Ways to Save - Part 2

Yesterday, I told you a couple of the tricks I'm using to save money at the grocery store. Here are a couple more.

3. Stock up on sale items that we will use in the future.
If you are the kind of person that allots a weekly amount for groceries, this can throw your budget out of whack. For example, this week a lot of what we use often was on sale BOGO. So, my tally at the register was $139. I almost threw up since I try to keep our bill under $100 a week. But ultimately, it will benefit us because I won't be buying those items this week. So, it should even out.

Another spin on this is to buy larger sizes of things. For example, I can get a 3 lb. chuck roast for less $/pound than I can a 1 lb. slab. So, when I get home, I had to cut it in half and freeze it separately for 2 meals.

4. Plan our meals and snacks.
Each week, I take about 2 hours on Sunday to plan our week's activities and food. One area where some meal plans fall short is that they only account for dinners. But I've found that if I plan all our meals and snacks, I am able to buy the right amount of food without going over and wasting. I'm still new at this, so there are kinks to work out. For example, sometimes we have left-overs so I plan those into the meal plan. But other times, we eat all of the prepared food, and then we're left scrounging for the next day's lunch. Still, all in all, it's worked.

This also helps when I have a list at the store and don't veer from it because I know that all my food is planned for. So I don't need to add things here and there. I do allow for flexibility for snacks. For example, I may plan for the kids to eat animal crackers for a bedtime snack, but at the store, we see that vanilla wafers are on sale. Whatever... it's the same type of food. But the principle is that I might substitute, but I don't add food to the list (except when stocking up!).

If this sounds a little rigid, just wait. More to come...