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| Small Bell Peppers from the Maryland Food Bank. |
I am looking for ways to save money by cutting my food budget. At the same time it is also important to eat healthy. In this post and the next few posts I will share tips for saving money. Hope you find this information useful.
Currently, I'm keeping a record of
what are my spending habits and the kinds of purchases I make on a monthly
basics such as:
- The kinds food I enjoy eating;
- Keep all receipts for food purchase to find the cost;
- Create a price book of the items I buy and the stores
I shop;
- This includes the food that I eat at work;
- breakfast, lunch and snack
From this information I hope to
gathered, what are items can be cut out or substitute a least expensive?
When I visit some of my favor stores,
the first thing I like to do is check out the mark down section. I have found
out of season items, household cleaners, personal care products that I use mark
down 50 to 75 percent. And I also look
for the monthly store brand items on sale if the item is out of stock I get a
rain check from the customer service desk.
Next, I keep a running shopping and errand
list and labels from hard to find items and coupons in a Ziploc bag in my car. On
my travel to and from work I do my shopping and run errands as many of these
places are on my route. This “Big List” helps to keep me on track and focus on
what I need to get and serve as reminder I don’t need to buy everything I see
at Wal-Mart! (LOL!) Writing out a meal plan for 2 weeks at a
time, checking my cabinets to see what it on hand and what is needed from the
food store is also helpful. Now that my children are grown I no longer need to
cook every day, so when I do cook I try to make enough for another meal. It is
also helpful to shop at smaller stores such as ALDI’s Savers Food Store, even
the Dollar Store and Big Lots. The draw back to shopping in these smaller discount stores is that these stores
may not accept coupons.
That’s all for now! More later!
