Grocery Hacking: How to Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half

One of the most immediately controllable aspects of your budget is your grocery bill. Changing how you shop for groceries is an easy and effective way to improve your financial well-being. This budget hack does require some planning but you don’t have devote a ton of time or effort to see some real savings, real fast. Using these tips and tricks I’ll show you how to cut your food bill in half. Thanks to my (previously) terrible spending habits, I was able to reduce my grocery spending by an amazing 73%! Crazy, right? I know! I’m saving hundreds of dollars a month, still eating well, and doing it with an investment of about 20-30 minutes a week. Do you have 20 minutes to spend to save your family a couple hundred bucks a month? Yeah? Here’s how you reduce your grocery bill in 4 easy steps. But first you need some tools…

Grocery Hacking Tools of the Trade

Every trade has their tools. Here are the tools you will need to cut your grocery spending.

The Weekly Grocery Ads – These are the sales each grocer is having. It’s their best deals and will showcase where you can score big savings. Shopping the adds, and building your meal plan/grocery list based on what’s for sale is your key to slashing your food bill. Most grocery chains release their weekly ad on Wednesdays. The ad is good from Wednesday through the following Tuesday in most cases. The ads will show up in your mailbox, but you can also find them online and often in the retailers app. Speaking of apps….

The Retailer’s App – Most grocery stores now have mobile apps. Often times the app has additional discounts or deals that aren’t available otherwise. Albertsons/Safeway have some amazing “Click and Clip” coupon deals specific to the store and only available on the app. I got 2 dozen eggs yesterday for $0.24. That’s 24 cents TOTAL. 12 cents per dozen. An outstanding deal that deal was only available in the app. Seriously, sign up for the apps. While you’re signing up for the app make sure you sign up for the…

Loyalty/Rewards Program – These programs really do save you money. Make sure you have signed up for the ones where you shop. It takes only a few minutes to do and only requires some basic information from you. Some people complain about the little key fob things that the programs make you carry but thanks to technology there are some great aps out there that manage your loyalty fobs. You just load them into the app then scan the barcode in the app at check out and *poof* no more annoying loyalty fobs on your key ring. Most places require you to sign up for these programs to get the real savings. Go for it. It’s worth it.

Planning – Of all the grocery hacks, planning is the most critical. To make the most of your grocery budget you need to plan your meals around what is on sale. This is the part that may take a little time, but is totally worth it. I can’t stress this enough: You can shop the all the ads and clip all the coupons, but if you are not purposeful in your purchases, you will end up right back at the store to purchase things that aren’t on sale, costing yourself more money.

Now before we jump into HOW to make these tools work for you, I strongly recommend that you determine how much you are currently spending on food. It’s hard to measure your success if you don’t know where you started. Think of it kinda like a weight loss journey. You want to know where you started and track your progress so you can see how far you’ve come. This is the same.

I tracked my spending manually using an excel Spreadsheet I made. I like excel and think stuff like that is fun. It’s not for everyone though. If manually tracking your spending isn’t for you, think about a budgeting app (I like Mint), or check your debit/credit card statement to see if it tracks your spending into categories. For purpose of this exercise, I am only tracking food purchases. I have not included things like toiletries, or household supplies. I track that spending separately, but you will find that the principles I discuss here will apply to a great many type of purchases, not just food.

Grocery Hacking Order of Operations

The order in which you use the tools above matters. To really slash your grocery bill, you have to approach these hacks the right way.

Step One

Look through the Ads. All of them. Spend just a few minutes looking over the adds getting a feel for what’s on sale and who has the best deals. Keep in mind what you have at home and what you can pair together for some cheap eats. Circle what is of interest or seems like a good deal. You aren’t making any decisions yet, just getting a feel for what’s available. You’ll make your list later.  

Pro Tip: Don’t limit yourself to shopping at just one store. You may find killer deals at two or even three stores. Assuming you live within reasonable traveling distance, you can save money by being willing to make a couple extra stops.

Step Two

Check for coupons. You can check the mail or newspapers for coupons, but most store apps have coupons built in now.

A Note on Apps and Coupons: Many retailers apps both their store coupons and manufacturers coupons built right in. You just have to click the coupon and it’s loaded to your loyalty card. When you scan your card/enter your phone number at check out, the coupons apply automatically. Gone are the days of holding up the line by handing the clerk grip of coupons and hoping they all scan!

As you look for coupons, keep an eye out for items that are also on sale in the ad. You can layer savings by combining coupons with what’s on sale in the ad. To give you an idea of the type of savings you can get I’ll share a recent example. Last week coffee creamer was on sale for $1.99 in the ad, with a normal price of $3.49, that’s nearly $1.50 in savings – already a pretty good deal. But after looking at the coupons in the app, I discovered a $1.00 off coupon which made the creamer only $0.99! Now that was a deal!

Pro Tip: Read the coupon details carefully. They may specify a particular quantity, size or other detail in order to apply.

Step Three

Plan your meals. Now that you know what is on sale and what you have coupons for, pick a few meals to cook. Stick to things that use common ingredients so you can limit the number of things you have to purchase. For instance, if there’s a great deal on chicken breasts think about a few different meals to cook using chicken. For examples, I might make Slow Cooker Lime Chicken for faux Chipotle bowls, Chicken Stir Fry with Veggies and rice and Baked Lemon Chicken. Three completely different dishes, but lots of overlap in ingredients (brown rice, vegetables and chicken) but with completely different flavor profiles so the family doesn’t get bored.

Pro Tip: Check your cupboards/fridge to make sure you have what you think you have and to prevent you from buying more of something you forgot was there.

Step Four

Make your list, and check it twice. Seriously. Twice. Write out all the deals you want to hit and all the ingredients you will need. I find it helpful to make a note of the quantity/size I need along with the savings type and price point so I make sure I pick up the right item. I also break my list out by retailer so I’m so not trying to remember where each deal was.

In the above example, I have 3 meals, which will feed my family of three dinner for three nights, but they will also result in some great left overs the hubby and I can take to work for lunch the next day. What ended up being really cool about this grocery run is that 8lbs of chicken is actually A LOT of chicken. More than I needed for these three meals. We could have had more chicken meals this week, but opted instead to make some Make Ahead Freezer Meals (I’ll go into freezer meals into another post since they are a great way to save money and time.) Going the freezer meal route meant that I now had THREE MORE meals all for just $22.54. 6 dinners (not including left overs) means that the average cost per meal on this run was $3.75. That’s cheap as fuck!

Common Mistakes that Cost You More Money at the Store

1. Buying more than your family will consume – It can be tempting to go hog-wild and buy a bunch of food all at once, but you need to be controlled and strategic. If you buy a bunch of fresh veggies only to end up not cooking them before they went bad, you’ve let your food and your money go to waste. Stocking up when things are cheap isn’t a bad idea, just make sure you are being realistic about what you will consume and be prepared to deal with excess via freezing or canning.
2. Planning overly complex meals – Meal planning is fun and saves money, but if you plan really complex or time-consuming meals, you may find that you don’t have the desire to actually cook them after a long day of adulting. You may also find that you forget to pick up an ingredient or two and have to go back to the store. When that happens, you are on a slipper slope of over purchasing or picking up extra things that you didn’t need. Like tasty tasty Doritos. Or Beer. Mmmm beer.
3. Not reading the fine print – Always read the fine print in the ads and coupons to make certain you are meeting the requirements in order to secure the discount. Thinking you’ve saved yourself one amount, only to find that you misread one of the terms and lost the discount is a crappy feeling. Save yourself the disappointment and double check before you head to the register.
4. Buying more then you came for – Stick you your list. You spent time checking the adds, the apps and the coupons, don’t blow it all now by buying more than what you came for. My buddy Jay used to tell me “If it’s not on the list, it doesn’t exist”. It was a good moto and I still repeat it to myself when I start to wander toward some tasty impulse item.
5. Not planning your meals around what’s in the sale ad – Your meals should be planned around what is in the ad, not just what sounds good. The ads provide great savings, use that as your guide and plan tasty meals.

I used to think I was saving money grocery shopping because I used coupons. I’d buy whatever “sounded good” that week without consulting the ads. I’d find the occasional coupon for what I was buying and feel good about saving money on the groceries. In reality, I was not saving money. At least not a significant amount. I was paying a premium simply because I bought things that decided I wanted instead of finding things that were on sale that would make a great meal. I had to change my mindset and be more planful in my approach to cutting my grocery bill. I had been spending more than $1,300 on food for a family of 3. That’s insane. With a little preparation, a shift in mindset and a little creativity we slashed our grocery bill by more than 73%. That’s nearly $1000 bucks a month I can put somewhere else, which is huge. You can do a lot with an extra $1000 bucks a month every month.