How to Save on Groceries
How to Save on GroceriesThis month we have talked about a lot. We have talked discussed Extreme Couponing for Beginners, we have talked about Stockpiling, and even how to save on produce and how to save on meat. Hopefully by now you are truly ready to cut that grocery bill in half. Make sure you read all our Saving money on Groceries posts.
Now if you are overwhelmed with all that we have talked about this month – don’t be. Take a minute to read them all – maybe just one post a day – and start tackling them. Start implementing them one by one and you will starting seeing a difference in your grocery budget.
Just this week I was talking to my sweet friend, Kasey, about her couponing adventure. She has known me be for years now, and has tried to coupon, but decided it just wasnt’ for her. Of cours, me being the money saving guru new that just wasn’t true. However, I still just let her spend too much for her groceries. 😉 This week though we were talking – she had followed some of my homeland shopping trips and saw how much I was saving. She started couponing again! This time it was different. She realized that she was doing it all wrong last time. This time she was changing the way she thought about grocery shopping.
A Light bulb light up inside my head. I needed to tell my readers the number one tip that they need to know to truly transform your grocery budget….
Change the way you shop.
It is that simple.
Let me explain more though. You see you are going to shop your favorite store deals and you are going to use your coupons, but you are still going to need to go do your regular grocery shopping. At first, you might not really see a change in your grocery budget. But if you keep at it you will.
Eventually (normally about 8-10 weeks) you will have a nice stockpile and you will start seeing your grocery budget change. This isn’t going to happen over night.
There are other ways that will save you money from menu planning to buying in bulk but this idea of changing the way you grocery shop is key to saving money.
You no longer shop just because you NEED something – now you shop to restock your stockpile. You shop for FREE and CHEAP items to almost create a “store” at home. Then when you NEED something to complete a dinner you “shop” from your store at home that you created with rock bottom prices.
Does that make sense?
If you don’t change the way you shop – change the idea of only shopping for items you NEED this week then you are only going to save a few bucks here and a few bucks there. BUT…. if you change the way you shop – change the way you think about couponing you are going to see a drastic change in your grocery budget – in fact, you probably will cut it in half.
YES, you read that right…
As many of you know we recently adopted 4 children through foster care and I was so focused on providing for their needs, trying to make them feel welcomed, and all the complications of blending 8 children into one home that my grocery budget sky rocketed. We didn’t start spending double on our food – more like quadruple. YES, QUADRUPLE. Boy, did our bank account feel that every single month.
Before I knew it we were back to living paycheck to paycheck and never seeming to have enough money. Finally, I had enough and I went back to my old saying “Change the way you shop”. I stopped buying because we needed it and I started stockpiling. When I saw a great deal I didn’t just buy one, but I bought enough to last us about 8 weeks. As you can imagine, it is hard to stockpile a ton of food for a family of 10, but with careful planning it can happen.
In just 2 months time I have literally cut my grocery bill in HALF just by changing my idea of how I shop. Now that life is settling, I’m back to couponing regularly and the grocery budget has dropped even more which gives me a ton of wiggle room in our monthly budget. We finally have some room to breathe again.
So in result – even if you don’t want to Extreme coupon, you can save a lot of money just by shopping differently and changing your mindset.
