Tips and Recipes to Reduce Grocery Spending

Whether you're feeding a family of eight or just yourself, you can have healthy, nutritious food without breaking the bank. I feed a family of 3 men and 1 woman with regular additions of a 16 year old boy and a 14 year old girl and routinely spend between $150 and $200 a month. Granted, I live in a part of the country that has a lower cost of living so grocery spending is less than it would be in many parts of the nation but the principles are the same no matter where you are. It takes some thought and planning but I learned how to be frugal with food dollars and so can you.

Know Where Your Grocery Money Goes

The very first thing I suggest to anyone interested in slashing their grocery spending is to keep track of every cent spent for 30 to 60 days. Not just the money spent at the grocery store but all money spent on all things. Most people aren't frugal, even if they think they are. We often buy soft drinks, snacks, and complete meals while at work or shopping or traveling and don't take the amounts spent on such foods into consideration when creating a budget or spending goal or when figuring what's been spent. Knowing exactly where your money goes give you an accurate idea of other areas that need work, too. If you really want to know where your money goes, keep a little notebook handy and record in it every expenditure, where it was spent, on what it was spent, and the date it was spent. An alternative method is to save every receipt and record the information once a day. Some people use spreadsheets to keep track and some use columnar pads, but it doesn't matter how you do it as long as you do it.

Warning:track spending to the cent only if you really want the truth about where your money is going. Most people are shocked at the results of this experiment but once you know what you've spent on all food for that time period, you can get serious about grocery thriftiness.

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