Protecting your Finances: Food Frugality Tips

Everyone is searching for ways to cut back on their expenses. Making changes to your lifestyle can be very difficult, especially when it disrupts your daily routine. However, by cutting back on specific expenses, you can help free up more of your finances for other purposes. Here are some quick frugality tips of how you can begin protecting your finances by cutting back on your grocery bill.

Food Frugality Tip 1: Dining In
You may not realize how much extra money you spend when you go out to eat, even if you’re only picking up fast food at McDonalds. Many times, you get food with little or no nutritional content, at a highly inflated price. In order to save money, begin organizing all of your meals at home. If you and your significant other often go out for a “date night”, arrange instead to have a fancy dinner at home. Even with the expense of purchasing good food at the grocery store, you will still be spending much less than you would at a restauraunt.

Food Frugality Tip 2: Start a Garden
In order to reduce the amount of money that you spend on produce from the grocery store, consider starting a small vegetable and herb garden. If you have good soil on your property, you can set up a garden with only the expense of the seeds, some gardening tools and a small amount of fertilizer. Choose to grow vegetables that you or members of your family will be willing to eat on a regular basis.

Food Frugality Tip 3: Cut Back on Snacks
When you go grocery shopping, you may be spending as much as $20 extra on snack food. This includes packaged chips, cookies, crackers and other snack foods. These foods have little or no nutritional value, and aren’t a cost-effective way to supplement your meals. It’s also good for your health to cut back on foods that are highly processed, or contain a high amount of sugar and fat.

Food Frugality Tip 4: Reduce Your Shopping Trips
Most people go grocery shopping at least once or twice per week. However, each time you go to the grocery store, you are already spending extra money on gas (as well as wear on your car). In addition to this, if you make small shopping trips, you are more likely to pick up food or other items that you don’t necessarily need. Instead, reduce your grocery shopping to one comprehensive trip per month. For perishable items such as milk, you can sometimes purchase an extra gallon to freeze before you need to use it. However, be sure to empty the milk jug so that it is two-thirds full, since the volume of milk will expand as it freezes.

Food Frugality Tip 5: Clip Coupons
Every sunday, your newspaper comes with those pesky glossy advertisements for tempting items for you to buy. However, if you look hard, you can usually find at least a few coupons for items that you already purchase on a regular basis. Though the extra $1.00 that you save may not seem to be worth it, it can really add up over time.

Food Frugality Tip 6: Buy Generic
Many of the name-brand grocery items that you purchase are produced by the same companies as some of the generic brands. In some cases, you really are paying extra for a better-looking package. When buying generic, it’s best to use your better judgement. For example, if you notice a difference in taste between name-brand and generic peanut butter, you may choose to buy the name brand. However, for other items (such as dish soap), you most likely won’t notice the difference.

Food Frugality Tip 7: Save Your Leftovers
While eating the leftover pizza from your previous night’s dinner may not seem appetizing, resist the urge to throw away all of your extra food after a meal. Purchase high-quality tupperware or glass containers, to make storing leftover food much easier. Be sure to purchase storage containers that are able to be safely microwaved, which can make it much easier to quickly re-heat any food leftovers.