Stay at Home Mom.com

One of the jobs of the Stay at Home Mom is often to oversee the grocery shopping and management of the food budget. The average family of 4 spends approximately $150 per week on groceries. There are a few ways that you can make that money stretch and still provide your family with a nutritious, well-rounded diet.

Start before you get to the grocery store:

1. Make a list

List out the items that you will need for the next weeks meals and organize that list by sections of the grocery story ( Dairy, frozen, veggie, meat, middle ). By planning out your meals for the week you can save making several trips for just a few items throughout the week. Then, say these words before entering the grocery store, “I will stick to my list!”

2. Never go to the store hungry

Have a little snack at home if you have to in order to make sure you don’t impulse buy. Everything looks better, especially higher priced quick foods, when you’re hungry. Remember to say these words before entering the grocery story, “I will stick to my list!”

Once you get to the grocery store

3. Join the store’s Club Card program

Yes you are giving up your identity - they do track what you are buying and use this information for marketing purposes. But without the club cards you will end up paying much more.

4. Use Coupons (wisely)

Coupons can be a total headache but they can also save you money. The trick with coupons is to only clip those coupons for food that you would buy anyway. It’s not a good deal if you save ten cents off a product that is overpriced to begin with and you wouldn’t have purchased in the first place. 95% of the coupons I have clipped go unused. Use them but just remember you can save the most money at the grocery store if you just say these 6 little words before entering the store, “I will stick to my list!”.

5. Cut out the extravagences

It really isn’t necessary to have dessert every night or have candy sitting around the house all the time. Soda Pop is not a nutrient. Allow yourself to splurge for special occassions but cut out some of those higher priced non-essentials and you will make the biggest dent in your food bill and the biggest impact on your overall health. If you bring that food home you will eat it. If it’s not there you may crave it for a few days if you are used to having it around but after a short time you will find that not only can you get by without it but that you really don’t miss it that much. This will make the biggest impact on your grocery bill.

Other considerations

Some families save money buy joining warehouse shopping clubs like Costco or Sams Club. But you have to be careful in these super warehouse stores. If you have a family of four and you buy the super size broccoli to save money you can actually end up losing money when most of the broccoli goes bad before you are able to eat it up. You can save money on these super sized veggies if you come home and instantly turn them into your own homemade soups, lazagnas or casseroles that you then freeze but this takes on an entire other dimension of planning. You can also end up coming out with alot of extras that you had not intended to buy. For example, books, office equipment, apparel, and snack items. Just remember that even if you are going into a warehouse shopping environment you must say “I will stick to my list!” before entering. And even in warehouse style - bigger and better - say it 3 times before going through the big warehouse doors.

Many experts have suggested that you leave your children at home when you go grocery shopping to save money. The only reason this would actually work is if you like to spend your alone time in the grocery store because this would involve leaving kids at home when your husband is around to be able to keep an eye on them. Getting a babysitter to watch the kids while you grocery shop negates any cost savings. And for our family we enjoyed spending time together as a family once Dad got home from work. So, I always took the kids shopping with me. First I made sure they weren’t hungry or tired when we went. That is a recipe for disaster and many screams, tantrums and tears.

We always went through the process of saying “I will stick to the list” before entering the store. They did finally catch on and begin to put the fun items they wanted on the list before we went to the store but that can be ok as long as they learn to stick to the list and plan ahead. Now that the kids are older they are really good at sticking to the list. There have even been a couple of times where I started to toss a magazine into the checkout line on impulse and they have corrected me saying “Mom, that’s not on the list”.

These are some great tips for saving money at the grocery story. For our favorite ways to eat healthier on a budget check back here for our next installment.

In the meanwhile, have fun at the grocery store by sticking to your list and if you have a favorite tip for saving money at the grocery store we would love to hear from you!

Eat healthy, eat smart, eat inexpensively!