ONE GROCERY HACK TO SAVE THOUSANDS ON YOUR FOOD BILL | FRUGAL FIT MOM

so you want to save a whole lot of money on your groceries but the thought of coupons makes you want to cry and sweat and steam comes out of your ears no worries i have one hack for you today that is going to save you money on your grocery bill i can't wait to tell you about it because if there's one thing i like it's saving money i have this friend we're gonna call her jen her name's actually not jen when i tell this story she's gonna know i'm talking about her but it's fine jen and i were friends way way back in the day when we lived in our starter hundred thousand dollar homes and our husbands made very very little money and we had lots of little kids we were trying to save money as much as possible by letting the kids play outside in our driveway instead of paying for them to do activities jen frequently told me that she was spending 800 to a thousand dollars a month on groceries and when you only make thirty thousand dollars a year that's like oh my gosh it gave me a heart attack back in the day to hear that she was spending that much money and then she would also say things like i don't know what to make for dinner i don't have any food for dinner and i'm kind of like what in the world is she doing because at the time i was only spending about 200 a month for my family of four or five at the time so the question is what was my friend jen doing wrong and what was i doing right to account for this basically 800 a month discrepancy in our grocery budgets and honestly it was one thing one thing that we did differently that saved me a ton of money and could have saved her a ton of money don't worry she learned how to do it later and now she saves a lot more on her groceries and i'm going to share with you today here's what jen did when she went to the store is she would wander the aisles with her cart and put things in that looked good so she would say oh yum i like chicken or these vegetables look delicious or oh this fruit is so yummy and fill her cart with all of these things that looked good in the moment checked out 200 a week later she'd get home and say wow i have no idea what to make for dinner now here's what i did that is different is i would sit down with a list it looks like a list wrong it's a list and i would plan out this is what i want to eat on monday this is what i want to eat on tuesday and i would write down the ingredients go to the store and buy those ingredients so i had a plan i had a purpose i knew what i was doing and you might be thinking well uh duh you meal plan and then you go to the store but you would be surprised at how many people don't do that so let's take you through the steps on what i do to save a ton of money by meal planning no coupons no shopping sales no digging through your freezer and figuring out what the heck you're gonna do i'm telling you you do this one thing you will save money on your grocery bill i have my pad of paper and my pen of course you can use app on your phone if you're into that kind of thing i just really like crossing stuff off so the first thing you're gonna do is start with a dinner that you've made before and you like you don't have to like make all seven new recipes for the week stick with what you know if what you know is a box of sauce wait what if what you know is a box of pasta and a jar of sauce and your family likes it great write that down you don't have to be coming up with new recipes all the time it is okay to stick with something you know is going to be a winner because nothing is more frustrating than trying to make a new dinner for your family and having them all go what is that because that's what my son ryan always does um what's this thing here i don't know about this thing number two and i've talked about this before and that's meal planning based on what you have so if you have a huge container of oatmeal in your house guess what you're having oatmeal for breakfast you can make oatmeal bread you can do oatmeal muffins in fact i just made some applesauce oatmeal muffins here on my channel you can make protein oatmeal bites like you can use that oatmeal as this big kicking off point to give you ideas for the rest of the week and also for example let's say you want to get some chicken because you want to make chicken alfredo which i really like actually the pioneer women's recipe is very good and so you get this huge family pack of chicken and you know you're only going to use half of it for the recipe well guess what you have a half a pack of chicken so you could also do chicken fajitas so you have one big pack of chicken you just have two dinners boom so now we only need to write down what we need for the chicken fajitas because we already have the bulk of the protein ingredients next up when it comes to meal planning and this does depend on your family and that's it's okay to eat leftovers i do know some people some are friends some are family that really have a hard time with leftover meat so if you have those kind of people in your family maybe be strategic about what you cook that being said if i make a lasagna my family is not going to eat a huge pan of lasagna for one meal they just won't so it's okay to put the cover on it stick it in the fridge and pull it out two days later and guess what there's another meal with no work other than hitting the buttons on the microwave now if you are a 100 beginner at this let's go by meal start with breakfast we're writing down breakfast for seven days and then pick the things you like and if the things you like is eggs and toast every morning and your family will never complain about that thing why reinvent the wheel why try and change it up just because other people on social media are doing that you don't have to do that write down eggs and toast make sure you have your bread make sure you have your eggs maybe you like cheese on it add some cheese onto your list boom breakfasts for the week are done the thing about lunches is my family is super super simple on lunches we keep some basic ingredients in the house for sandwiches quesadillas wraps if we have leftovers for a meal like let's say we have a lasagna maybe we'll have that lasagna for lunch the next day but otherwise my family's very very basic on lunches cheese and crackers sometimes i have mac and cheese if i remember to buy it hot dogs i'm better about that during the summer than i am during the school year the school year is really like sandwiches granola bars and fruit like that's about as far as it goes we are not complicated for lunch and i know if you've got kids if they're anything like my kids like my kids will eat a sandwich every single day and not complain about it like legit every single day the only one who likes anything different is haley so maybe i get a couple of bagged salads maybe she eats leftovers with me and boom we're done make sure you have your bread your pb and j or whatever sandwich fixins you like and you're set and let's say you want to do fruits and vegetables as your side dish for lunches or even for dinner shop seasonally and you're gonna save the most amount of money that way now for dinners i've given you a lot of tips of generalities of what you can do but i will share specifically what i do i really like to plan out one week at a time two weeks three weeks a month for me that's really really far out our schedules can change maybe we're tired one night i like the flexibility of only going a week at a time out and then feeling out maybe what i planned on making and didn't make and that'll cover me for week two of the month okay so let's start with that you don't have to do once a month cooking if you've never done it and it's intimidating to you it's okay start with a week start with four days that's okay who said you had to do seven days nobody so we have one recipe that is a tried and true we know it's easy and we know we can do it so we write that down maybe even we have three of those recipes so it's gonna be tacos it's gonna be burgers and it's gonna be pizza because let me tell you what my family would eat tacos and burgers and pizza every single day and be happy about it i look at my schedule for the week and if i have one night that's super busy and i know i'm gonna be gone maybe it's a crock pot meal maybe that's the night i do a box of pasta and a jar of sauce and call it done because it takes like 10 minutes to make dinner and everybody's happy with a spaghetti type of a product at my house maybe i have a freezer meal that i made so i pull that out for that night and then once i get to that point that's when i start thinking okay let's look through a recipe book let's check out pinterest check out youtube and see if there's a recipe that looks really interesting and delicious to me now i only meal plan five dinners a week yes there are seven nights a week but i make a ton and we eat leftovers so there's only five for example for me for this week i happen to have some bags of trader joe's orange chicken that i wanted to try well guess what that's a really easy dinner it's in my freezer all i need is some rice i have some frozen broccoli boom i have a meal ready to go and i didn't even have to buy anything yet okay so that's one meal set we are going to do spaghetti with sauce first of all it's easy two we haven't had it in a while my family likes it and three i have a bunch already i open my pantry and i think oh my gosh why do i have so much pasta sauce pasta because i keep stocking up on it we're gonna actually use some of it there's dinner number two i've basically not been shopping yet number three it is summer and it is grilling season i just refilled my propane tank so it really really feels to me like we should be grilling something outside one of my favorite things to grill outside is bone in chicken i'm gonna write down grilled chicken with maybe like a big salad okay now i have something i don't have i don't have the salad ingredients so i'm gonna write down on my shopping list lettuce tomato cucumbers like colored bell peppers maybe i need some croutons maybe i'm out of salad dressing i mean i'm not but maybe you are and so i write my list of the items i need to go with that dinner now i want to pull up pinterest and i look at all of the pinterest recipes and i see this like oven baked chili dog casserole thing which doesn't sound healthy even a little bit but really sounds delicious so i'm going to write down the hot dogs i'm going to write down the canned chili the cheese and make sure i have all the ingredients for that so now i have four dinners i need one more i'm gonna go check out my freezer again i have a roast you know what it's summer it's hot outside crock pot's the way to go so i'm gonna do a crock-pot roast with veggies so i write down whatever veggies i want to have and i have my shopping list for the week five dinners with room to have two days of leftovers or like an easy night like a sandwich or like omelets or something like that i have my eggs my bread my sandwich fixings my fruits and vegetables that i want to eat for the week and we're done so now all we have to do is go to the store put the things in my list on our cart and we can eat for an entire week instead of wandering through the store getting some things that might look okay and then i end up with 15 packs of chicken in my freezer 10 heads of lettuce and some tomatoes and no plan on what i'm actually going to cook there were many times early on in my marriage that my husband would come home look in the fridge in the pantry and say there is no food in the house and i was like what are you talking about i have everything i need to make for dinner and i would pull out like five ingredients whip together a dinner he didn't think i could do and i'd be like boom who's the boss now he was always super impressed by my ability to put together a meal based on what he thought was nothing and that's because if you don't have a plan it's hard to look at ingredients and see a finished product but if you go into the store with your plan it's easy to see how these items come together it really only takes like 10 to 15 minutes of planning at the beginning of the week you don't need coupons you don't need special apps you don't need special shopping and then once you have your list these days you oh my gosh there's a b did the b fly out this is what happens when you leave your door open heart rate's coming down these days you don't even have to go to the store and be distracted by what's there now my area doesn't really have instacart but they do have walmart grocery pickup you can like put everything in online drive up they put in your car and you drive away and you're done so you don't have to be tempted you don't have to be like oh this gatorade looks delicious or ooh yum a chocolate bar delicious you can just put in your plan pick it up come home you've saved money you've saved time and you can impress your family when they say there's nothing to eat in this house and then you whip up this amazing meal out of what seems like nothing and then they say we're not worthy basically if you haven't started meal planning yet please do it you will save so much money you will be shocked at how well you can feed your family with a little bit of preparation and then you'll have a whole bunch of money to spend on other stuff i hope you enjoyed today's video if you did i would hope that you'd hook me up a thumbs up maybe subscribe if you want to see future videos like this and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Frugal Fit Mom

Views: 353,818

Keywords: grocery hacks, save money on groceries, life hacks, save money, grocery store, budget, money saving hacks, grocery store hacks, ffm, frugal fit mom, frugal living, on a budget, budget tips, frugal, how to budget, ways to save money, grocery budget, how to save money, how to save money on groceries, grocery shopping, save money on food

Id: pyZsfXrqcKs

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 30 2021