Grocery shopping is an essential necessity and a major part of our budgets and monthly spending. This is why it’s a common goal to try to increase or limit and control your grocery and food spending so you can have money for other areas of your budget. Food gets more and more expensive each year which causes us to come up with more creative ways to save.
If you don’t live in an environment where you can grow your own produce in your yard or if you can’t stand clipping coupons, there is still hope for you and plenty of other ways to save money on groceries.
Here are 3 unique ways to save money on food and groceries.
1. Price Match
Price matching can help you save a ton of money on groceries, especially meat. Price matching basically involves shopping at a store that has a price matching policy and putting it to use.
For example, if a store claims to offer the best price in town on steak and you find an ad from a competitor with a lower price, you can bring that ad into the store and pay for your steaks for the lowest price. If a store promises to price match, they have to honor the price on your ad as long as it complies with their rules.
Some people get frustrated with price matching or find it hard to do because they fail to read each store’s specific rules and disclaimers. Some stores will only honor ads from competitors within a 30 mile radius so that is important to keep in mind.
If you keep your eyes out for ads with savings and become familiar with your favorite store’s price matching policy, you should be able to price match some of your food items and save a decent amount of money as a result.
2. Prepare 3-ingredient Meals in a Crock Pot
One habit that can cost you a lot of extra money on food is preparing large luxurious meals each day. Breakfast should be your simplest meal, but lunch and dinner can easily get out of hand.
Invest in a crock pot or slow cooker and try to cook simple meals in batches that only require 3 main ingredients or less. Soups, stews and other crockpot meals are simple to make and can also serve as leftovers for the following day.
Just because you can price match steak doesn’t mean you should buy it all the time. As a cheaper alternative, you can prepare a big batch of beef stew with the meat, carrots and potatoes being your three main ingredients.
Some simple dinner recipes you can prepare can be as simple as buying a 2-pound bag of beans and cooking it slow in your crock pot along with some seasoning and your favorite meat or addition of choice. Five-bean soup is delicious and packed with protein due to the various types of beans included.
3. Scan Your Groceries
A company called Nielsen will actually pay you to scan your groceries each week. Once you sign up with the Nielsen Consumer Panel, the company will send you a free scanner or you can use your smartphone.
You can scan the barcodes of various different products each time you go grocery shopping and send the data back to Nielsen.
When you scan items, you earn points that you can redeem by choosing a wide variety of rewards and merchandize from a catalog. Since you have to purchase food no matter what, it’s nice to get some reward or return on your purchases that you can use as savings for different areas of your budget.
On the plus side, scanning your groceries will also help remind you how much certain items cost and alternatives that you can choose in order to save money and time in the store.
Have you tried any of these strategies before when it comes to purchasing groceries?
Chonce is a freelance writer who’s obsessed with frugality and passionate about helping others increase their savings rate, eliminate debt, and work toward financial stability. She chronicles her journey to becoming debt-free on her blog, mydebtepiphany.com.
