Everyone knows the standard advice when trying to save money on groceries. With the economy today, many people already clip coupons, look for store brands, and rummage through the scratch and dent bin. While this is all great advice, it has been passed around so much that grocery stores have started to adapt. Many stores have started to mark up their in-house or “store” brands and carefully select sale items to make it difficult to plan meals entirely from the sale paper.
There are still plenty of ways to save money on groceries. Try a few of the following suggestions.
Instead of a menu assigned to each day, come up with a list of ten to twenty meals your family likes to eat. Use this as the basis for what to stock in your pantry. Being prepared to make different meals gives your family flexibility when schedules change, and it allows you to quickly plan out a trip to the grocery store.
Don’t overlook convenience foods. In the past, the advice to save money has always been to make everything from scratch. Today, with commodity prices rising, making things from scratch can often cost more than buying something pre-made with a coupon. For example, last week my local supermarket had frozen family size lasagnas on sale for $8.99. With a dollar off coupon I paid $7.99. Compare that to buying a box of lasagna noodles ($1.19), a pound of ground sausage ($4.99), a jar of spaghetti sauce ($1.59), and a 16oz container of ricotta cheese ($2.49). To make it myself would have cost over $10, and I would have had to clean the pan.
Shop “discount” stores carefully. These stores will often mark-up staples at the beginning of the month when consumers have just been paid and aren’t looking too carefully at the price. In general , only use them for items like spices and convenience foods.
Find multiple coupons for items on sale, then buy the smallest size. Many people make the mistake of assuming the bigger size costs less. Recently, my local store had frozen corn in 8 oz bags on sale for $.75, and 16oz bags for $1.00. Without coupons, buying the 16oz bags was a better deal. I had four $.65 off coupons, however, making the cost of the smaller bags $.40 for 32 oz, versus $.70 for the larger bags.
Save every coupon, even for products you don’t normally eat or find too expensive. If the product doesn’t do well, the store will put it on clearance. With the coupons, you can get these items cheaply or for free. Typically this works best with name brand paper goods; their prices are usually very high but they are deeply discounted when they don’t sell in order to clear shelf space. If you really don’t like the product, donate it to the local food pantry or give it away to your friends. At least you can get a tax deduction.
