Plan & Compare for Grocery Budget Savings

In our neck of the woods, we get the weekly sales specials in the mail. By taking thirty minutes a week to plan our meals, we save time, money and gas!

I can jot down the deals of the week and price compare at Walmart. I begin planning meals based on where I can save the most money, the main dish or meat. From there, add a starch: potato, pasta, or rice. Then it’s veggies and bread.

Stretch the Grocery Budget by Planning for Leftovers

There are a few dishes in our home that are created through leftovers on different evenings. If I have made a roast and then roasted chicken on two consecutive nights, I combine the leftovers and make a stew on the third night. This saves me one night’s meat purchase and ensures that we do not waste.

Saving money is important, but making a plan that incorporates savings, delicious meals, and spending time with the kids will pay off now and in the future!

Keep Hunger at Bay to Avoid Emergency Expense

Keep the kids’ hunger at bay! Make sure to carry fruit or a hearty snack (think anything with peanut butter!) in the car so that you don’t arrive home with kids ready to ransack the fridge. Keeping them held over with a snack will allow you the sanity time to prep a quick meal.

Stretch the Grocery Budget by Planting a Garden

It’s springtime, and planting an herb garden and a vegetable garden will give me about four months of tremendous savings at the grocery store. From tomatoes, dill, rosemary, peppers, squashes, green beans and more, planting a garden is not only money saving, but it gives you an activity to share with your kids. (Remember, you can even make pickles with the kids and call it science!)

Scour Your Recipe Books (or the Internet)

Necessity is the mother of invention, and when you need to save money, it’s time to find recipes that are simple, delicious and cheap. Based on what’s on sale in your area, begin a search online or in the index of your recipe books. You’ll be amazed at the creativity you can bring to the dinner table for just pennies.

Avoid Unexpected Expense by Always Having a Backup Plan

I often have our meals planned out, but if the day does not go as planned and we are arriving home late, I always have a meal that takes about fifteen minutes to prepare in the freezer or pantry. For our family, it’s Cincinnati’s famous Skyline Chili in a can. We pour this over pasta and add cheese and onions. A hearty meal in fifteen minutes, and almost all the ingredients can be stored in the pantry or freezer, allowing me to always have them on hand.

Stretch the Grocery Budget by Investing in a Bread Machine

I get my everyday sandwich bread from the store, but when it comes to specialty dinner bread, it’s outrageous what the super market charges for simple flour and water. Enter the bread machine. I know my time is at a premium, so I appreciate the ability to throw five or six ingredients into the machine, set it to dough, and time it to finish about an hour from dinner.

Creating fancy dinner rolls is not only cost effective, but I have fond memories of teaching my girls how to braid bread, egg wash it, and sprinkle sesame seeds. Yum!

Stretch the Grocery Budget by Dividing & Conquering

With our children eating more and more, the expense of meat is quickly rising. In order to make our dollar stretch, I buy in bulk and then divide and conquer! For example, I might buy two 4-lb roasts.

At home, I take these roasts and divide each into two portions, then cut the sections into stew meat. Bagging three of the four into freezer bags, I use the remaining stew meat to create a dish like beef vegetable soup, beef pot pie, or Kentucky burgoo.

Any dish that can have less meat and more vegetables or starch will stretch the dollar and increase the proportions.