Grocery trips

I did some research on grocery shopping,  The average family grocery shops twice a week.    There are four types of grocery shopping hauls according to the food marketing institute.  

1. The once a week stocker that buys just what they need for the weeks meals.   
2. The shopping trip to prepare for a party. 
3. The fill in trips to get odds and ends that you need to complete your meals. 
4. The quick trip to buy one or two meals.   

The fourth one is the most disturbing to me,   It is a good way to overspend,    You don't have a list and you are looking for what looks good to you for the next two meals.    Sales aren't on your vocabulary and you can bet your bottom line is going to be high.    

The average family of four spends 786.00 a month on food.    We spend 300.00 and I have a stock built and maintained,    I used to shop on Friday, hit two stores. And be done.    After the shake up of the food industry here, I find that Fred Meyers and Winco are the best price leaders of the moment,    Fred Meyers has ads that come out on Sunday.   Winco has no ads.  It has changed the way I shop 

It also has made my grocery bill go down.    

I heard a checker one day say that she  wasn't going to go to two stores to save 25 cents.   Good point.   But, I save about five hundred dollars a month.   What can you do with five hundred dollars a month?    That goes a long ways to pay our lower bills.  

Groceries on the cheap is looking at the Put Dinner On The Table meal train from a different

 prospective. .  The emphasis is on purchasing good food( shelf- stable/ freezer staples )at the lowest possible cost and purchasing enough to last you until it goes on sale again -- Keeping a controlled non-perishable stock of they things you use on a regular basis. It means that when you shop, rather than purchasing just what you need for a day or a week, you  buy a loss leader protein, produce you will need on sale, a stock item if it's a RBP, and dairy instead.    This allows you to put well balanced meals on the table consistently  for a four dollar a day budget per person.   You spend more time on the planning and shopping end of the meal train and less on the cooking end by cooking efficiently.    

Four dollars a day is the target amount for people on snap.   My premise is that of you can do it on four dollars a day, spending more isn't hard.   You still get more bang for your buck.