Grocery Budget Calculator: Is your grocery budget out of control?

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Meal Planning

Meal planning is not only about planning on what you are going to eat this week, but it’s also about making a plan for your money and preventing food waste.

When you know what you are going to be making for the upcoming week/month, then you have a plan on what you need to buy.

Otherwise, money is wasted purchasing items that you don’t need or possibly will never get to use if it’s perishable resulting in wasted food.

And, if your weekly grocery budget doesn’t allow for everything that you added to your meal plan, you can easily swap things out with a few budget-friendly meals or find cheaper food alternatives to bring down the cost.

>>> Learn how to create a meal plan on a budget

>> Here are 35+ dirt cheap meal ideas to help control your grocery budget

 

Download your free grocery budget worksheets here.

Couponing

Couponing has gotten a bad rap in recent years, partially due to extreme couponing shows since pulling off a major grocery haul for pennies takes a ton of time to strategize such a mission.

With that being said, using coupons to reduce your grocery bill is effective. But you don’t need to go to extremes.

It’s up to you how much time you spend. You could take 15 minutes a week to scan Sunday coupon inserts or printable coupon websites to see if there are any offers for things that are on your list this week.

If you can save $10 – $20 a week in 15 minutes, and with little effort, your ROI (return on “time” investment) is really good. I’m talking $80 hr. I don’t know about you but that’s certainly worth my time.

>>> Read couponing tips and tricks for beginners to learn the in’s and out’s of effective couponing

 

Grocery Budget Apps

Like couponing, using grocery budget apps are another way to save money on food that can give you a really great ROI for the time spent.

What’s nice about using apps is that they link to your store’s loyalty card, so you present your loyalty card at checkout, there typically isn’t anything more to do on your part.

But there may be some places that you make a purchase that doesn’t have a loyalty card such as privately owned grocery stores or convenience stores.

In these cases, you would need to submit a picture of your purchase to prove you made the purchase.

The process is really easy and many times the apps will deposit the money earning in your account balance within 24 hours.

The Best Grocery Savings Apps

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>>> Check out 20+ cashback apps that pay you to shop

Sale Shopping

Sale shopping is one of the easiest ways to save money at the supermarket but there is a big misconception about how to do this.

Many people are turned off by this method because they think that it’s very restrictive, thinking that they will have to eat the same things all week long. Although this is one way to go about it, that’s pretty constrictive. 

Instead, what you do is find the best deal for things that are on sale and you buy enough of those items to last until it comes on sale again (usually between 4 – 8 weeks depending on the store’s sales cycles).

Then, you do the same the next week, and so on. By doing this, you are not eating the same food all week long because you have a variety of food, and you’ll never have to pay full price for those products again.

>> Learn all the ins and outs of sale shopping in here

Meal prep

Meal prepping typically isn’t associated with reducing your grocery budget, but I thought it fit perfectly in this list since “time is money”.

Prepping meals not only helps you save time preparing healthy meals for your family, but it also reduces the amount of