How to Lower Your Family’s Grocery Bill

I am always searching for ways to cut down on my family grocery bill. I read, and re-read tips all the time but some are a little far fetched for me to realistically think of doing. So for the past six months I have narrowed down a small list of simple ways to lower your family’s grocery bill.

Space is an issue of why I didn’t mass meal prep at the beginning of the month. I don’t have a massive freezer for a month of meal prep to fit, or massive pantry space for stocking up on dry goods on sale. Lastly, time is an issue. I am a mom, work full-time and go to school full time on top of blogging on the side! I wish I had the time to meal prep, but not at this time in my life. I’m sure many others of you are with me not having the time or space for massive meal prep. If you have the space I  highly recommend trying a big food prep for two weeks or even a month. There are some great pins about how to make freeze ahead crockpot recipes like this one here.

However, this last year I still managed to save a little over $100 on my grocery bill for a family of three without the meal prep! Here’s my tips to how I saved! And I promise these are small easy tips anyone can follow. For a Family of three eating three meals a day, and snacks for my toddler and of course us to, I was spending about $450 a month sometimes more. Here’s how I lowered my grocery bill to $335!

-Enjoy!♥

How to Lower Your Family’s Grocery Bill

Meal Planning

I was also going to the grocery store about four times a week on average. This was a huge waste of time and costing me way more than I even knew on groceries. By creating a meal plan once a week I turned that into going to the store once a week. On top of cutting down on my grocery trips, I was planning meals where I could use all the ingredients throughout the week. For example is we had hamburgers one night, I would plan out another meal that would use the rest of the buns instead of letting them go bad. Try this recipe for Homemade Sloppy Joes.

Costco

If you have a Costco membership there are some great food deals to take advantage of. First off snacks, I love buying fruit snacks, granola bars, trail mix and protein shakes there. Especially when they go on sale you save so much compared to the store prices. I also love saving money by buying my butter, milk and eggs there. The milk comes to about $1.70 a gallon and the eggs are less than a dollar a dozen! The butter is the best deal only being about $2.50 a pound! A huge time saver on nights you forget to defrost meat is having the Kirkland canned chicken breast on hand. From this I make chicken wraps, nachos, enchiladas or chicken salad sammys. I am very picky about canned meat but this is a great one! On top of these you can also save big on diapers, toilet paper, cleaners and so many other household items. Oh.. and they have great prices on wine!

Meat

The best way to save money on meat is to buy in bulk. I don’t necessarily mean to buy from Costco, price it out at your local grocery store and see what is cheaper. If you have an Albertsons, Safeways, or Vons at night they do meat markdowns to save 50%. I have gotten 4 pounds of extra lean hamburger for $8 before! I buy in bulk about every other week, divide into freezer bags and label for what they would be good for, or their weight.

Ibotta and Shopkick

Its a small amount of cash back per shopping trip but a couple of times a year, per app, I get gift cards. We have cashed out for gift cards at Target, Starbucks Movie theaters. On Ibotta you can even cash out through Pay  Pal!

And Lastly.. Buy in season!

Buy all your fruits and veggies when they are in season to get the most produce per dollar! If it not in season by it frozen or canned. I think that canned veggies get a bad reputation for being overly salty. *TIP* If you rinse the veggies in a strainer before cooking them, a lot of tat extra salt will come out!