Grocery Tweaks

One of my favorite ways to save extra money is through grocery shopping.  It is a flexible expense that simple changes can alter.  Currently, my family is in a phase of life with growing children, so grocery costs are growing.  It seems I have not been able to save any money in the past few months to put towards debt, and this bugs me.

I feel like there is an untapped money source just sitting there, waiting for a few tweaks to make it aid in our debt-free goal.  A few weeks ago I purchased the book Family Feasts for $75 a Week by Mary Ostyn.  I have read her book, A Sane Woman's Guide to Raising a Large Family and have been an avid follower of her blog Owlhaven for several years, so I was excited to gather some more of her money-saving tips.  The book is wonderful and is filled with some great recipes that are not a huge change for our family making it easily doable.

I also use the Food Planner app to really streamline my shopping and menu planning, plus a couple more apps to help me compare prices.  With all these tools, I am hoping to have a few good months of grocery planning to save a couple hundred dollars.

A couple years ago, when I blogged on TheNorthForty, I would do what I called Power Saving Months where I would use up every last thing in our pantry and freezer, becoming extremely creative and buying only the bear minumum in groceries.  This would save us an extra $100 to $200 in a month.  This is my goal for this month.

I have all ready spent $250 on groceries this month which included a monthly trip our local club store.  Currently, we have a lot of odds and ends in the house which leads me to believe that, with a little creativity and planning, I may be able to finish out the month with only $150.  This would save us $100 this month to use toward debt.  I am also hoping this goal will jump start me back into some old habits in order to save a little more in future months.

You can follow along with my monthly grocery spending on the sidebar to the right.  Wish me luck!