Every morning, I wake up before my hubby. I spend that time looking at u tube and facebook , ‘READING” anything that doesn’t take sound to understand. I see a lot of recipes and grocery hauls.
After I discovered that my readership is not just people from the PNW, I started watching grocery hauls from other parts of the country. I have discovered that not including Alaska and Hawaii, the PNW has some of the highest prices, even on some things that come from the PNW. Go figure. I also see a lot of mistakes of people that are trying to cut their food bill. I don’t comment because that would be rude and everyone has their own values and circumstances.
I can, however learn from their choices , what can be done to cut a food bill that needs to wants to be cut. Everyone has their own priorities. Ours is to eat well, have fresh fruits and vegetables in the house and stock enough food so that if hard times hit, be it sickness, a government shut down, or snow Apocalypse, we at least can eat for a few days.
I have mastered that....now my goal is to pay off bills and purge 40 years of ‘stuff” accumulation in the storage room. It would be a good room if granddaughter could play in the winter.
The basics of groceries on the cheap is to never pay full price for anything. Some things, just never go on sale, some things basically only go on sale seasonally. Some staples go on sale in cycles. If you find that cycle, you can clean up. Some things are almost. always cheaper at certain stores. Learning what is cheapest where and how to maximize your shopping trips, is a key.
We have two places within reasonable distance from our home that have grocery outlets (discount grocery overstocks) and dollar trees side by side. We try to hit those places about every month to six weeks. Dollar Tree is usually pretty stable. You can bet that they will have pinto beans, pizza sauce, tortillas, and orowheat bread. The grocery outlet is a lot of here today, gone tomorrow. You can most generally find sliced cheese for between two and two dollars and thirty nine cents. Some other prices are more than the RBP I can get other places. I most generally stick to name brands I can count on. If there is a good price on something, I might buy one to see if it is a good quality. I’m not gambling on a lot of money. Always check pull dates. Lately, I have found organic Hunts diced tomatoes for 50 cents at both Grocery Outlet and Dollar Tree. I suspect they were an overstock . The quality is fine. Hunts peels their tomatoes with steam, not chemicals, and organic diced tomatoes were 2.29 at safeways and .70 at costco. That is a prime example of why its not what you buy, or the quality you buy, its how much you pay for what you buy. I did get tomatoes, not organic from safeways on a case lot sale for .39 net using a basket coupon.
All of this is manageable because we have simplified our grocery carts. By buying basics and efficiently scratch cooking, we have less prices to carry around in our heads. Some people carry a small spiral notebook (3/1.00 at DT) to use instead. Picking rotation meats that are versatile, and one type of canned tomato that can do double duty helps.
Years ago, we found ourselves, both out of work. Scary time. My husband started going with me
to get out of the house. We we’re building the house and living in the basement. He passed an end cap with 8 ounce cans of tomato sauce marked a quarter. He said “ that’s no bargain , you paid a dime last week.” I about fell over. I wasn’t aware he was paying attention .
It doesn’t make sense to buy one of an item at FULL price one week, and one for a drastically lower price the next. I’m not saying buy out the store and it is rude to clear the shelf at the store. Don’t hog. I usually stick to six of something unless the store is stipulating case lots. This isn’t about hoarding. Its about stocking enough to get you to the next sale so you don't have to pay full price—that nasty F word. LOL.
Some people stock and then when they have an abundance , they go on a maintenance “no spend month” and creatively eat down the stock. This is especially good if you know you have a high expense month coming. You could save your money, buy buying food at half price is better return on your money than you can get at any bank. We all have to eat.
