Help reducing grocery bill?

[LilyD]

What I do to save money on groceries is some of the same things already mentioned.

1. Make sure you make a list of meals to take you through the month before you go shopping and be realistic about what you need of each item to make you through until next shopping day. If you don't have a plan for what you are going to make it will cost a lot more.

2. Try to grow as much as you can at home to save money.

3. Base your meals on what is on sale don't just say you want to make lasagna and do it even if cheese is 5$ a pound.

4. Get your meat from a butcher rather than a grocery store. They sell beef, chicken, pork etc cheaper than a regular grocery store.

5. Buy items like flour sugar ketchup in larger amounts when on sale so that you don't run out and need to go to the store to get more.

6. Avoid impulse buying. If you decide you want ice cream then put it on the next shopping list and don't go to the store unless it is a designated shopping day. I can easily pay 50$ to 100$ just on an impulse shopping trip so I try not to do it as much as possible.

Hope this helps

 

[Nonesuch Farm]

4. Get your meat from a butcher rather than a grocery store. They sell beef, chicken, pork etc cheaper than a regular grocery store.

Let your local butcher know you are really on a budget. He can call you for older meat that needs to be frozen NOW. Also learn to love bone broths. Most butchers will still give away bones and you can make some super nutritious and delicious food with them.

 

[LilyD]

4. Get your meat from a butcher rather than a grocery store. They sell beef, chicken, pork etc cheaper than a regular grocery store.

Let your local butcher know you are really on a budget. He can call you for older meat that needs to be frozen NOW. Also learn to love bone broths. Most butchers will still give away bones and you can make some super nutritious and delicious food with them.

The butcher that we use sells his beef pretty much at whole sale costs. Hamburger is 2.99 a pound and steaks are like 1/2 price of what they would be at the regular store. They also sell pork, lamb and goat as well all of which is good. Even buying their steaks to grind for hamburger is cheaper than buying hamburger at the local store. If I go to the grocery it would cost me almost 5$ for a pound of hamburg versus 2.99 at the butcher.

Another good tip if you can do it is to wait for a sale and buy whole chickens when the price per pound is cheap. We usually have sales up here where they are for like half off, especially when they get a surplus of them. If you buy 5 or 6 whole chickens that are between 4 and 8 pounds when they are cheaper (usually between 3 and 5 bucks depending on weight) you can then take it home and cut it up into pieces and you will end up paying less per pound for the pieces than you would if you bought even the cheap meat already cut up. You also get the edibles from the inside which cook up well to make stock that can then get canned for future use.

 

[FranklinStreetWest]

We are a 2 (young) adult home. Our food expenses are $140-$200 per MONTH. Here are some simple things that I do in my climate & region to cut costs.

-- Right outside the back door we have an EXTENSIVE herb garden. Here in Michigan I have fresh herbs 365 days a year, and I use them almost exclusively for EVERYTHING.
-- Use garden space wisely, only grow what will be successfull and that you will store or eat regularly. For us, that is tomato, garlic, peppers, collards, mustard greens.
-- Go to local meat market. We just discovered ours, and it has much better prices than the big stores!
-- We are lucky enough to have an organic grain farmer near us that has become a good friend...we trade for all our flour, beans, popcorn & some fun stuff like quinoa, amaranth, flax seed, etc.
-- Make our own soup stock (just picked up a package of clearance turkey backs for $.51 total, that will feed us like fat pigs for 2-3 days)
-- Buy clearance vegetables and freeze or can (there's a rack at our local Meijer that always has stuff that is bruised or needs to be used NOW, I buy all my peppers onions & potatoes there)
-- Everything is made from SCRATCH!SCRATCH!: pizza crust, pasta/pizza sauce, some pasta, biscuits (not a box mix), soup, pie crust, beer, wine, sweet breads, can't think of everything..
-- We don't use fancy fertilzers and expensive products on our garden. We keep a few chickens, and I compost EVERYTHING that I can. We keep a bucket just outside the house where all the veggie scraps go. Improving the soil structure is more important than expensive chemicals. Though it takes longer, the long term effects are better and the end product has more flavor!

Three things to remember:

1: Look at every little thing and say; "How can I make that myself", then google it.
2: Try doing things from scratch, don't get discouraged if the first few trys are clumsy or failures
3: Don't try to do everything from scratch all at once! This has been especially important for me to remember. Find one thing that you decide to start doing, add that to your routine, when that becomes second nature, add another thing, and then another....learn the things that you are better off buying from local merchants.

Check to see if you have a small wine merchant in your area. There is one in my small town, he takes much better care of his merchandise, he sells stuff by the case at a huge discount & he sells home brewing/wine making equipment. The big box stores cook their wine and beer on the shelves under all those lights and constant heat....it REALLY effects the flavor profiles of the product!

 

[elijahboy]

coupons for what you want but cant make yourself

just got 4 16oz jars of planters peanut butter original price 3.60 each
2 bags of nabisco animal crackers original price 2.00 each
2 6pk of 16oz cocoa cola original price 3.50 each
1 merita bread original price 2.89 each

12.00 total

before coupons and sales around $28-$29

 

[edjanuary39]

We are a 2 (young) adult home. Our food expenses are $140-$200 per MONTH. Here are some simple things that I do in my climate & region to cut costs.

-- Right outside the back door we have an EXTENSIVE herb garden. Here in Michigan I have fresh herbs 365 days a year, and I use them almost exclusively for EVERYTHING.
-- Use garden space wisely, only grow what will be successfull and that you will store or eat regularly. For us, that is tomato, garlic, peppers, collards, mustard greens.
-- Go to local meat market. We just discovered ours, and it has much better prices than the big stores!
-- We are lucky enough to have an organic grain farmer near us that has become a good friend...we trade for all our flour, beans, popcorn & some fun stuff like quinoa, amaranth, flax seed, etc.
-- Make our own soup stock (just picked up a package of clearance turkey backs for $.51 total, that will feed us like fat pigs for 2-3 days)
-- Buy clearance vegetables and freeze or can (there's a rack at our local Meijer that always has stuff that is bruised or needs to be used NOW, I buy all my peppers onions & potatoes there)
-- Everything is made from SCRATCH!SCRATCH!: pizza crust, pasta/pizza sauce, some pasta, biscuits (not a box mix), soup, pie crust, beer, wine, sweet breads, can't think of everything..
-- We don't use fancy fertilzers and expensive products on our garden. We keep a few chickens, and I compost EVERYTHING that I can. We keep a bucket just outside the house where all the veggie scraps go. Improving the soil structure is more important than expensive chemicals. Though it takes longer, the long term effects are better and the end product has more flavor!

Three things to remember:

1: Look at every little thing and say; "How can I make that myself", then google it.
2: Try doing things from scratch, don't get discouraged if the first few trys are clumsy or failures
3: Don't try to do everything from scratch all at once! This has been especially important for me to remember. Find one thing that you decide to start doing, add that to your routine, when that becomes second nature, add another thing, and then another....learn the things that you are better off buying from local merchants.

Check to see if you have a small wine merchant in your area. There is one in my small town, he takes much better care of his merchandise, he sells stuff by the case at a huge discount & he sells home brewing/wine making equipment. The big box stores cook their wine and beer on the shelves under all those lights and constant heat....it REALLY effects the flavor profiles of the product!

So are you willing to share some tried and true reciepis and tips for what you use around your home? I am new to sufficient living, but I have a hard time trusting some of the websites -not this one-reciepies, some are very wrong and I can't afford to be making too many mistakes. Homemade soap from ash is one no one seems to want to share, and a good laundry soap and fabric softener. Turns out there are so many 'dummies' out there, the random googled websites just end up being alot of wasted time and no product to show for it! Although I have found some awesome sites, I have found far more that are useless. Any recipieces for anything you make and use would be awesome! And I know there are lots of others who would want them! Thanks

 

[JacksFlock]

I'm keeping a journal this year of every single piece of produce we buy in attempts to modify my garden for 2013 to eliminate the need for buying them.

 

[k15n1]

I'm keeping a journal this year of every single piece of produce we buy in attempts to modify my garden for 2013 to eliminate the need for buying them.

Sometimes you just have to eat what grows! We're eating a lot of corn and green beans this winter. It's not the best, but each pint eaten is a dollar-something saved.

 

[kimnkell]

Here are a few things that we do to save on our grocery bill. First of all we have a milk cow...that in itself saves us a huge amount of money. We have all the milk we want plus we make cheese, yogurt, sour cream, ice cream, ricotta cheese, butter, cream cheese, butter milk and we have all the cream you could ever want. We have so much milk that we give all we can away after we make our products and then we feed our animals with it too. If you are in the position to own a milk cow I would strongly suggest it. Next we have chickens ( which provide us with all the eggs we need) , turkey's and rabbits to kill for meat and my Husband hunts and we usually have 2- 3 deer in the freezer and canned to do us for awhile.

I also can everything in sight... right now I am canning dried red beans ... Canning makes supper so much easier... I tend to can more in the winter. By doing this it helps with heating the house and in the summer it doesn't heat the kitchen up because I've already got my canning done...lol....

I make all of our bread by hand ( I know... it's an all day job with the kneading and rising and such) but at 2.49 per loaf at the grocery, it's worth it all to me and I'll usually make extra loaves to freeze so there we have our bread. Really all I have to buy at the grocery is flour, dried beans, yeast, and my pepsi... I have been trying to quit the pepsi and drink more tea and eventually we hope to quit drinking soda all together.
But....anyway...that's how we save on our grocery bill.

 

[hqueen13]

Homemade soap from ash is one no one seems to want to share, and a good laundry soap and fabric softener.

Maybe because they're already here?? There is a really good thread already on laundry detergent, as well as good suggestions on fabric softener (plain white vinegar is ALL I ever use). Soap I can't help you with much because we haven't started making that yet...

Do a little more digging in the Roll Your Own section - TONS of REALLY good info there!

I don't know about yall, but I can get lost reading here! It also seems that every question I ask has already been asked to death 18 ways 'til Sunday, but the good folks here still put up with my questions and answer me again