Grocery Shopping for Less.

Most people don’t know that when my husband and I first got married we moved two weeks later to a new town so my husband could go back to college. He went to a very “content focused” school that was open 24 hours and offered schooling around the clock. During this time I was the only one working and it was my first professional job right out of college (I graduated two weeks after we got married). During this time our food budget was very small and we learned quickly how to eat for less and how to shop smart.

If you can believe it, during this time, I didn’t cut coupons and we were still able to eat for $20 a week. (For both of us)

The number 1 thing if I had to advise anyone who i trying to cut costs by cutting their grocery budget is make sure your partner is in it with you. There is nothing harder than having a partner unwilling to make sacrifices and splurging when they go to the store. We were both on board because we had to be. We didn’t budget because we wanted to, we budgeted because we had to.

1. Make a List

Sounds pretty standard in a budget but I had to start planning out meals and strategizing how we could shop on a reduced budget. Each Sunday I would plan out our meals and then check through the ads to find the best deal.

2. Shop the Stores

This is actually where people go wrong. I never would shop at just one store. I didn’t even always go to a grocery store either. Our local grocery store was Publix and for us they were usually expensive. I would split up my list into which stores were cheapest for each items and go to each. Did it take more time- yes. Did it save money- yes. Was it worth it- yes. I usually split up my shopping between- Walgreens, CVS, Wal-Mart and The Dollar Tree.  (ex. Milk was always cheaper at the drug store)

3. Portion out your food

When you get home with all your food, break it up and separate it. If I got a lot of hamburger meat, I would break it into two sections and freeze the other half. If you’re cooking for two, most times you don’t have to cook all the food. You end up with tons of waste and if no one eats leftovers it goes into the garbage.

4. Don’t be afraid to use the same recipes

I can tell you that for the most of the time my husband was in college, we ate the same 5-6 meals over and over. We knew why and were willing to make the sacrifice to do so.

Here is a sampling of the items that I used to purchase and meals I would make.

1. Steak & Rice- Sounds great right? It’s really cheap. We would get a bag of rice for $1 and a “about to expire” portion of the cheapest steak. The one slab that is $2. I would cut it up into small pieces and cook it over medium heat, add in garlic and onion spices for flavor. They put it on top of the rice. So easy. ($3 for both of us to eat dinner)

2. Pasta Meals- Another favorite of ours. For $4 we could go to Wal-Mart and get a “Voila” meal in a bag. It was great, filling and cheap. There would usually be enough for 3 portions so I would take the last portion to work for lunch the following day.

3. Cheap Spegetti- This might sound sad but I would go to the Dollar Tree and get a package of noodles $0.50 and a can of Meat Sauce $1 and for $1.50 I would make pasta with meat sauce. There were the smallest meat flakes inside but the flavoring made it taste like their was meat. (No ground beef for us- not in the budget). I would add in parsley, onions and garlic spices for flavor.

4. Chicken Meals- Another thing I would do is grab a house brand bag of Frozen Chicken Breasts and cook one portion at a time, again chop it up and put it on top of rice and corn or noodles. Anything really but it was super cheap. A bag with over 10 was about $5. Would last me a few weeks.

5. Frozen Pizza- We would get house brand frozen pizza once a week. Usually about $2.50 and that would be one of our splurge items, sometimes we would catch DiGiornos on sale for $3. This was one of the highlights to the week.

Hopefully this gives you a few ideas of the items we would eat and how we could cut our costs down so much. I look back at these times and wonder if I knew how to play the drug store game, use coupons in conjunction with sales and freeze meals if we could have ate better or cheaper. While these were one of our hardest times, it really helped us to appreciate how far we have come.

What are some of the things that you have done to cut costs at the grocery store? Any cheap food ideas?