First of all, I do NOT profess to be an expert at this! I'm just posting what has been working for me the past few months. And each month I make adjustments and get a little better. The topic is menu planning and grocery shopping. The goal is to be organized and to save money!
Confession: I used to go to the grocery store and say, "Well, we use chicken breasts, ground sirloin, lunchmeat, milk, and bread every week. I'll get those. Do we have lasagna noodles? I better get some. Oh, what goes in lasagna? Does that have carrots? I know I put carrots in something. I better get some carrots. Oh...that's all the way on the other side of the store in produce. Crud. Oh...avocados! I love avocados! I'll just get a couple since they're so expensive. I'm sure I will use them for something. Oooo. Fresh peaches..."
You get the idea. If I did have a clue about what I wanted to make for the week, I'd forget half of the ingredients and have to go back or make something else. And then I'd get home and think, "Now WHY did I get avocados? What was I making?" And I seriously had 4 boxes of lasagna noodles in my pantry. Every night I'd struggle and we'd have whatever I could make with the hodgepodge mess of groceries I brought home. I would drag the kids to Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market a couple of times a week and spend around $600 a month! I never went anywhere else because I thought Kroger, for example, was way more expensive. Which, if you shop like I used to, it is. BUT, I have seen the light!
Step 1: Menu Planning
The first thing I did was figure out what meals we eat all the time. Tacos, jambalaya, hamburgers, grilled chicken, BLTs, etc. These meals vary with the season. So I got some 4X6 index cards and wrote the meal on each one. This includes the recipe and every side item or add-in options. Some of these are incredibly simple. I have one card that says, "Hamburgers." I know I don't need a recipe for hamburgers, but I do need a reminder of everything that goes into the "hamburger" meal. I even put a "Thaw Meat!" reminder on there, because that has gotten me into trouble several nights. (My goal is to someday have different colored cards for dinner, desserts, side dishes, etc.) When it comes time to make the meal I don't have to go searching through my cookbooks and figure out where I got the recipe. I have all these little cards in a container, and when it is time to do menu planning I spread the cards out on the table and figure out our dinners for the next two weeks. (There will be repeats, and sometimes leftovers, but these people I live with are not big into leftovers, so I try not to do that often for dinner, and instead eat the leftovers for my lunch the next day.) Then I sit down and write out my grocery list, which I have separated according to which grocery store I am going. But it is most often: Produce, Dairy, Meat, Frozen, Shelf, and non-food items. Sometimes I have a "papers" section for toilet paper, paper towels, plates, etc. I go through these cards and look to see what I already have in the pantry and refrigerator. Then I make out my list of EVERY ingredient I need for every meal for the next 2 weeks. I know I'll have to return for some of the fresh produce and for milk and bread, but that should be it! Basically, I go through the cards after the first week and see what's missing.
Doing this planning ahead was a huge help! I just pull the cards that I will be using for the next 2 weeks and then go through them each morning to decide what we will be having that night. And I make a final check to make sure that I'm not missing an ingredient. I try to plan the meals with the perishable produce first. Oh, by the way, one card says "Frozen Pizza." It is used every cycle!! Also, I just started making cards that list our favorite lunches and snacks. I have one that says "lunch" and one for "snacks."
Step 2: Finding deals and coupons
I saved $100 the first month from planning. I was still going to Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market. Then I kept reading these posts from some of my friends back home about getting $200 worth of groceries for $65, etc., and asked what the heck they were doing, and was it legal?? They referred me to the new world of printable and electronic coupons. These are the links to some very valuable sites that guide you through this world: moneysavingmom.com, southernsavers.com, mrspennypincher.blogspot.com. Moneysavingmom is more of a "deals" site where you can get freebies and discounts. The other two are more for grocery shopping and teaching you how to do it. I'm BARELY going to touch on it, becuase I'm still learning myself, and there's no way I could do any better. Southernsavers is Nashville area, but a lot of the deals are applicable here also. She has really good tutorials on her site. The Mrs. Pennypincher one is a lady here in Louisville, so her deals are local. You will learn how to check all the store websites for their sales ads, and basically only buy what is on sale. You will plan your meals around what meat is on sale, unless you already have some in the freezer. You will begin to stockpile items like cereal and canned foods when they are on sale. I got several boxes of cereal for free the last time I went to Kroger! I had $20 worth of printed paper coupons and several loaded on my Kroger card. You can learn to load your store cards with coupons from these same sites. Basically, it just automatically comes off when you purchase the item. So, let's say you have a paper "manufacturer's" coupon for a brownies mix. Kroger will double these coupons up to .50. You can "stack" another type of coupon on top of that. There's a Betty Crocker brownie mix that costs $1.99 on sale. You have a coupon loaded on your card for .50 off the Betty Crocker brownie mix. You also have a paper coupon for the same mix. When you get your receipt, you will see that you ended up paying only .49 for it!
This takes a LOT of planning. I spent a couple hours the other night making out my grocery list according to my cards AND the store specials AND my list of coupons. However, I'm told you get faster, and those web sites basically talk you through how to do it every week and give you a grocery list. A word of caution though: Don't buy items--especially if they're not on sale--just because you have coupons for them. You'll end up spending way too much. We have to remember the point of coupons is to get you to buy things you normally would not because they are more expensive, unhealthy, or you can live without them. I don't need Viva papertowels when I can buy the off brand for $1 less, even with the coupon. Don't let them outsmart you!! The really good deals are the ones where you either have stacked coupons and/or the item was already on sale to begin with. And again, these deals are listed by the wonderful ladies on those sites.
I hope some of this makes sense! It's very confusing at first, and I haven't even started the whole Walgreens, CVS bucks programs. But it is all worth it! I spent around $200 less on groceries last month, or about $300 total! I'm sure that I'll keep tweaking my plan every month, but I wanted to share where I started. Now GO!
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