How We Save Money on Groceries

One of the more variable budget line items in our quest for frugality is groceries.  Our current level of spending for two adults and a toddler is in the $800 per month range, but I have also seen friends and family with grocery bills both drastically higher and somewhat lower.  This all comes down to choices made while both grocery shopping and what to keep in our at-home inventory.  My wife and I routinely discuss various ways of saving money on this budget category and have been refining our way down to the above budget slowly but surely.  Here’s our top tips.

Meal Plan

This is both the most effective and the hardest part of creating a more frugal grocery budget.  When we’re doing this well, we sit down each Sunday and talk about what we want to eat each meal throughout the week.  We also usually need to look at our calendar to determine what else is going on that week so that we can plan appropriately.  For example, I rarely have the energy to cook a fancy meal after I have worked an in-office day (my current job schedule is 3 days work from home, 2 days in the office).  So, those days are more likely to get penciled in as a leftover or something like a frozen pizza.

Figure Out What Leftovers Work for You

Light meal prepping is an easy way to build a backlog of leftover options for busy weeknight dinners.  What do I mean when I say “light meal prepping”?  This is something along the lines of cooking a meal as a double batch so that there is enough to eat fresh that day, plus enough to pack away.  However, my wife and I discovered that we tend towards certain freezer items quicker than others.  Something like a chili or a rice-based dish?  Yes please!  Something made with noodles?  Not so much, since the texture of the noodles tends to get extra mushy upon reheating.  We realize this and tag recipes with “meal prep” so that we know which ones we are likely to grab from the freezer as leftovers.

Use an Online Calorie Calculator to Determine Portions

Let’s say that we’ve prepared a big slow cooker’s worth of chili, had our dinner, and we’re now looking to put it away for later.  How much do we put in each container?  Well, the most reliable way to do this is to put the entire recipe into an online calorie counter, then divide the total number of calories in the full recipe by the calorie target for each meal. In our case, we target approximately 2300 calories per day, divided up as follows:

• 450 calories for breakfast

• 200 calories for morning snack

• 650 calories for lunch

• 200 calories for afternoon snack

• 800 calories for dinner

So we typically target 650 calories for a one-person lunch serving, or 1600 calories for a two-person dinner serving. The above batch of chili makes about 6 servings, so we have 4 servings to freeze after eating dinner (4 single-serve lunches or 2 two-serving dinners).  This will change slightly as my daughter gets older and wants to eat the same food as us for dinner.

Storage Containers (with labels!)

Closely related to the above is to get a set of reusable storage containers that works for you.  We have 3 sizes of Ziploc-brand containers - 1 cup for small toddler leftovers, 3.5 cup for one-serving portions, and 8 cup for two-serving portions.  It looks like these have since been discontinued, so I’d personally look for something in similar sizes.

Also, label everything that goes in the freezer with its contents and date.  Mystery dinner in a container will guarantee it gets relegated to the very back of the freezer.

I heartily recommend not keeping that one container left in the old set with the lid that almost matches the new set…it’ll just cause frustration every time a reusable container is needed.  When enough of the discontinued Ziploc containers break, I'll purchase new replacements and recycle the one or two remaining containers. Managing a cabinet of reusable containers is significantly easier with only three sizes of containers and three sizes of lids.

Keep A Small Inventory

This is a lesson I learned while visiting Japan.  We stayed in a small AirBnB with a kitchen where there was not enough room for a large inventory of food, so we did grocery shopping either each day or every other day.  This led to near-zero food waste since we were able to keep track of what we had on hand at any given time.  Grocery stores aren’t quite as conveniently located in the US, so we instead aim to have our pantry and refrigerator inventory cover 1-2 weeks instead of 1-2 days.  A smaller inventory has helped us narrow down the foods we regularly enjoy eating vs. the foods we buy that we “should” eat.  Which leads into the next point…

Be Realistic About What You’ll Cook

We do enjoy trying new recipes fairly often to keep meals interesting, but at the same time, we have a standard set of go-to recipes that we always enjoy.  We’ve determined that we very rarely have the energy to cook a meal that takes longer than 30 minutes of prep, so complicated recipes are out.  But we nearly always have the energy for simple sheet pan dinners: toss a frozen veggie in some oil and seasoning, add a protein like sliced sausage or chicken strips, and bake it on a sheet pan.

We also keep a standard set of premade frozen entrees on hand at all times for stressful or tired nights.  For us, this includes primarily frozen pizzas and various dough pockets (potstickers, ravioli, tortellini, pierogies, bao, shumai…anything that has a filling encased in some form of a dough). The key is that these have to be easy and enticing enough to overcome the urge to eat out.

I feel like there are endless possibilities for how to save money on groceries, but these are the highlights that we’ve consistently applied.  The above strategies plus regularly shopping at ALDI allow us to keep a trim, consistent grocery budget.