Your desire to ensure your family has enough and good food to eat is reasonable. It’s also admirable to want a better financial future for your family. Can you both feed your family and manage your finances well? Yes, you can! If you believe you are overspending, I will show you how to save money from the grocery budget without feeling deprived.
1. Plan Where the Money You Save on Groceries will Go
The first step is to identify a reason why you wish to minimize costs. Do you want to get out of debt or focus on saving money for a trip?
So now you know that money saved on groceries is going towards a want or necessity, which is a great motivation for you.
2. Put Groceries at the Top of Your Budget List to be Paid First
This means, no matter how tight money is, there will always be enough for groceries. Food always should be a priority. Our goal is to spend money on food wisely, not cut down as much as possible. When you know you can feed your family, you can focus on other aspects of your finance.
3. Define How Much You are Spending and How Much You Should Spend
Define how much you are spending on food by printing out the last three months of your bank statement, then highlight all lines that relate to food. Divide them into 3 categories: groceries, eating out/delivery, and fast food. You also can follow your money spending by some useful apps like Money Lover, EveryDollar, PocketGuard, Simplifi…
Now you have an overview of your spending. Take these factors into consideration to know if it is too little or too much:
- How many people are in your family (ages, males/females…)
- Do anyone in your family need a certain type of food/diet?
- Do you prefer organic food?
- How frequently do you want to eat out/have food delivered?
- Your income and financial goals
Determine how much you should spend for each type: groceries, eating out/delivery, and fast food.
4. Invest in Nutrition Food and Reduce Other Categories
Spend more money on groceries and ingredients so that you can cook most of the meals from scratch by yourself. Feed your family nutritious foods that will help them grow and remain healthy.
Determine whether other budget items are not as necessary as healthy food for your family and reduce those quantities. You may now save your first chunk of money from your grocery budget.
5. Make Menu Planning
If you have a suitable menu plan, you can avoid overspending when going shopping. Menu planning allows you to buy just enough groceries and make use of the same ingredients for different dishes, eliminating the possibility of food waste.
6. Pay with Cash
Paying with cash is a simple but powerful tip to help you spend less. Paying with cash pushes you to be more cautious with your spending because it affects your emotions.
When you get paid, take the amount you budgeted for groceries, eating out, and snacks and place it in separate envelopes. Now, whenever you go shopping for groceries, use the money from the envelope. The same goes for eating out and snacking.
