My husband and I have a wonderful, happy marriage. We are so grateful to be able to live as blessed as we do, but we do have to operate on a small budget. I’ve learned a lot over the last year and a half of our marriage about cooking on a budget, and today I’d like to share some of the things I’ve learned with you!
Here are my top tips:
- Meal/grocery planning is key.
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I have an entire day set aside for meal planning and grocery list making. It’s a job that is big enough to take an entire day, and it can often be pretty difficult to balance trying new meals and rotating old ones, all while remaining within your budget. Especially with prices fluctuating often.
But, in my opinion, this truly is key to staying within your grocery budget. I meal and grocery plan each week by coming up with meal ideas and then inputting my grocery list onto the app provided by the grocery store that I shop at. Most mainstream grocery stores that I’ve seen either have a function on their website to browse their products and make a grocery list, or they have an app dedicated to this. Walmart has a well laid out app for grocery shopping, Aldi has a grocery list function on their website, Piggly Wiggly has a decent app, and so does Hy-Vee, to name a few.
Using an app allows me to efficiently browse through a store’s products and create a list with the prices of products all laid out for me. I find this much easier and more efficient than going to the grocery store without a plan, browsing an entire store of products, and adding up prices as you go, hoping that everything will be within your budget limit.
Usually, I will come up with the meal ideas that I want to make that week, put all of the items that I would need into my grocery list, and then see what the total adds up to. If it goes over my limit, then I reevaluate the meals that I planned and maybe switch out one or two with a cheaper meal option. Then I save the meal ideas that I switched out and use them another week.
Planning on an app, especially one that is up to date with a store’s prices, is great because I can plan each week’s groceries to exactly fit my budget. However, I recommend always leaving about ten dollars of wiggle room, because the app may not be completely up to date on prices or one of the items you planned to buy may be out of stock and you’ll have to buy a different one that’s more expensive.
Going to the store with a plan already in place, knowing exactly what you are going to buy, is a great way to feel in control of your budget, to keep you more accountable to your budget, and to reduce stress while shopping.
- Implement Themed Food Weeks
Having a theme to your meal list is a great way to cut down on food costs because doing so allows you to spread ingredients out through the whole week.
For example, if I’m doing a “Breakfast For Dinner” week, all of my meals will most likely use eggs, cheese, sausage, and bacon bits. This allows me to buy those ingredients in bulk (which is often cheaper than smaller packaging) and spread them out throughout the week.
Some examples of themed weeks that we’ve done in the past are: taco week, breakfast week, pasta week, rice week, soup week, potato week, and shrimp week. The potato week and shrimp week were really nice because I planned them around some big bags of potatoes and shrimp that were on sale those weeks- which leads me to my next point…
- Use Sales And Coupons
Unfortunately, this is something that I’ve only started doing recently and I wish I would have paid more attention to sales and coupons earlier. Sometimes, if there are good sales going on, I will plan an entire week around what is on sale, and it can save so much money.
Pay attention to the sales flier that stores often put out every week or every month. Search around and go to their websites to find their daily deals. Read the grocery section of your newspaper. You may have to go to several stores to get all of the best deals, although you’ll want to weigh the cost of gas against how much a deal or sale will save you.
Using sales and coupons can really be a lifesaver, and it’s super satisfying to go through the checkout and watch your total go down, down, down.
- Freeze For Later
If you have the freezer space, this is a great way to save money and to save food for later that would otherwise go bad. Unfortunately for us, we have limited freezer space and it tends to fill up fast, but I’m hoping to get an extra freezer in the near future.
It’s so nice to be able to freeze half of a bag of hotdog buns that I know I’m not going to use that week, and then pull it out at a later date and not have to buy buns! Or perhaps one week I bought a bunch of bananas for breakfasts, but we won’t be able to eat all of them before they go bad. Just cut them up, pop them in the freezer, and now I have frozen bananas for smoothies later!
It’s a great way to buy fruits and veggies that go bad fast and store them for longer periods of time.
- Shop From Your Own Store!
Every so often, I try to plan a week of meals solely around ingredients that I already have in my pantry, fridge, and freezer. I have some buns and ground beef in the freezer? Lets have burgers this week. I have half of a box of noodles, some milk, and some cheese? I’ll mess around with them and create some sort of pasta meal. Oh, I also have an onion and some pesto? I’ll throw those in there too.
Dig deep and try to get creative. You can make a meal out of just about anything. It doesn’t have to be pretty, it doesn’t have to be particularly special, it just has to fill your belly. Don’t feel bad if you feed your family a can of spaghettios and a box of stuffing for a meal; they will be fine, they will be fed, and you will have been resourceful with your budget.
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There you have it, my tips for cooking on a budget. Hopefully this was helpful to anyone else who may be in a similar boat. If you have any tips you’d like to add, tell me about it in the comments!
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