Everyone needs food, but with the cost of living going up everyone now needs to save money on food. It is not really a difficult thing to do and with practice you can eat great healthy meals and not be spending tons of money.
Discount Stores and Brands
Many communities have discount stores such as Save A Lot, Aldi’s, Sam’s Club or Costco. These stores often offer great discounts for food by only selling generic brands. Often larger stores have their own generic brand, such as Wal Mart’s great value brand and Spartan Store’s Spartan brand. Some of these brands are not as good quality, but others are just the exact same as the name brand. So try a generic brand here and there and see how you feel about it.
Also if you’re a big cereal eater consider buy generic brand puffed rice or corn flakes. A large bag of these can often found for around one dollar. If you need to sweeten your cereal you can try adding a little bit of honey or sugar to it.
Make your own
If you want to spend less instead of buying premade sauces, or frozen dinners make your own. It costs significantly less to make your meals yourself the buy prepackaged things. If time is a large issues for you consider making your meals on the weekend and store them in Tupperware containers in the fridge and then microwave them when you’re ready to eat them.
Fruits and Veggies!
Eating healthy has other benefits than helping you lose weight. It also helps your bank account gain weight – er you save more money. I bought a cucumber and fresh head of lettuce for under one dollar this afternoon and it made a great lunch with a little bit of dressing. The head of lettuce and cucumber will feed a person lunch for three to four days on less than one dollar. Also try other healthy alternatives such as turkey bacon. I find when shopping turkey bacon can be found for as much as a dollar less than regular bacon.
Buy Bulk When Possible
If you buy groceries that have a long shelf life in bulk you are going to get the bulk discount. Consider buying bulk sizes of peanut butter, ketchup, mustard, drink mixes or whatever you use often. You can save a substantial amount using this method. Major stores such as Wal-mart have a bulk food section that these bulk groceries can be found in, and Gordon Food Service as well as Sam’s Clubs are also good sources for bulk packaged groceries as well.
Don’t Do Bottled Water
This is not a well known fact, but a lot of bottled water (Dasani, Aquafina) is tap water from a city water system put in a plastic bottle. If you need water to go save bottles from water you have bought and fill them on your own. If your water tastes like crap at home consider getting one of the pitchers with a filter in it. For eight dollars a month – the cost of a filter you can have fresh and great tasting water! Also you should try drinking more water as it helps save money. If you don’t like the flavor of water try adding a little bit of lemon juice to the mix.
Get Some Tupperware
You should really get some Tupperware or other food storage containers. This way you can store your leftovers. Throwing out leftovers is a huge waste of money and most leftovers can be saved for as long as week in the fridge if you have proper food storage containers.
Uses of Milk
Use dehydrated or dry milk for cooking. This will help you save a ton of money on your food costs. Save fresh milk for drinking. When you use dehydrated or dry milk for cooking you can’t tell the difference but you sure can tell if you use it for drinking. But this is huge way to save money, as its not more expensive to drink a gallon of milk than it is to put a gallon of gas in your car.
Don’t Eat Out
Don’t eat out all the time. This costs a lot of money, often triple what it would cost you to eat at home. When you take road trips bring some sort of snack mix that’s homemade so you don’t have to stop for a snack. Save going to restaurants for special days such as first dates, anniversaries and birthdays.
That’s Not All
There are plenty of other ways to save money on food. Just use common sense and look around for great deals! Your budget will appreciate it!