Today marked the end of the 2010 All You Grocery Challenge.
I am pleased to say that I learned a few things! I had always thought I was a pretty frugal grocery shopper, but to have a concrete budget and incentive (like $1000 incentive) to really stick to that budget made me much more mindful of our spending habits!
Here are some things I learned:
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Stockpiling food when it is on sale is great...but make sure you actually use it! And don't buy items just because they are cheap, buy things that fit in with your cooking and eating style. -
Even when figuring in coupons, it is most budget friendly to choose ONE kind of breakfast cereal and make that your go to. For us it is original Cheerios, only 1 g sugar and no HFCS. We can vary the flavor of the cereal with our own toppings. -
On that same token, breakfast can use some variety. Shake things up, fry eggs, make pancakes or waffles from scratch or toast up some bagels. Most of these options are more satisfying and less expensive than breakfast cereals. -
Make your own...cookies, granola, snack mixes, etc. Not only is this healthier, it is cheaper too! -
Repurpose your leftovers. Not many people really enjoy leftover night. However, my family LOVED leftover steak cubed up and served in a gravy over whole wheat egg noodles. Chicken noodle soup is a hit in our house, leftover chicken is not! -
Sometimes you have to splurge! Last week I sprung for two family sized Pizzas from Papa Murphy's since it was too hot to cook. I had a $5 off coupon, so for about $20 we had dinner, and lunch the next day! -
For our family, the food cannot just be cheap...it has to be good. There are plenty of ways I could have cut our budget even further, but quality food does cost money, and I'm not willing to substitute quality for price. -
Bismarck has some great buys for good food!
My grocery total for the month was about $430. This is significantly less than my usual $600/month. When you combine that with the fact that we dod not resort to fast food on top of that grocery budget we saved even more!
What are some of your favorite money saving tips! Leave them in the comments below and I may feature them in a future article!
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