I recently was asked about my grocery budgeting tips andhow I feed my family of 4 for $250 a month. I knew nothing about the person asking me except she also had a family of 4 and she was regularly spending $1,000 a month and could not figure out how to spend less.
I immediately launched into what I did and started to give her some tips. What I got back was actually a kind of defensive response about how she is “health-conscious” and doesn’t eat bread, milk, cheese, hamburger or hashbrowns. She couldn’t believe the advice I was giving her. It was like I had offended her by offering tips from my own life.
I was kind of taken aback, to be honest.
So now that I have had some time to digest that conversation, I want you to know, it is totally okay if you don’t like what I feed my family. You definitely don’t have to feed your family the same things as me.
BUT, if you want to know how to save money on groceries and feed a family of 4 for $250 a month, you can absolutely do what I do!
Let me tell you some things I do:
- I feed white bread instead of wheat bread because it is cheaper (yes, like 7 cents cheaper).
- I don’t drink pop because it’s expensive (not because it isn’t good for you).
- We cut out cheese occasionally to save money (not because it’s fatty).
- I refuse to buy bags of lettuce because I can chop my own lettuce, and I can buy 4 heads of lettuce for the price of 1 bag of chopped.
- I cook with canned chicken way more than I would like to admit.
If none of this sounds appealing, you can take a detour from here to some of our awesome budgeting or debt payoff resources!
How to Pay Off $35,000 of Debt in 6 Months
Still sticking around?? Awesome!
Ready to save money on groceries?
Grocery Budgeting Tip #1: Shop where it’s cheap.
Trader Joes, Whole Paycheck…whoops! I mean Whole Foods, your local small town grocery store….not the place to save money. Unless you feel like bouncing from store to store to use coupons and shop specific deals, stay clear of these places.
I for one do not have time to be shopping around from store to store. I have butts to wipe and crumbs to clean up off my floors……like all the time.
If you want a cheap grocery budget, you need to shop at a cheap store. My best recommendation is to shop at Aldi.
Now, lots of people say, they can’t do all of their shopping at Aldi because they don’t have everything they need for their meals.
Want to know the solution to that? Make your meals fit with what Aldi does have.
If you are trying to save time and money, then you need to make Aldi work for your meals and save time by only shopping at one store. You will thank yourself, I promise.
I used to go to Aldi, then Target, then Walmart….good Lord! Then I came to my senses and started making meals that only used things Aldi could supply. Then I started ordering my toiletry stuff online (and my coffee….I do not like Aldi’s coffee) and having it shipped from Target to my door.
If you really want to tighten up your food budget, you need to be shopping at Aldi (or an Aldi equivalent) and only Aldi. No extra store trips where you will spend more and you will buy more on impulse because you are in the store. None of that.
Grocery Budget Tip #2: Plan to save money.
If you aren’t already meal planning, you are going to be saving so much money once you start!
Before meal planning, I was spending $250/month on groceries and then another $300-$400 just eating out because I felt like we had “nothing to eat.” Isn’t that always the case? We would seriously have a pantry full of food, but no idea what to do with it so we felt like we had nothing.
When you meal plan, your ingredients have a purpose and you know you have what you need on hand to make your meal for the day. No more wasted ingredients and no more impromptu drive-thru adventures.
Okay, meal plan, meal plan, got it. But how do you actually start to meal plan?
When I first started, I just kept it stupid simple. I’m talking about spaghetti, frozen pizza, scrambled eggs, Mac ‘n Cheese, chicken nuggets, frozen dinners.
For the first couple of months of meal planning, I made the meals require like zero effort to accomplish.
Designing the meal plan, making the grocery list and doing the shopping took enough of my energy, I couldn’t imagine doing any serious cooking on top of that.
My first victory was just accomplishing the meal plan for the month, the grocery shopping and telling my husband what was for dinner. For the first couple of months, we would alternate cooking days (or I’ll be honest, he did most of the cooking/putting stuff in the oven) in the beginning.
Simple was our friend. Soup and sandwiches? Absolutely! Frozen chicken pot pie? Sure thing!
Once I actually got comfortable designing a meal plan, then I started to put more effort into the actual meal preparation and cooking. We have since gotten a little bit more adventurous, but nothing too crazy.
Meal planning is actually really easy. Now that I have been doing it, it is super simple.
When you are first getting started, it seems super overwhelming and exhausting. To help with that, you can design your menu by theme nights (ex. Monday = Mexican, Tuesday = Chicken, Wednesday = Italian, etc.).
