Budget Ideas for Groceries
Groceries are a necessary budget item, but they can become an unnecessarily large part of your budget; and it can be difficult to find areas to save money when you go grocery shopping. Food is a necessity and many people overlook ways they can save on their groceries because they cannot simply stop buying groceries or greatly reduce the amount of food their family needs.
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Shop Less to Save More
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Planning your menus on a weekly or monthly basis can reduce the number of trips you take to buy groceries -- reducing the number of times you can be tempted into impulse purchases. Planning a menu will prevent quick trips to the grocery store for items you forgot. It allows you take advantage of bulk buying as well by planning all the menus that use an unusual ingredient the same week. Another option is to plan your menu around sales listed in the store flyer and save money on meat and produce that way. Stick to your list when you go shopping. If you hate planning consider subscribing to a menu planning service, which will plan the menu for you. Some services will plan based on weekly sales, while others focus on groceries costing a certain amount each week. E-mealz and Menus for Moms are two sites that do that.
Create a Price Book
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A grocery store price book will track the average price and the sales prices of items you regularly buy. Most items go on sale every few months in a regular cycle. Tracking the prices each week, or writing down a new low price and marking each time it happens will allow you to spot trends and know when to stock up on an item. After a few months you begin to recognize the best prices and will only buy the item when it hits that price or is lower. To make the book create a page for each grocery item that you buy for example one for vegetable oil, one for chicken and one for cheese. List the amount that each item costs each time you buy it and the date in the book. You can also update the pages with the sale flyers you get each week. After a few months you will be able to spot the patterns.
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Take Coupons to the Next Level
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Coupons can save you money on your groceries. In addition to clipping from the Sunday paper, you can find coupons online, at manufacturers' websites or in the store's weekly ad circular. There are also sites, such as Cellfire that will load your coupons directly to your grocery store card, saving you time on clipping and shopping. You can sign up for coupons to be emailed to you directly from the manufacturer as well. Sites such as The Grocery Game or Coupon Mom will take the current sales and then tell which coupons to use to stack the sale and the coupons for the lowest prices.
Shop at Discount Grocery Stores
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There are groceries stores that sell groceries at discounts. The trick to saving money this way is to find a store that does not sell old or dented merchandise, but rather carries off-brand or their own brand of groceries with several months left before the expiration date on the goods. Aldi, for example, offers private label goods at less than other private labels in traditional grocery stores. The food is fresh since it is purchased very often. Save A Lot and Grocery Outlet are two other national discount stores to check out. Discount stores offer lower prices on many items than other stores do, even for products on sale.
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- Photo Credit veggie stand image by Mat Hayward from Fotolia.com
