These 7 tips will help you learn how to save money on groceries, all without sacrificing quality!
1. Cook food at home
Cooking at home is the most important thing you can do to reduce your food costs, but for many, there’s simply not enough time or motivation to be had. Restaurants are so much easier!
Luckily, we have an entire article on how to save time and energy when cooking at home, whether that means meal prepping, going minimalist, or adding your own spin on instant meals:
2. Reduce waste
The average American throws away a whopping 32% of the food that they buy. Whether it’s due to “aspirational purchases”, forgetting what’s in the back of the fridge, or just never wanting to eat leftovers, this amount of waste seems practically criminal to me! The solution? Only buy/cook what you eat. Don’t buy/make stuff just because “it looks good” or “it looks healthy” or “it’s on sale”. You should only buy it if you will actually eat it! If you regularly let the same type of thing go bad, either stop buying/making it, or change the way you eat.
Personally, I like to shop multiple times per week, buying only the ingredients for 1-3 meals at a time. This makes it easier to prevent food waste, since you don’t have to store food for very long, and it’s harder to waste ingredients due to meal planning mishaps. Though granted, this option only works well for me since I live a 5-minute walk away from the grocery store (on purpose, since I’ve gone car-free).
Another option is to lean more on frozen, canned, and dried goods! If you keep buying green beans and letting them go bad before you can cook them, simply buy frozen ones instead. Some people worry that preserved stuff isn’t as healthy as fresh, but the reality is that eating vegetables in almost any form is going to be good for you, and the stuff you throw away isn’t going to give you any nutrients!
3. Buy in bulk
If you have some savings, then you can use it to create even more savings! For stuff that keeps well and that you know you will use, simply buy lots of it at once. Usually, a larger pack will be cheaper per-unit. For example, you could buy a 5lb bag of rice for $5… or you could nab a 10lb bag of rice for $7. The bigger bag is almost always a better deal. Many grocery stores even calculate the unit price (e.g. price per oz) for you and print it in the corner of the price tag. But pay attention, because sometimes—especially during sales—the smaller sizes can be cheaper for no obvious reason!
And of course, definitely stock up during sales! Good candidates for bulk purchases include dry goods like rice, beans, medications, toilet paper, etc., but also frozen goods if you have the freezer space. I like to pass by the dry goods sections in the store every time I go just to check out the sales, even I don’t need any of it urgently.
In some cases, you may even be able to visit restaurant supply stores to really buy stuff in bulk!
Keeping extra dry goods around is also a great way to be prepared in the event of a natural disaster or supply chain disruption. Nobody wants to be the one waiting in line for 6 hours just for toilet paper!
4. Buy generic
The generic brand is often made in the same factory as the name brand—you’re just paying extra for the packaging. This is often the case for everything from ibuprofen to breakfast cereal. Obviously, the name brand really is better sometimes, but always try out the generic brand first and only go back to the name brand if you really can tell the difference. Consider a blind taste test. 🙂
5. Compare prices between stores
Shop around! If you have multiple stores in your area, keep track of which ones have better prices on the things you spend the most on. Stock up on your staples for each store when you happen to be visiting that one!
For example, I always buy my canned beans at Trader Joe’s, but I stock up on toilet paper at Costco.
You’ll especially want to do this with expensive purchases, such as over-the-counter medications or other medical supplies. In my experience, it’s almost always cheaper to buy them online (e.g. Amazon) or at Costco. For example, a 30-day supply of Zyrtec is $23 at my local Safeway, but only $18 on Amazon. And if you really want to save, you can even get a full 365-day supply of the Kirkland generic brand for just $20. That’s 93% off compared to Safeway!
And don’t count out more expensive stores like Whole Foods or co-ops. They often have the best prices for more niche items, such as “health food” or meat-free/dairy-free/gluten-free versions of common items.
Another good tip is to visit Asian, Mexican, or other ethnic grocers. Specifically, small independent ones! They often have amazing prices on staples like rice and produce.
6. Be choosy about organics
There is some evidence that organic produce is covered with fewer pesticides, so going organic can be a reasonable precaution if you’re concerned about their negative health effects. But what if you want the best bang for your buck while still avoiding most of the chemicals? Some folks recommend the use of lists such as The Dirty Dozen and The Clean Fifteen. If you want to be cautious, you could simply always buy the organic versions of everything on the Dirty Dozen list, and get whatever is cheapest for everything else.
However, others criticize these lists, arguing that while the Dirty Dozen may indeed be dirtier, the total amount of pesticides and other chemicals left on produce is so small that it doesn’t even matter anyway. Especially so if you actually wash your produce before using it, like you should!
So then what to do? My personal recommendation is to buy whatever produce you want and then just wash it. It’s both cheap and effective. Just focus on eating lots of vegetables, and you’ll probably be good. 🙂
But if you’re unconvinced, you can still buy organic if you think it’s worth it. It can also be worth supporting organic farms since the use of fewer pesticides is better for the farm workers, who get exposed to them in much larger quantities than shoppers do. However, while buying products with the “organic” label can be a good rule of thumb to avoid pesticides, note that it is possible for non-organic products to actually be both healthier and better for the environment in some cases, such as with GMOs.
7. Don’t skip GMOs
While organic foods can be the best option in some cases, genetically modified foods unfortunately cannot be labeled as organic, even if they are more healthy and sustainable than the organic alternative—while also being cheaper.
This is a shame, because modern genetic engineering is simply a more efficient and flexible form of the same practice that humans have applied for millennia—namely, artificial selection. Even the humble banana simply doesn’t exist in nature and is entirely the product of human ingenuity. For example, wild bananas used to be round and filled with giant seeds! But over centuries, humans just kept identifying the banana plants with the smallest seeds and breeding those, until eventually, those seeds ended up being gone entirely.
Modern genetic engineering simply allows us to accomplish similar feats more quickly, in order to make plants more tasty, productive, nutritious, drought-resistant, etc. That means that farmers can produce more crops with less land, water, machinery, pesticide, and herbicide. This can not only help the environment, but also your wallet!
So in summary, not only is it fine to skip the organic version, but the GMO version may actually be your best bet. And no, this article was not sponsored by Big Agriculture. 🙂
The Readyist 
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