IV: Make a Grocery List and Go Shopping!

{I first published this as a Google document, mainly because I wasn’t going to have any pictures to go with it, and you know I like posts to have pictures. My thought was that this should be something easy for you to print out and put in your menu binder. But now Google has messed with things, so I’m just posting it.}

Worksheet IV – making a grocery list and going shopping!

Now you have your menu list for the coming week. Good job! Time to make your list. It’s essential to organize your list in the order you will shop for things, not in the order they occur to you. You can loosely divide your list and fill in categories as you think of them.

If something is on sale, buy a few extra at least – if the price is below the lowest normal price for the item (see below, “price notebook”). Your pantry should have depth to it, so that you are not always shopping for staples, but replenishing when sale prices are good. This is the backbone of saving money on groceries, and you won’t see the effect for many months.

When turkeys are on sale at Thanksgiving, buy a frozen one and put it in your deep freezer. When ground beef is on sale, buy twice as much as you need for that week. When tomato sauce is on sale, buy twice as many as you need – more if your budget allows for it.

Beware of the sneak attack in the staples. If you save on ground beef but at the same store pay much more for flour, sugar, canned beans, canned tomatoes, bread, milk, etc., then you haven’t saved and it would be worth it to shop where the basics are lower, even if the ground beef isn’t on sale.

Notice what you have not planned for in your weekly menu.

You have not planned for unexpected leftovers. So if you end up with a lot of something, that’s a bonus day (as opposed to planned leftovers, a discussion for another time). Sometimes several family members don’t show up for dinner, or out of town guests take you out for a treat. Lucky you! You get an extra day – just shove everything down the list.

Another way to handle a leftover meal is to wait a day and then have a “leftovers day”, aka “bits and pieces”, aka “fab buffet” or whatever you want to call it. Again, just juggle your days and take the bonus.

You have also not planned for a meal out. Most “weekly” menu plans I have seen factor in a day or more of eating out. Maybe those folks are living in New York city, where eating out is a must, as far as I can tell; or maybe they just can’t imagine cooking seven days a week, or maybe they haven’t checked their charge card statement lately. But we don’t eat out once a week!

Eating out is the ultimate budget buster! You might be hiding this from yourself because it’s in another category, like entertainment or “eating out” – but it should be in your food budget and if you are like me, you just can’t afford this.

Think of it this way. If I took three kids to McDonald’s, there is no way we are leaving there for less than $16 for supper – supposing we did just the dollar menu and I didn’t have any teenaged boys with me. Now, I love a double cheeseburger as much as the next person. But for $16 I could go get us two sirloin steaks – my ultimate fast food at home! – grill them, and serve them sliced with baked potatoes, salad, and garlic bread, with money in my pocket. And I’d have leftover steak for sandwiches the next day.

Or I could have gotten a bunch of cold cuts and made subs to go, and put money in my ice cream fund. I could have bought cashews, dried apricots, and string cheese, and everyone would be satisfied until we got home, with about $8 to spare.

If you are traveling and have to stop for food, fine. That’s the cost of doing business. But as a thoughtless we’re-hungry-there’s-nothing-at-home option, it stinks.

So go ahead and pat yourself on the back for planning an entire week’s worth of home-cooked meals!

Usually I buy store brands. For most basic things I don’t see a difference. Since our food is made mostly from scratch, coupons don’t do me much good anyway. But there are some name brands I stick with because of their higher quality overall, and for those I buy in quantity when they are on sale, hopefully with a coupon. Mostly this would apply to paper goods. I really just prefer Kleenex, Charmin, Bounty…and I am past the diaper stage, but it seems like store brands don’t hold up to name brands. So use your coupon energy for those things. If you can combine a sale with a coupon, you are in pretty good shape.

Sometimes, though, there are some prepared foods we like that have higher quality ingredients than others. For instance, Hellman’s mayonnaise seems to have fewer additives than other brands. Grey Poupon mustard is a favorite. So, I buy several jars of those items when they are on sale – enough to keep me until the next sale. When Hellman’s goes on sale, I buy 6 jars! I have a big pantry, it keeps, and we will use it.

Usually these items don’t have coupons. The sorts of things that do I consider not worth the money or the eating! The more prepared something is, the less likely I am to buy it. We eat no prepared frozen foods, few snack foods that aren’t homemade, and no packaged things like rice dinners.

If you make your menus, you will find your reliance on these things evaporates. If someone really wants pizza bagels, just make them instead of buying them frozen. This is well within the capabilities of the average eight-year-old. Bread and butter is a better snack than chips.

Get rid of the things that most coupons get you. You will be better off nutritionally and financially.

I used to do BJs when I had more people to buy for. For a household of 5, it’s not worth the membership fee, unless you have a pet (pet food is a lot cheaper there, I think). When I had enough shopping to do that I would go to both BJs and the supermarket, I could discipline myself to buy only the things that are truly cheaper there. If you do all your shopping in a big box store, you will spend much more. Just as an example, the last time I checked, although flour and sugar were cheaper there, pasta and sauce were considerably more.

Since I have a good, large, cheap grocery store near the BJs I would otherwise shop at, I do everything big there, figuring that the $45 fee goes a long way in paper products and other things I would have gotten at BJs and I can avoid the temptation of a lot of other things I’d see there.

If you have a large family and pets, it is worth it to go there, but know your prices!

Keep a price notebook. Note the best price per pound or other unit of the things you buy. Yes, everything.

Keep updating it. Eventually you will know these by heart, and it saves you time when you are deciding whether a sale is really that. It helps when you are somewhere unusual and see a putative bargain. Things are tricky out there in grocery store land. Sometimes the bigger box isn’t cheaper, per unit, than the smaller. Sometimes a discount store is expensive. Sometimes even a coupon doesn’t make the purchase worth it, if you compare with the store brand.