With the rising cost of food prices, our family of 8 has really worked hard this year to keep our food costs low. Our family of eight includes my husband and our two sons as well as my mother. My oldest son and his fiancée and their child also live with us as well. We are continually looking for ways to keep our grocery budget under control, and I’m going to give you our best tips while not sacrificing nutrition.
- Loss Leaders – The grocery stores put loss leaders on the front page of their weekly flyer to help draw customers into their store. These items have deep discounts, and are a great way to pay less for food. However, this does mean you may need to visit more than one grocery store to acquire several of these loss leaders each week. I view grocery shopping as a part-time job. While it doesn’t earn money, the amount of money I am saving compensates for my time. This also allows me to buy nutritious items like fruits and vegetables at a greatly discounted price.
- Sale Cycles – Stores will place every item on sale every six to eight weeks. This works just like buying stock. Buy when the price is low! For example, last summer crab legs were only $5.99 a pound at our local grocery store, and we purchased many pounds and placed them in our deep chest freezer. We love seafood, and honestly, this was cheaper than ground beef at the time!
- Meal Plan– If you are new to meal planning, check out our Meal Planning 101 post. Planning meals in advance will always help reduce last minute take-out meals and ensure you are staying within your budget. We have one child in soccer and the other one in football, and we are on the go all the time. However, we plan most meals and even snacks for the game in advance so that we are not tempted to buy quick items that tend to cost more. We also do stock some quick meals like chicken tenders which help on nights when we are in a hurry to get out the door.
- Cook From Scratch. I still feel that cooking from scratch is one of the best ways to save on your grocery budget. We work hard to even have homemade snacks such as protein balls, overnight oats, etc. My oldest son is adopted from Guatemala, and we have homemade guacamole every single night! He loves to cook from scratch, and honestly, we don’t mind his favorite hobby!
- Use ChatGPT or other AI. We also use Chat GPT to meal plan each week. I go to Chat GPT on my desktop and type in our favorite foods and ask it to create a meal plan. I also ask it to create it in PDF form with a grocery list. This has saved me SO MUCH MONEY. There are so many wonderful tools today to help with meal planning that I never had thirty years ago when I was establishing our home.
- Grow Your Own. This past summer when blueberries reached $8.99 a pint in my area, I decided to plan our own blueberry bushes and strawberry patches, and I established two raised bed gardens. I will tell you that gardening can cost a lot of money on the outset depending on how you go about it. My suggestion is to follow You Tube accounts and learn as much as you can about the items you are planting. While I do see our blueberry bushes as an investment, they already produced a harvest this summer. I also learned a lot about gardening, and I feel much more competent, but I still had a huge learning curve. We also have two large pumpkins ready for us this fall that we will be carving, and we never had to purchase them!
- Use Digital Coupons– While this does seem cumbersome at times, it is worth it in the long run. I use these all the time at our local Weiss supermarket. I also use Target Circle as well. I have found the digital coupons are a little more work, but still worth it when it comes to saving money. My other tip is make sure you know all the rules on how to use your local store’s digital coupons before you head to the store. Our local Weiss requires that you have the coupons loaded 15 minutes before you are ready to check out. Knowing these types of rules in advance will help save stress at the checkout.
- Consider Food Prep Services. If you are single or have food restrictions, you may want to consider using a food prep service such as Hello Fresh. Sometimes making meals for a large number of people saves money, but services like this work for those who are single, or who prefer more costly dishes that are cheaper made en masse with a program like Hello Fresh. However, do your homework. This may end up being more expensive if you are not careful. Many times you can get large discounts when you first sign-up with this type of service. So, if you plan to cancel before the next shipment, set a reminder on your phone.
While these are just some of my tips, I feel that after thirty years of grocery shopping as an adult, I have learned a few things along the way and wanted to pass these tips along to the younger generation, or for those just looking for other ways to save! It’s definitely still possible to live within a budget in 2025, even with rising food prices.
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