripe fruits and veggies, but you can still use them for soups and stews, and overripe bananas make excellent banana muffins or bread!

Sometimes you can also find a clearance section in the canned food aisle with dented or near-expiration products that are still perfectly fine for eating.

You should also look for the “last chance” or clearance section on the freezer aisle. Sometimes you can find excellent deals on closeout products or products that they ordered too much of.

Take Your Calculator

If you need to stick to a strict budget and not go over, take your calculator to the store with you. Every time you put an item in your cart you add it to the total on your calculator.

This is an excellent way to curb purchases of items that you don’t need as you see that total climb.

Shop High and Low

When you are walking the grocery store aisles, make sure that you are shopping from the top and bottom shelves. The middle shelves at eye level are where you are going to find the most expensive products.

It is a marketing tactic used by many grocers. It is not known that when we are in hurry to shop we simply look at what is in front of us. We want fewer options and less time in the store.

Buy Store Brands

If you are trying to lower your grocery bill then try out the store-brand products. For many products, the store brand is just as good as the nationally known name brands, and you can get them for a lower cost because they don’t spend money advertising them.

Sometimes the store brands are the name brands in different packaging.

Use these tips to help you spend a little less on groceries every trip. With practice, you will learn even more tips and tricks of your own to help save you even more!