Ok, so my partner and I spend a lot of food and we are not even remotely frugal with groceries. Some of the stuff you guys do blows my mind, I don't know how you live on so little for groceries, but I want to be better! What are your best tips to get started so I can ease us into being frugal? Any great websites besides Budget Bites for learning how to be cost effective with meal planning and groceries? I'm honestly not even sure where to begin…
EDIT to add: We have no Aldi or Grocery Outlets in my state, just as an FYI!
Best tips for TOTAL beginner when it comes to frugal groceries?
byu/c0zycat inFrugal
Posted by c0zycat
31 Comments
Rice bowls are the way to go. Put whatever you want in it, rice is cheap and stretches out meals
Learn to cook things that make more than 1 serving: you clean dishes once, make the food once, but you get to eat multiple times
Examples: soups, casseroles/baked dishes, enchiladas, burritos (wrapped and frozen individually), etc
If you haven’t cooked much and normally follow directions on a box (no shame) you can sometimes quickly build some pantry cooking skills by subscribing to a good intro deal on a home food delivery service like Green Chef (whatever is cheapest) as they help you understand how to add oils, flavors, etc. at the right time vs. boxed foods
Rice, eggs, potatoes, beans/legumes, vegetables… these things are key
A little garnish & salsa can take a bowl of white rice & pinto beans to the next level and it’s like a buck a serving when you make a bunch… think Chipotle but without 20 toppings, it can be very affordable and delicious
I suggest picking one change out of all these suggestions you’ll get. Going too big too fast can make you feel overwhelmed and deprived.
You’re an adult but don’t know how to manage a budget?
To start, prepare an inventory of all the food you already have in your cupboards, fridge & freezer — concentrate on which proteins you have because dinner is always the most expensive meal. Once you see it all written down you can then start to mix & match and use things up before buying new.
When veggies start to wilt a bit, don’t chuck ’em, turn them into soup. I keep a bag of veg in the freezer for this and when I have enough, it all goes into the pot. Boil it down with some water, S&P, whatever spices you like, then blend it. Ditto for fruits — a bag of those, chopped up in the freezer, can easily be added to muffins, cakes, or blended into smoothies.
Buy items that have a long shelf life in bulk and/or when they’re on sale, e.g., flour, pastas, rice, canned goods. Don’t be fooled by best before dates, either; the product is often still fine to eat.
homemade chicken and rice bowls using rotisserie chicken and black beans, and cumin/chilli powder
boil the bones to make chicken stock for a quick chicken soup with carrot, celery, onion, dried rosemary and thyme (if you own an instant pot you can throw the bones in there with a few cups of water for 1.5h, it’s amazing)
eating more plant based
buying in function of the seasons and prices instead of wants
dry legumes are cheap and healthy
rice/ pasta/oats (not flavoured do it yourself it’s not that hard)/cornmeal
frozen veggies, cabbage, carrots , potatoes and onions are usually cheap
then you have the seasonal stuff
canned corn , beets, diced tomatoes are cheap
applesauce (great egg substitute for baking + cheap fruit intake)
apples, bananas and oranges are usually cheap
frozen berries are cheaper
chicken is cheaper and healthier than red meat
Trend away from the center of all grocery stores. The good stuff is near the walls: veg, fruit, meat, dairy, eggs.
If you get fast food often I always like to suggest to buy the frozen food option as a replacement.
Chick fil a – get buns and fully cooked frozen chicken breast patties, Aldi red bag are great. And waffle fries
Chipotle- buy fully cooked pulled rotisserie chicken and open cans of beans, corn, salsa, sour cream and you got ready to go bowls much cheaper
I think taking an inventory of what you spend in groceries, eating out, work lunches, etc. Then you can decide what changes are feasible. I think the easiest thing to start with would be deciding if there’s a lower cost store in your area. You can also make a list of items you’re okay with purchasing the generic or cheaper brand for. Then see how those two changes impact you for a few months.
After that set small goal like “Eat out one less time a week” or “take lunch 3 days a week to work”. You don’t want to feel deprived or you won’t stick to it. Small changes can make measurable savings.
I recently bought an entire month’s worth of groceries for around $100. I try pretty hard not to purchase from Walmart, but sometimes it’s necessary to keep the bill as low possible.
My best advice is to very meticulously plan each meal and prep in advance so nothing goes to waste. Of course, this is difficult if you don’t have a day to set aside to do something like this. If you really want to be frugal, try eliminating or cutting down on meat products. It is cheaper and healthier to buy beans and legumes than it is to eat meat every day. It’s also important to focus on buying ingredients that can be used for multiple recipes, and to choose recipes that are simple and not super difficult to prepare.
Here is what I bought:
1 bag pinto beans
1 bag lentils
1 bag chickpeas
1 can refried beans
2 packages tofu
1 3 lb bag potatoes
2 large sweet potatoes
1 bag of avocados
1 bag yellow onions
Sleeve of garlic
1 bag baby spinach
2 pineapples
1 5 lb bag rice
1 3 lb container oats
1 5lb bag of pancake mix
1 bottle maple syrup
1 small bag frozen blueberries
1 gallon almond milk
1 container chicken bouillon
1 bag shredded cheese
1 container cottage cheese
Burrito tortillas
Medium tortillas
1 Large can enchilada sauce
1 can corn
I spent an entire day preparing a few different meals, including 8 servings enchiladas (corn, enchilada sauce, refried beans, cheese), overnight oats (oats, blueberries, almond milk), 8 burritos (tofu, potatoes, spinach), 8 servings sweet potato lentil stew (onion, sweet potatoes, spinach, chicken bouillon, lentils). I plan to use the rest of the spinach to make savory oats, and I will use the avocados with the dry pinto beans and chickpeas with rice. Also plan to make blueberry pancakes. Cottage cheese and pineapple for lunches.
It also helps to stick to mostly generic store brands. Avoid name brands if you can. Sometimes you can’t, though. Basically, just keep it simple, avoid meat, stick with generic, plan your recipes. Avoid food waste by preparing ahead of time and freezing. Eat at home before eating out at a restaurant. Good luck, I hope this helps!
Meal plan for the week, make your grocery list and only buy what is on it. And use your freezer! Eating out, food waste and impulse purchases can be so financially damaging.. good luck! It gets easier the more you do it
Plan around sales ads! I do this with Aldi, Kroger, and Costco. Aldi and Costco are mostly monthly stops for us vs weekly but it saves us so much to buy things we already would need when they’re on sale. Costco especially is very cyclical so it gets easy to time out when we need supplements or a certain grocery item. All done on their websites!
I hate doing this but with Walmart I will sometimes scroll through their in-store food rollbacks. They did away with ads so it’s the best I can do with them but I do occasionally have a good find.
I suggest cultivating your chef skills. When you know how to cook you go to the store and judging what’s available you’ll be able to create a menu right on the fly for fresh ingredients and will be better at purchasing non-perishables. You also won’t be wasting any food.
I recommend Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat. Unlike diets and recipe books, this book will teach you how to work with ingredients.
More basic the ingredient, more economic it is and better it will taste (and long term you’ll save on medical bills since you’ll be avoiding preservatives and additives eating healthier whole foods).
Hi! Since you’re a beginner, start small. Consider trying the generic version of something low stakes. For example, try generic frozen veggies or generic rice or pasta. See how that goes and expand from there.
Aldi and Walmart. Go to Aldi with the Walmart app open. If it’s cheaper at Aldi buy it. If it’s cheaper at Walmart buy it here. Make a list and don’t go to the store hungry.
look at what you have in your pantry. organize what’s there by category.
then:
look up grocery store circulars– where you shop may be making food more expensive than it needs to be (ex down south, harris teeter made our grocery bill twice what we pay now elsewhere, four or so years after regularly shopping there). See what’s on sale.
Look at your pantry, look at the circulars, and Google recipes that include what you have and what’s on sale. recipes don’t need to be super involved/complicated/have a million ingredients to be good. expand your palate and spice collection.
we benefit significantly by being mostly an ingredient household. most snacks and sweets that we eat are homemade. this may not be for you, but we have the time to do this and really enjoy it.
Get a deep freezer.
Keep it simple. Not every meal needs to be exciting or new.
Find 2-3 breakfasts and 3-4 lunches that you both like and stick to those. Fewer ingredients to buy and less potential waste.
I have a small number of meals that I make regularly. My Master Grocery List is for stocking the ingredients for those meals. Then I shop to restock my pantry.
I rarely cook a completely new style of cuisine, because I would need too many new ingredients and I don’t want to waste them.
Pay attention to what you like and what you don’t like. By which I mean, keep track of what kinds of food winds up sitting in the fridge until you have to discard it. These observations can give you valuable information not only about what you should be purchasing but how you should be going about cooking.
1. Shop at Sam’s Club or Costco. Member’s Mark and Kirkland Signature are equal to the name brands.
2. Shop at Aldi or Save A Lot. Their store brands are equal to the name brands.
3. Shop at Dollar General or Family Dollar or Dollar Tree. Their store brands are equal to the name brands.
Most grocery chains have 50% or more markdowns of imminently expiring produce/meat/bakery items — nothing wrong with it, just make sure you cook/eat within 1-2 days! You can also track the data (e.g. my local Whole Foods tends to do more of these markdowns on Mon-Wed). For people (like me) who have decision-making paralysis, this also reduces burden of deciding a great deal haha.
Cook enouh for leftovers. A big pan of potatoes can be transformed into something else for tomorrow. Eat light at restaurants and carry enough out for dinner or next day.
Over time we have large freezers and buy in bulk. In-season vegetables/fruits get frozen. Buy those large ice cubes and blend in herbs and freeze them. We buy a lot from Azure. Meat comes from local farms by the half or full cow. Lots of pecans around her and so we crack gallons of them and they go in the freezer.
Best thing I do is rotisserie chicken. I eat for a week on a $7.99 chicken. Add some rice and veggies.
Cook at home, eat seasonally, eat less meat, plan your shop (which means planning meals), reduce food waste dramatically, avoid single serving sizes and convenience foods (like salad kits, washed/cut veggies, prepared foods).
It all starts with a weekly or fortnightly routine that involves meal planning and managing your inventory.
Sales and weekly ads are gonna be your best friends. Also coupons if you can find them.
Now, don’t go buying extras JUST because they’re on sale. Maybe swap them for something else you were going to buy that’s similar. Don’t buy name brands if at all possible. Store/generic brands frequently taste almost exactly the same and are way cheaper, sometimes may even have more in the package (Best choice cake mixes have like 3 oz more than Duncan Hines while being half the price, for example). Plan your meals around your grocery shopping and plan your grocery shopping around your meals (so basically do them at the same time). And make sure to shop your kitchen/pantry first!
If you can find a store that has clearance racks, those are elite. And ethnic markets often have better prices on dried staples like beans, rice, and spices. Plus you get to support a local and often immigrant-owned small business.
Shop the outside of store, bulk dry goods, canned single ingredients. Nothing premade
So I would actually start by sitting down with my grocery receipts and thinking about where the high food costs are coming from. The three biggest causes of food overspending are
1) eating out (no food in the house, didn’t plan realistically for time and energy available)
2) highly processed and packaged food—much more expensive for what you get than ingredients
3) food waste—not eating leftovers, miscalculating perishables
Are any of those things going on with you? That will tell you where to start and help us give advice. If you’re OK on those, then we can talk about strategies like legume-based meals and scratch baking
I’d start with boxed meals like hamburger helper or au gratin potatoes.
Follow the instructions. Add a normal size bag of frozen veggies to every box about 10 minutes before you turn off the stove. This will help keep the meal more balanced and simple. If you feel adventurous, swap out the meat, chopped chicken instead of hamburger…
I think a good place to start is by getting into the habit of comparing unit prices while shopping. Sometimes the unit prices won’t be on the same units (one might be listed as price per gallon, another as price per pound) so get used to noticing these things.
Make a plan of meals you’re making for the week, write down a list of the ingredients that you need, and *stick to that list when shopping*. I think it is easy for beginners (I know I struggled with it back in the day) to go to the store without a plan and start buying things that they think they need to make something. End up with a whole lot of extra items that may or may not get cooked, or impulse buy some items that are totally unnecessary. I always buy according to a meal plan, and during early COVID, my ex and I were planning our meals for two weeks at a time to reduce the number of trips to the grocery store. It’s doable, just takes some prep work before going to the store.