20 Ways to Spend Less and Eat Better
How to trim the fat from your food budget

By Chrystle Fiedler

We all want to reduce our weekly food bill and still feed our families well. An impossible dream? Not at all. “While you may not be able to cut back immediately on house or car payments or other expenses, you can begin to economize on good food today,” says Rhonda Barfield, author of Feed Your Family for $12 a Day. Saving even $10 or $20 a week adds up. Use these tips and tricks to reduce the hassle of cooking and shopping, starting now!

SHOP SMARTER

1. Shop on Mondays or Tuesdays. “They are usually the least busy days of the week,” says Martha Bullen, coauthor of Never Throw Out a Banana Again. “You’ll have more time to compare costs, take advantage of special deals and zip through the checkout.”

2. Ask department heads for good deals. As you shop, ask the managers at the meat and deli counters about particularly good deals. “I talked to a meat manager and found out the store marks down day-old ground beef every morning at 8:30 a.m. ,” says Barfield. “Now I stop there once a week to buy ground chuck at $1.19 a pound.”

3. Buy produce from the farmers’ market at the best time. “Purchase your fruits and vegetables during the last selling hour of the last selling day,” says Barfield. “If a market runs on Fridays and Saturdays, for example, you’ll get the best bargains by shopping Saturday at 4:45 . The reason? Sellers don’t want to drag all their excess produce back home again.”

4. Pick and choose sale prices. Shop around for the best buys or simply check sale flyers. In a small notebook, designate a page per product. List brand, ounces and price per unit in each store. Compare prices for several weeks and select your target price. When you find an item at your target price, buy four to six weeks’ worth of the product because that’s about how long it will be before that price is repeated. “The savings are well worth it. We saved sixty dollars a week,” says Jonni McCoy, author of Miserly Moms.

5. Decide how much you want to spend. “If I allow myself a hundred and ten dollars, I spend that much just as easily as eighty-five,” says Barfield. “Restricting my outlay helps me to think creatively about possibilities. I have to carefully examine priorities. Do I really need to buy juice boxes for the children, or is there a cheaper, healthier substitute? It’s kind of a game to try to get more for my money at the supermarket each week.”

6. Fill your cart with the basics first. “My shopping list starts with essentials, such as flour, potatoes, bananas, apples, lettuce, then I add other food I would also like to buy,” Barfield explains. “I estimate the total cost for everything on my list. If I’m under eighty-five dollars, I can add more. If I’m over, I have to delete a few items and rethink my meal plans.” A shopping list helps you estimate how much the basics will cost; you can add extras as your budget allows.

COOK SMARTER

7. Divide the labor. Form a cooking co-op with friends and neighbors. “Each family cooks a recipe for every co-op member, then once a month you get together and distribute the meals. For example, if there are five families, you would cook five pans of your recipe,” says McCoy. “The result is that each family goes home with several different meals ready for the freezer. You also save more by cooking in bulk and you get variety, too.”

8. Plan your menu around sales. You can save as much as 30 percent each week. “The supermarket is hoping that you’ll buy one or two items on the sale flyer, then spend a ton on the rest of your list,” explains McCoy. In fact, stores often raise prices to make up for loss leaders. “If you go in, buy only the sale-flyer items and move on to a cheaper store, you’ll make out like a bandit.”

9. Use the 15-minute cooking method. “The easiest way to save money on groceries is to cook from scratch and avoid expensive convenience foods,” says Barfield, also the author of 15-Minute Cooking. “Having a prep plan for each evening meal and implementing it in two short sessions a day can save a significant amount of money.” Start with a few favorite family recipes and jot down simple meal plans for a week. Each day, spend 15 minutes in the morning (or the night before) and get started on dinner prep. For example, place a roast in the slow-cooker and cut up lettuce for a romaine salad. That evening, just before dinnertime, spend another 15 minutes toasting rolls in the oven and microwaving frozen vegetables. Presto, dinner is served!

10. Win over your family. “When you choose to eat more frugally your family may complain at first,” says Tawra Kellam, author of Not Just Beans. To ease this transition, start by changing the way you cook your meals. Make homemade sauces and cut back on the meat in a meal. Start serving more soup and pasta dishes. Next, gradually cut back on juices and soda. “Have kids spend their allowance on extras, such as candy bars and soda, if they still want those things.”

11. Eat healthier and save. According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, switching to a healthy diet for one year saved families an average of $12 per person in weekly grocery bills. The Traffic Light Diet, designed by Leonard Epstein, Ph.D., and nutritionists at the University at Buffalo , will also help you eat healthier and lose weight. Follow these guidelines: Fill your plate with green-light (Go) foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables, whole-grain breads and pastas, brown rice, beans, lentils and tuna. Aim for smaller portions of yellow-light (Caution) foods, including yogurt and cottage cheese, eggs, chicken and fish. Finally, limit red-light (Stop) foods to two servings a day or fewer. These include cheese, whole milk, butter and red meat.
Supermarket Savvy

12. Get in, get out. “For every minute that you hang out in the supermarket, you spend an average of two dollars. So it’s important to be familiar with your store’s layout,” says McCoy. “You should get in, find your stuff and get out.” If you shave off just five minutes from your weekly shopping trip (and stick to your list), you could save $520 a year in impulse buys, adds Bullen.

13. Save with Web Bucks. At www.valupage.com, you can print out coupons that are good at more than 15,000 stores nationwide. “It’s a better selection than the Sunday paper,” says McCoy. Start by entering your zip code and selecting a supermarket. Next, pick the offers you want, then print the “ValuPage shopping list” and take it to the store. Give it to the cashier to scan and a coupon will be printed out that can be used like cash for money off your next purchase.

14. Hold on to your wallet. Supermarkets spend millions to get consumers to spend more money. Being aware of this will help you save. “There are so many strategic things done in the grocery store,” says McCoy. “For example, eggs and milk, two frequently bought items, are usually in the back so you’ll be tempted to buy something else on the way.” Produce, on the other hand, is almost always front and center when you enter, since stores make 30 percent of profits there. “It’s colorful, visible and helps draw you in,” says Kerri Conan, an expert on supermarket trends. “Delis and bakeries are usually nearby and can be money traps since that’s where all the prepared food is. You’ll pay much more for that convenience, so avoid it or buy carefully there.”

15. Let your store know what you want. “Supermarkets want you to feel that they are your neighborhood grocery store,” explains Conan. Always take advantage of what’s available: frequent-buyer cards, mailing lists, in-store magazines, newsletters, suggestion boxes and customer service.

16. Put blinders on at the checkout. “There are more and more point-of-purchase items there,” says Conan. “It’s a real pitfall.” While it’s OK to treat yourself to your favorite magazine, skip extras you don’t really need, such as soda, beef jerky or candy. “You can easily add another ten dollars to your grocery bill.” Instead, focus on something else, such as balancing your checkbook or organizing your purse.

MAKE EVERY DOLLAR COUNT

17. Go for painless cutbacks. “People try to give up things they like, then get frustrated and say, ‘I just can’t save money,’” says Kellam. “But you can save if you cut back a little at a time.” By eliminating one bag of chips a week, for instance, you can save $100 a year (see Save Without Feeling It, page 85, for more). “You can still have the chips, just cut back from three bags to two bags a week. When it comes to saving money in your household budget, the little things really do add up.”

18. Become a use-it-up cook. First, check the refrigerator daily to see what’s there. “Change your mindset about meal planning from ‘What would we like to eat today?’ to ‘What do we have on hand to eat today?’” says Lois Carlson Willand, author of The Use-It-Up Cookbook. Next, incorporate food you have into the day’s menu. Add cooked meats and vegetables to soups and casseroles, quiches and omelets, or use raw vegetables and fruits in salads. Finally, give yourself credit for serving a “free meal” every time you find a way to use an item in your refrigerator. “It gives you a real feeling of accomplishment.”

19. Don’t throw money away. “Parents often give kids more than they can eat,” says Kellam, whose web site is www.notjustbeans.com. “Give them child-sized rather than adult-sized portions. If they ask for more and are still hungry, give them another serving. If someone gave you a dollar bill you wouldn’t throw it in the trash, but every night parents do that with wasted food.”

20. Go for the green. “Put budgeted grocery money in an envelope,” says McCoy. Next, challenge yourself to see how little you can spend and how much you can leave in that envelope. “You can see the leftover money when the week is over. That’s yours to spend on something fun.” Wd