5 Exciting ways to Save Money by Shopping Less Often!

CHOPPING SHOPPING and CUTTING OUR GROCERY BILL
How we shop to save time and money

”I’m running to the store to pick up a couple of things for dinner— be back in 20 minutes.” This is the mantra of the harried shopper, home from work or rushed at the end of a day of non-stop errands or transporting kids to various activities.

For some families, a trip to the grocery store has become a “daily necessity.” We shop once a month and spend an average of $350, which includes all food items, paper goods and cleaning supplies. Limiting our food shopping not only saves time but loads of money, too. It wasn’t always this way—here’s how we started.

When we were first married and living in an apartment—with a very small refrigerator/freezer—Annette went food shopping once each week. A year later, she met a neighbor who had a free-standing freezer in her apartment.

This neighbor offered to share a shelf in her freezer, so, we took her up on the offer. We stretched our shopping to two-week intervals. It took about the same amount of time to shop for two weeks’ groceries as it did for one. With this one change, we cut our shopping time in half.

In 1984, we purchased a small 9-cubic-foot used chest freezer. We decided to try to stretch our food shopping to once a month to feed our family of three. We’ve been doing it together ever since—twelve times a year we go on a “hunt” for a month’s worth of food. The whole process from leaving the house to putting the groceries away takes about five hours. Over the years, the process has evolved. Here’s how we do it now.

Shopping Together?

With a large family, shopping for a whole month is a sizable task and shouldn’t be attempted single-handedly. If you have a smaller family, planning and shopping will take much less time. Single parents can shop with an older child or get someone else to help. When Steve first started shopping with Annette the extent of his involvement was limited to picking up specific sale items.

As time went on, he learned to match coupons with sale items and even graduated to his own coupon envelope— shazam! Now we divide the store into two sections: the inner aisles—Annette’s domain—and the outer loop (produce, meat, dairy and deli)—Steve’s area.

We know that many men would never think of helping their wives grocery shop. As a matter of fact, many would elect to have a root canal just to avoid this possibility. We understand this aversion, but honestly, there are times when neither of us feels like starting this 5-hour marathon, but we figure it only happens once a month and we can get through it . . . together! Steve’s advice to men is “If you want to eat it, you ought to help in hunting it down. Besides, it’s a great way to love and support your wife.”

Okay, we know many of you wives are saying, “I was hearing you when you reduced your trips to the store to two times each month, but getting my husband to go with me and doing it once a month is just plain crazy.”

Before you give up on this idea, please remember that we’ve been doing this since 1985. Don’t expect to do what we do. Simply use this article as a catalyst to question if what you are doing is really efficient. Can you make some changes and implement a couple of these ideas?

Sure you can!

Can you discuss this with your husband? You bet, and you might be pleasantly surprised by his response when you enlist his help to save money on the food budget, just make sure you have a plan before you take him with you. Remember the big picture: Let’s find ways to make our money go further and reduce the stress in our lives. Minimizing the number of shopping trips can accomplish both.

Working together and utilizing the aisle and loop system, we can visit two stores in one night— one store for sale items and the other for the balance of the month’s worth of shopping. Here are the basics of our plan.

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Saving with The Ads

The week we go shopping, we purchase—or borrow—Wednesday’s newspaper; that’s the day grocery ads are published in our area. We plan our menu/shopping list based on what is on sale. The first time Annette did a month-long menu plan, it took almost a whole day to map out just the dinners.

Now she can crank it out in about 30 minutes. She has developed a huge repertoire of meals in her menu book, enough to go about three months without repeating a meal. But ask the kids and they’ll tell you that they have a few favorites that Mom cooks each month.

What about using Coupons to save on Groceries?

We each review our coupons, weeding out expired ones and seeing which can be combined with sale items to make a real killing – In our area, most grocers offer to double manufacturers’ coupons up to 50 cents off. With a little planning, we can often get needed – and sometimes frivolous – items for pennies or free!

Reviewing the coupons this way also provides us with a reminder of which coupons we have available for those unexpected sales that we may stumble across. (To get a discounted newspaper subscription click here)

The Value of Getting a Sitter

When the kids were younger, we would pick up and pay a babysitter while we went to the store. It is well worth the money to be able to concentrate and calculate what the best values are. We love our children dearly, but trying to make them behave for four hours of intense grocery shopping is an unrealistic expectation. As they’ve grown up, they occasionally accompany us to the store and are a great help with the hunt. Usually, our older daughter, Becky, watches the younger ones, and yes, we do pay her.

Having Hi-tech Fun

Often Steve has questions about specials he has come across—managers’ close-outs—and whether to buy them or not. He used to walk the outer loop looking up and down each aisle to find Annette, so he decided to bring a pair of FRS radios—walkie-talkies— and now rings her with questions or phenomenal deals he has discovered. We feel like spies—” Hey, Annette, you won’t believe what I just found…”

Putting the Groceries Away

Once we get home, we put away only the perishable items. We‘re usually too exhausted to do everything, and the kids love to forage through the bags looking for “surprises.” The next morning, the kids help put away the dry goods. We label cereal boxes with the month and year so we don’t end up with 2-year-old cereal sitting on our shelves.

How to make Fruit last a Month

Limiting our trips to the store means that certain fruits must be eaten earlier in the month because they are more perishable. Bananas and grapes usually last a week. Once they’re gone, we move on to other fruits. Pears can last two weeks. Apples and oranges, carefully stored, can last a month.

What About Dairy for a Month?

We are often asked about storing milk, cheese, and bread; we carefully freeze all three.

Pour off a little to allow for expansion.

Cheese: We mainly buy shredded cheese, but be aware that if you do freeze chunks of cheese, you will have difficulty slicing it—freezing will cause it to crumble.

Bread: It needs to be carefully set in the freezer to avoid crushing and creating grotesquely misshapen loaves.

We use many other techniques to stretch our grocery dollars and we share them in our grocery category. Topics such as chasing loss-leaders, storing lettuce and other veggies, maximizing savings with coupons, utilizing warehouse stores to your advantage, bread outlets and grocery seconds stores.

Author: Steve & Annette Economides
Scottsdale, AZ