Save Money on Groceries, Part 2
July 29, 2008 – 6:02 am
This is the second post of my 2 post series regarding how to save money on groceries.
Another simple way to save on groceries is to stop wasting leftovers and ingredients due to spoilage. I discovered early on that if I planned my meals I automatically started having less waste, both from ingredients and from leftovers. And although making the weekly meal plan does take about 30 minutes a week, it has the added benefit that I eat more nutritious meals and even have enough left over for lunches and snacks the next day (I eat 5-7 small meals and snacks a day, so planning is a bit more involved for me than it may be for you).
You can purchase a vacuum sealer and use it to store leftovers in the freezer. There are even entire cookbooks written with recipes that store well in the freezer (vaccum sealed or not).
If you find that some of your most common meals store well in the freezer the next step is to realize that making a double or triple batch of most meals takes the same amount of time as making a single batch. Why not make 3 batches of meatballs and freeze two of the batches? If you freeze them in single-meal sized portions you can thaw just the right amount of food for a family meal.
To summarize meal planning helps can save you time and money by:
- Reducing spoilage of ingredients and leftovers
- Buying less at the grocery store because you’ll be less likely to make impulse purchases based on what you think you need for the week’s meals
- Allowing you to spend less time cooking because you’ll be able to cook largers batches of your most common meal components.
Give The Grocery Game a Try
The Grocery Game is a commercial site that provides recommendations for when to purchase items. The company tracks coupons and historical prices for a lot of name brand products. The program then tries to optimize the use of coupons with sales at your local grocery store(s) in order to help you save money.
I’ve never tried this system, primarily because I don’t subscribe to a newspaper (so I don’t have access to coupons) and I don’t buy a lot of name brand products. Lastly, with just 2 people in my household, I’m not sure it would be as cost effective for me as it would be for a larger family.
Regardless of my choice I think it’s a great concept and is reasonable affordable ($10 every eight weeks if you get data for only one store). Check it out!
Image Credit: ninjapoodles
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5 Responses to “Save Money on Groceries, Part 2”
Never pay for a service such as the grocery game to save money. There is a wealth of free coupon tips, lists, and help at free sites such as http://hotcouponworld.com I love it there!
By Hotcouponworldfan on Jul 30, 2008
I think the GG is good for people who don’t have the time to scout out all the best deals. Now that I know I can find it on the web for free, I cancelled my subscription! But it is very user friendly and less time consuming that scouring the internet for deals. (Now, I can personally spot them out since I did GG for so long!)
By Briana on Aug 6, 2008
Excellent point about reducing waste. Why let all your hard work finding a bargain go out the window?
By Lia on May 18, 2009