Beck2844 - You might enjoy The Fresh20. My wife and I have been using this for about 6 months and not only has our grocery bills gone down but we are eating healthier dinners. Our bill is down because we are not buying a bunch of junk or stuff we don’t end up using that goes to waste. And the meals are really amazing, 20 fresh ingredients every week as a part of a 5-night dinner menu with a shopping list for the week.
And no, I’m not affiliated with them in any way.
Go to your market and look at what there’s lots of, that’s cheap. Vegetables, fruits, meats, fishes etc.
Now get to experimenting to see if you can’t turn one or two of those cheap ingredients into something your family will really enjoy eating. Recognize this could take some trial and error.
But, if you keep at it, you’ll hit on something that you work well with, that the family enjoys eating and that’s really economical. It will save you money now, and well into the future.
One success at this, and you may find yourself inspired to attempt others. Figure out two or more, such dishes, and you’d really be saving some money on groceries, I should think!
That’d be the approach I’d take. As you already seem to be doing so much right, (lists, meal plans, etc!) Good Luck!
So what you’re saying, is, before leaving for the store you identify those items that you will buy, and then you buy those items? Kind of like when people make up a shopping list of needed items, and then buy those things?
You use a list, you just don’t write it down.
I actually did a spreadsheet last Halloween, to figure out which store had the best price per unit of chocolate candy. 
I got fed up with the grocery bill and went on strike for a month. All I bought were bare necessities: pet supplies, toilet paper, milk. Everything else I found in my freezer or pantry. I went for about 6 weeks before I decided to shop again, and probably saved several hundred dollars. Of course, I have a LOT of stuff stockpiled, so that made a difference.
What helps me, aside from the other suggestions you’ve seen here, is thinking in terms of “today’s budget”: if I plan to spend $50 on groceries today, do I want to spend 10% (or more) of it on chips or soda? When I just look at the sales (2 bags for $6! awesome!), it seems like an okay deal. But when I think of the % of my money I’m throwing at junk food today, it really keeps me on track.
I’ve been spending normally again for a month now, and am going to go on grocery strike again soon.
You’re in Israel, so I guess pork shoulder is right out. However, you can use a crock pot (electric slow cooker) to cook tough cuts of meat all day, until the tough gristle melts away into gelatin. Then you can pull it apart for packaging in plastic bags of one meal size, frozen for later use. Besides the meat packets, divide the broth and fat into small amounts for freezing. The best broth you can buy is not as good as what you made in the crock pot.
In the produce department, sometimes you’ll find a good price on whatever they accidentally had too much of. Buy that, cut it up, and freeze it.
We have been priced out of most primary cuts of meat so learning to cook secondary cuts has been essential if we are to remain carnivorous. There are so many recipe sites it is pretty easy to get good ideas to suit your palate. I also only buy supermarket meat when it is reduced significantly, I shop at a market once in a while and fill the freezer.
Checking the unit pricing is something I have always done, luckily here they have started displaying it - seeing which brand’s box/jar has the best price per 100g is a good starting point in determining when I will buy stuff and what size I will buy.
This is an education program designed at helping people eat better on small budgets, there may be some ideas that suit http://www.foodcentsprogram.com.au/
Funny you should mention that. I just bought about 8 pounds of pork shoulder for 99 cents a pound. You cook it forever - with a salt coat on the outside - and it falls right off the bone. Not only can you eat it for dinner, you can make tamales with it and I will bring it for lunch.
Actually, that is another cost saving - if you buy a bit more meat than you need, you can use the leftovers for lunch, which is a lot cheaper than the cafeteria or buying pre-sliced lunch meat,l even in the deli.
And a lot better.
Writing down the groceries that are being bought is really the first and most essential step. Earlier I gave a elaborate example of a spreadsheet. It can be done more easily.
Create sections on a spreadsheet. Snacks & Drinks, Meats, Staples, Produce, Household Goods bring your grocery ticket home and enter each item under the appropriate section. use a sum formula to get a total for that section. Then sum the whole column for a grand total of everything. Each month start a new spreadsheet. This maybe over simplified but it will work for anybody.
If you don’t have a pc or a spreadsheet. use a yellow legal pad. Each page is one of those sections. add it up with a calculator.
Somehow you have to see where the money is going and what can be trimmed back. Some things are necessary. Like a bar of soap, or laundry detergent. Staples like flour, salt, pepper are essential and don’t cost much.
Lots of good suggestions above but one thing I did not see mentioned is to buy store brands wherever possible. Mustard is mustard. The name brand is 2 dollars, store brand 1.
The other one I didn’t see is price matching. There are several stores in my area that will match the advertised price of any other store in the area. So, you get all the good sales and only have to go to one store.
Store brands are not always cheaper. On Saturday I bought Breyer’s Ice Cream which was 25% cheaper than the very good store brand.
And the quality is not always the same. Store brand popcorn is awful, I found compared to name brands. And store brand frozen vegetables are much lower quality. But many items are pretty much the same.
I’ve never seen this in the US. There are so many different items in a grocery that I’d think this would be impossible to implement.
There are a few stores that do it. You’re not price matching everything, just the advertised stuff, and that only when the items are an exact match, only for the advertised time period, and generally only if the shopper has the relevant ad on hand to prove the price difference. Our grocery store sale flyers usually only have 20-30 items, most of which are brand-specific, and often size-specific too.
I’ve never shopped in Israel, but in the US shop the perimeter. Into the store, turn right, shop all around the the outside wall, check out and go home. You’ll spend less and be healthier. You don’t need any of the stuff in the middle aisles. Try it and see.
That’s not true, stuff like rice and beans are in the middle aisles.
Yeah, the perimeter’s where the beer and ice cream are.
They are in the middle aisles of my store. The perimeter is produce, dairy, meat, bakery, deli. Not super sure you’d be healthy, but not too bad.
Exactly. Always try the store brand once. If it sucks, use it up and don’t get it again. If it doesn’t…profit.
We’re lucky up here in Ontario; we have stores that sell No Name (yellow label) and President’s Choice products. They are by far the best store brands I have ever seen.
In Israel, I expect you’d usually be able to skip the boiling step, and just leave a half-gallon jug with the water and tea bags in it out in the sun all day. Works just as well in a hot, sunny climate.
A lot of casseroles, soups, and stews use some meat but not a lot, just enough for the meat to impart its flavor to the overall recipe. That sort of thing is generally a lot cheaper than an entree that’s basically a chunk of cooked meat with seasonings.
What perfectparanoia said about the store brands: “Always try the store brand once. If it sucks, use it up and don’t get it again. If it doesn’t…profit.”
If you’re not already doing this, make your own lunches and snacks to eat at work. Bring in a thermos of coffee from home in the morning.
Each day, I bring in a sandwich from home, or a container with some of the leftovers from last night’s supper. Plus half an apple, already sliced, in a ziplock bag, or maybe a banana instead, and some peanuts or mixed nuts in another zippie. And of course, the thermos of coffee. At the beginning of each week, I bring in a half-gallon jug of tea I brewed at home.
If I go to the cafeteria at work, I can’t seem to get out of there for less than $5, but lunch and snacks from home run less than $1. With ~230 work days a year, that difference runs to ~$1000/year.
Well, looking in the fridge/pantry to see what you need IS a list, of a sort, even if you don’t write it down. I like a pre-written list because it makes it less likely I’ll forget something I knew I needed.
As far as buying something just because it’s on sale: yes, that’s bad if it’s truly an impulse buy. But let’s say you have 5 pounds of flour at home and that’s enough for a month or two - but you get to the store and see it 1/3 off. There’s nothing wrong with building in a little wiggle room in your budget to allow for taking advantage of things like that.
And related to the rice: yes, as another poster said, invest in some good food storage items. It’d stink to lay in a supply of dry goods and find out that one of them brought in, say, pantry moths which ruined everything else.
My tips:
Preplan meals, which means you are less likely to come to dinnertime and wonder what the hell you’re going to have, and fix some convenience food (or worse, eat out).
Don’t overbuy, and do your best to minimize waste. If you buy veggies, and don’t get around to eating them (we’re big culprits there) then you’ve just thrown money away.
Go a bit further from home to a cheaper shop, even if not every week. Though that can backfire: I go to Aldi occasionally and once, when I needed rice, got two big 10-pound bags for, say, 7.50 (cheaper than at the grocery store). That afternoon I finished my shopping at the local grocery (Aldi’s prices are good but selection isn’t the best) and cracked up when I saw that 10-pound bags of rice were on sale for half off. Yep, it would’ve been cheaper to wait (in fairness, I didn’t know they were on sale and the regular price WAS higher).