10 Ways to Slash Your Grocery Bill

Rising food prices often scare people into stocking up on Ramen noodles and cheap frozen pizzas, but a trimmed food budget doesn’t have to be bland or unhealthy. Here’s how to maximize the value for your food dollars, along with ballpark estimated savings from my own experience shopping for two. (If you have more, just multiply to adjust)

1. Eat at home. Why pay $20 dollars for a restaurant meal full of mystery ingredients when you can make a delicious, gluten-free meal at home for less than $3? Eating out will suck your wallet dry faster than anything, and it doesn’t take any less time than throwing a few ingredients in a crock pot or assembling a quick stir-fry. To save time and money, prepare a quick meal at home and light some candles and play soft music. You won’t get sick or have to deal with a crowded, noisy restaurant. If you usually eat out twice a month, with these numbers you’ll save $34 dollars per month and $408 dollars per year!
2. Garden. One tomato plant is cheap and easy to grow, even inside and can yield several pounds of tomatoes. Start a small garden in your backyard or try container gardening if you’re pressed for space and save several dollars a pound on fresh, organic produce that’s only a few footsteps away. I don’t have garden and I haven’t gotten anything to grow in my dark apartment, but my family probably saves several hundred every year by gardening and giving homemade salsa as gifts.
3. Use a pricebook, or some method of comparing unit prices at different stores. Before you go shopping, compare your list to your pricebook and hit the store with the best deals for the items on your list. You’ll save several dollars per trip, and if you shop every week, a savings of two dollars per trip adds up to over a hundred dollars per year.
4. Buy in bulk. This isn’t always the case, but bulk items usually boast a lower price-per ounce than smaller containers. Buy the 24 oz container of yogurt instead of 4 six ounce containers. Get the carton of 18 eggs instead of the dozen. If you save two dollars every week, you’ll save another hundred.
5. Make friends with the grocery circular. Check out the sales at nearby stores every week and plan a grocery list and meal plan to go with it. I save at least five dollars every week doing this instead of just buying the items when they’re not on sale, so this translates to an extra $240 bucks in my pocket.
6. Go vegetarian. Meat is by far the most expensive item the grocery store, so back off on the meat and potatoes meals and try dishes with other protein sources like eggs, legumes, nuts, and dairy. Enjoy quiches, bean burritos in corn tortillas, soups, salads, and all kinds of vegetarian wraps in brown-rice tortillas. When you do eat meat, use it as a condiment and focus on the veggies instead. Stir-fries, soups, and casseroles with potatoes or brown rice are great ways to cut back on the meat. Eating meatless dinners four days a week saves me about twelve dollars a month, or $144 dollars every year.
7. Don’t be afraid of generics. Check the ingredients list to be sure, but generic items usually contain the exact same ingredients as their name-brand counterparts, so try the store-brand canned beans or tuna and save at least $50 dollars this year.
8. Pack a lunch. Fast food is almost always higher in unhealthy fat, sodium, and sugar than homemade foods, and you run a higher risk of gluten contamination. Instead of hitting the drive through on your lunch break, brown bag a healthy salad, wrap, or warmed-up soup from home. If you save three dollars every weekday doing this, you’re looking at a whopping $780 in the bank.
9. Cook from scratch. Prepackaged convenience foods cost more than foods prepared from scratch because more middle men are involved in its production. Stop paying the middle man and make your own soup or pizza crust from scratch. It tastes better and is usually healthier, not to mention the extra $365 in your wallet if you save just a dollar every day.
10. Try less expensive staples. Usually, this means scaling back from more processed foods like gluten-free cold cereals to simpler, healthier, and more natural foods like oatmeal. So try switching from boneless, skinless chicken breasts to whole chicken, from gluten-free pasta to rice, and from a packaged potatoes au gratin dish to whole baked potatoes. If you save only twenty cents a day doing this, you’re still $75 dollars richer.

So if you’re want to know who much all of these things can save you but don’t want to do the math, here it is folks: Without the very flexible savings of gardening and assuming you were doing the opposite of these tips before, following the other nine tips can save a couple $2262 dollars every year on food.