8 Ways To Save Money on Groceries

Image via Wikipedia

Making your food dollar stretch

The price of basic living has really risen over the past few years. As the cost of luxuries like gas, heating, food and housing rises, it becomes even harder for people who are underemployed, taken pay cuts or who are looking for a new job to make ends meet. That's why finding ways to save money on groceries is so important.

In a recent survey by CouponDivas.com, 46% of the people polled said that they spend about two or three hours a week or more looking for coupons, making shopping lists by store and reading sales ads. Initially, I was surprised by their results. While a frugal shopper, I don't work that hard for a discount. If I have a coupon, I'll use it but I don't keep file folders filled with them. Then, as I started looking around, I found that the art of finding coupons is a growing interest field and their are several website communities that share discounts and tips.

That got me thinking about other ways to save money on groceries, with or without coupons. Here are 5 ways to stretch your food budget:

Shop less often - Every time I go into the grocery store to get just one or two specific things, I end up grabbing other things that I don't really need. It seems like just a couple bucks - and hey, there is no shame in grabbing a candy bar or a drink. It feels like a small thing, but it can add up. By decreasing the number of times you have to go into the store, you'll avoid temptation.

Plan out meals - This is difficult to get in the habit of, but it really does help. Plan out each meal for the week and use the menu plan to make your grocery list. If you look at a sales paper from your favorite grocery store before you start, you can try to plan meals around the sale items.

Make a list - Making a list just makes sense. If you want to avoid trips to the store, making sure that you have everything you need to make the items on your menu will help. Also, it prevents you from buying things you may not need but want to buy "just in case".

Buy a freezer - Having a separate small freezer is great for stocking up on meats and veggies when they are on sale. You don't have to get a huge one, even having a small freezer can make a big difference.

Be nice to your cashier - Especially if you are planning to use a lot of coupons, be kind to the cashier. Have your coupons and discounts organized and be pleasant.

The key to stretching your food budget is to plan ahead. When you look back at the way that people shopped 50 years ago, you'll see that these days, a good portion of our budget is spent on convenience. Think of the hour or two you'll spend as a job; if you can save $30 by spending an hour of your time, it's worth it.

Do you use coupons? Why or why not? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for HealthcareJobsiteBlog and Beyond.com.. Along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.

Related articles

• Put Your Job Search In High Gear (healthcarejobsiteblog.com)
• Rethinking the Workplace and Taking Responsibility for Your Career (phillyjobsblog.com)
• 5 Ways to Keep Your Relationship Strong When Money Gets Tight (healthcarejobsiteblog.com)

How to avoid wasting food: Is this still edible?

Mold. At the first sign of it I tend to throw food out… unless I convince myself that I feel bad for letting it mold (beause it was either expensive or delicious), in which case I put it back in the fridge and hope that magic food fairies will come and fix it so that I can eat it and get my money’s worth.

On fridge clean out day, I always cringe at the sight of the half-full garbage bag filled with spoiled and unwanted food. Am I wasting food items that don’t necessarily need to be wasted?

This article on Boing Boing caught my eye: When is it OK to eat moldy food?

The USDA (that’s the United States Department of Agriculture, not the United Square Dancers of America, of course) recently did a study on moldy foods and released the Safe Food Handling fact sheet.

Surprise, surprise — in the end they do recommend throwing out most moldy foods. But the advice within the chart for how to salvage other foods is great!

Generally I live by the “if it smells bad or feels slimey, I won’t eat it” rule but after reading the chart I’ll never eat a moldy dollop of sour cream again. (Bleh!)

Be sure to check it out for yourself, you scrape-it-off-the-top types.


By: Bambi Blue

Bambi Blue is a freelance writer, editor, and codemonkey living in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She moonlights as a jazz musician, a social butterfly, and most apparently a weisenheimer. Loves to cook, hates to clean, and can easily be found on Twitter.

Why Go Organic?

So why eat organic foods anyway? Why are they better than your average grocery store fare? Well, for one, organic foods are foods that aren’t covered in chemicals such as insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers. I, for example, am violently allergic to a lot of chemical preservatives and a lot of these spray chemicals trigger the same reaction: sore stomach, headache, nausea, blurred vision… I could go on. And it can be a bad scene for those who aren’t even allergic to any chemicals, too!


Plenty of EPA-approved pesticides were approved a long time ago –before research linked these chemicals to cancer and other debilitating diseases. Currently the EPA considers 60% of all herbicides, a whopping 90% of all fungicides and 30% of all insecticides to be potentially carcinogenic.

Taste is an individual matter, but many gourmet chefs are choosing to use organic foods in the recipes, due to the superior flavour and quality of these products. A growing number of consumers — including yours truly — are also claiming that organic food tastes better.

I mean, doesn’t it make sense to you that foods grown naturally in well-balanced soils and ripened by the big, happy summer sun will be healthier and tastier than products raised on a diet of smelly, wildlife and bug-killing chemicals? Then they’re sprayed with preservatives that allow them to sit for months in storage. What are these chemicals and preservatives doing to your insides? Do you think it’s possible that they’re strong enough to kill pests, make plants grow faster/bigger, and last for weeks on a shelf without having a negative affect on your insides? I don’t know first hand, but I’m sceptical at best.

Try organic food for yourself and see what you think — is it tastier? Does it smell better?

For more information on health careers, visit http://www.healthcarejobsiteblog.com/

Bambi Blue is a freelance writer, editor, and codemonkey living in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She moonlights as a jazz musician, a social butterfly, and most apparently a weisenheimer. Loves to cook, hates to clean, and can easily be found on Twitter.