Listening to the Radio on the Way to Work

Jonni McCoy was being interviewed about her book, Miserly Moms: Living Well on Less in a Tough Economy. She had some great ideas on reducing the grocery budget, so I’ve summarized some of her thoughts.

What About Convenience Foods?

I spent several years in South America. One of the things that made the biggest impression on me was their slow-paced lifestyle. Apart from a one-hour siesta every day, it wasn’t uncommon to spend a hour or more sitting around with friends and drinking mate. In my opinion, we tend to get way over-paced here in the United States. And that, it seems, makes us more inclined to purchase convenience foods.

The largest waste in a food budget is convenience foods, not spoiled food. Any food item that has been somewhat pre-cooked, pre-packaged, pre-washed or pre-chopped. A convenience food can run anywhere from 3 to 5 times more than making it yourself. Leaving those convenience foods on the shelf can make a huge savings on a food budget.

You can make your own pancake syrup for less than a quarter, compared to roughly $4.00 at the market. You’ll spend about a $1.00 per pound to make your own granola versus $4-$5 a pound purchasing it. Pre-washed, bagged lettuce costs about 5x more than buying it by the head.

You Can Save 35% Off Your Grocery Budget

Nearly every grocery store has an advertisement flyer at the entrance of the store or on their website. The items on the front and back pages are called “loss leaders”. These are items the store is losing money on to attract you. My advice? If they are items you use, buy them. You can either purchase the loss leaders by themselves, or plan your weekly meals around them.

Warehouse Clubs

We have a Costco just down the road from us and we really enjoy going there. We’ll generally buy a few things that we need if we see a good price. But be warned, not everything at a warehouse club is a good deal. Just because you purchased that 50-roll pack of bulk toilet paper, doesn’t mean it was actually less expensive.

Sales at grocery stores will almost always be cheaper per unit than at a warehouse club. For example, peanut butter tends to run about twice as much at a warehouse club than the sale price at the market. On the other hand, milk, cheese, eggs, produce, batteries and personal care items generally tend to be a pretty good deal at warehouse clubs.

Pulling Out the Coupons

If you would be purchasing the item anyway, then coupons are a great thing. The problem happens when you spend $4.50 on a product, thinking you saved 15%, when you wouldn’t have purchased the product to begin with. Do you really need yet another 12-pack of Lever 2000? There’s a great article about your coupons may be making you poor over at Frugal Dad.

Save Time Finding the Best Weekly Deals

My Grocery Deals lists a lot, of not all, of your local grocery stores’ weekly featured discounts. All in one place. Convenient.