Yahoo Finance 6 Ways To Cut Your Grocery Costs in Half
Due to inflation woes, going to the grocery store has become a matter of playing Jenga with your budget. In 2023, GOBankingRates reported on the happenings in a Reddit thread devoted to millennials who shared that their family grocery bills could sometimes rival their mortgage payments. One Redditor disclosed that spending on food for a family of two, plus a pooch, averaged roughly $200 a week.
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With many Americans looking to trim the fat on their grocery bills, everyone is looking for tips on dramatically reducing their weekly costs. There’s a lot of good advice out there, from Reddit threads devoted to budget shopping to shopping experts and even financial planners. GOBankingRates took a look at some of the best tips for chopping up your grocery expenses every week.
Look for Hidden Fees in Grocery Delivery Services
Just as you often look carefully at the nutritional ingredients of anything you buy, searching for pesky added sugars or allergens, you also should be on the lookout for hidden fees and service charges when using common grocery delivery services. While you gain in convenience from having your weekly haul land right on your front door, you might be losing out in costs.
According to experts from Shopkick, a shopping rewards app, grocery delivery services come with hidden fees or service charges — in addition to tipping out your shoppers — that can impact your bill every week. To be more budget-conscious, you may need to forgo instant deliveries and look instead at options like curbside pickup.
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Clip Coupons Like a Champion
If you have memories of your parents cutting coupons out of the local paper every weekend, you know the power of a good discount. While today’s shoppers can embrace traditional, low-fi coupon cutting, there are also digital options available.
Karl Filmore, a consumer advocate and writer at CouponKeg, suggests using digital coupons and cash-back apps together to get the tastiest deals.
“These platforms offer exclusive deals that can significantly trim down your grocery expenses,” he said. “Stacking manufacturer coupons with store promotions is a surefire way to maximize savings.”
Some shoppers can cut the cost of their grocery trip by as much as 75% using this strong strategy.
Compare and Contrast Wisely
While buying cans of chickpeas for your homemade hummus recipe isn’t quite the major investment that buying a new car might be, there are some common principles to finding the best price — specifically, price comparison shopping.
Fortunately, cutting your grocery bill doesn’t mean dealing with car salespeople across a variety of locations. Between the different apps and websites for most grocery stores, you can get a sense of where to find the best value on meat compared to vegetables or canned goods.
With a little willingness to make a few trips throughout the week, you can find the best cost for every item on your list. You’re also likely to snag some good deals if you add smaller outlets such as farmers markets or local grocery stores devoted to fare from different nations.
Look for Dupe Products
If you find yourself craving soda but can’t stomach the prices of a six-pack at big-box chains, consider expanding your palate. One Redditor posting in r/budgetfoods found the Clear American waters at Walmart rivaled many sodas in flavor and cost.
The Redditor found that the Clear American mandarin orange water has a flavor similar to Fanta, while the key-lime was akin to Sprite.
So, search for products that give you the same taste as your all-time, more expensive favorites. Many major grocery stores will have store-brand dupes of name-brand items. For instance, Target has two food brands — Market Pantry and Good & Gather — that offer a wide variety of affordable name-brand alternatives. Your taste buds won’t know the difference, but your wallet sure will.
Invest in Inexpensive Staples
Another Redditor in the aptly named subreddit r/EatCheapandHealthy claimed to reduce the food budget by one-fifth by focusing on a few versatile staples. The person said that getting items like seeded bread, pastas, lentils, beans, rice and chicken thighs helped stretch the budget over different meals.
Additionally, non-perishable items like canned foods and frozen fruit are inexpensive foods that you can keep for a long time and won’t go bad, thus ensuring you maximize your spending as much as possible.
This Redditor also got creative in terms of meal options, getting cereals not only for breakfast but also as desserts. By using food items for a variety of different meals — such as breakfast for dinner, for instance — not only does it reduce food waste but it prevents you from buying more food when you may already have meals in your fridge.
Buy and Cook in Bulk
While you may think of your slow cooker as a winter weather friend, there are delightful slow cooker recipes that can feed you and your family year round. Making a large batch of a favorite meal, from split pea soup to Santa Fe chicken, isn’t just a great way to have dinner on hand when you don’t want to cook — it also spares you from heading out to the grocery store again.
Buying items you know you’ll cook and finding recipes that allow you to make large meals that can be frozen is a great way to enjoy your dinners and your savings.
Justice Peterson contributed to the reporting for this article.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: 6 Ways To Cut Your Grocery Costs in Half
