How to Save Money on Groceries

A couple of weeks ago I sat down and decided that I wanted to reduce my grocery bill in order to save for a holiday. My personal finances were an area of my life that I identified as a problem when I looked at achieving total balance in my life. This week I was asked to go into more detail about how I have been reducing my grocery bill and to pass on any tips that may be useful.

It is early days yet but last week I finally managed to spend only $150 instead of my usual $200. We have not run out of anything and there is still food in the fridge, freezer and cupboards. Five of us live here, but my daughter eats out quite a bit and buys her own toiletries, so I guess you could say we have four and a half residents. Some of this information I have mentioned in other posts but putting it all together will make it easier to refer to later. Every Monday when I post my menu plan I will include my weekly grocery spend and a savings tally.

So, where do you start? Here are my top 20 tips to reduce your grocery spending. They will not work for everyone and some you already know, but that's the thing with lists.

1. Keep your receipts and track your spending
Tally them up for a few weeks to see what you are spending money on. I did this and the results were surprising with approx $40 per week being spent on fruit and vegies, despite some supplementing with home grown produce. I also identified the kids lunchboxes as an area I could save on...and provide healthier snacks at the same time. Make sure you include any milk, bread etc bought at the corner store as well so that you can add them to your grocery spend if you are regularly running to the shop.

2. Menu Plan your dinners
Work out what you are going to cook every week, checking what ingredients you have at home to utilise first. You want to reduce the risk of popping out for extra ingredients and hence avoid the temptation to overspend.

3. Write a Shopping list
Every post about saving money on groceries will tell you to do this. It works, but only if you are strong and stick to the list. Take a pen and cross off each item as you go or download a grocery shopping app onto your phone to do the same.

4. Research Grocery Prices
I get the Coles, Woolworths and IGA catalogues delivered to my email inbox and check the prices every week so I know where to do my 'extras' shop and get the best prices, particularly on meat.

5. If you have an ALDI, shop there
I save at least $30 a week by shopping at ALDI and what I can't get there (my 'extras') I get at one of the major supermarkets. For example 1kg of grated cheese at ALDI is $5. I would pay double that at any other supermarket. A dozen rolls of good quality toilet paper are $3.99. If you don't have an ALDI supermarket in your area buy generic brand staples to keep the cost down eg. things like flour and sugar.

6. Shop Weekly
This may sound different as most people say to shop fortnightly. I always find if I shop fortnightly I run out and have to do a second shop anyway. It is easier to budget if you spend weekly and your shopping list is smaller and easier to manage. Your vegies are also fresh every week instead of having to last a fortnight or rely on frozen ones - speaking of which, always have a supply in the freezer just in case.

7. Pay Cash
I have found that withdrawing my $150 each week and placing it into a separate compartment of my wallet, forces me to work within that budget rather than using my debit card. If I can see that I only have $20 left after the Aldi shop then that is what I will spend at Coles.

8. Set Limits
I never spend more than $10/kilo on meat and will shop around until I find good quality meat for that price. I sometimes shop at a butcher who supplies local meat, but only buy their bulk specials. Our IGA stocks local meat and their weekly specials are great. I use mainly mince (premium grade), chicken breasts, rump steak and fresh fish. We rarely buy lamb as it is too fattening and expensive. If you buy your meat at Coles or Woolworths you could be paying too much...and it is not local.

Less than $60 worth of meat creates nine meals

9. Cook with pasta and grains
Design filling and nutritious meals that use less meat by utlising pasta, rice or couscous. Lentils and beans added to mince dishes also create more bulk. I am also a fan of grated zucchini and carrot to bulk out rissoles or patties, and to provide extra goodness, of course. 500g mince should feed 4 -5 people as your meat portion should only be 1/3 and vegetables 2/3.

10. Buy Tinned Tuna
We have a tuna meal once a week, either patties, mornay, casserole or pasta . $5-6 will feed 4-5 people and my kids love it. If you don't eat tuna try a vegetarian meal or omelette to reduce your meat consumption.

11. Go to your local market
Buy your vegetables at your local market or farm fresh grocer if you can. I have been saving $15-$20 a week doing this. We also get local growers doing home or work deliveries and this way you can order the amount you want to spend and not be tempted to buy more.

12. Reduce Wastage
Plan meals that use fresh vegetables or ingredients early in the week to avoid wastage. Use old bread to make breadcrumbs or make a dahl in the crockpot with leftover vegies. Don't let anything in the fridge not be utlised. Everything you throw away is wasting money.

13. Add up as you go along
I do a rough calculation in my head as I go around the supermarket to make sure I will not go over my budget. I just round up each item to the nearest dollar and tally. You could also use the calculator function on your phone or a small calculator. If the boys are with me, it keeps them amused to add up for me.

14. Make your own cleaners
My initial expense on cleaner ingredients was about $15 and for the last three months I have not bought a single cleaning product. They work well and are environmentally friendly. Check out my roadtest.

15. Be Environmentally Friendly
Reduce your expenditure on paper towels (by using washable cloths), plastic bags and packaging to save money and the environment.

16. Make extra portions
Cook an extra portion or two each night to take for lunch the next day to work. It can work out cheaper than sandwiches and snacks.

17. Bake your own bread
This can save money depending on the bread you usually buy. A loaf of bread in our breadmaker costs around $1. It is smaller than a normal loaf but there is less wastage for us as we do not eat a lot of bread. This bread is so yummy it always gets eaten!

18. Bake lunch box treats
I have only just started doing this and am saving about $15/week on the boys lunches. The Pizza Muffins I made the other day yielded 16 for a total cost of $2.50. Good value for very little effort.

19. Grow your own vegies and herbs if you can
This is not a new concept and may not be practical for everyone. It does cost a little money initially but the rewards are worth it and every year you will get better at it and grow more...that's what I am hoping.

21. Buy a water filter
We used to spend $9/week on water or around $468/year. This water filter unit cost $68 and replacement filters are less than that per year. If you have town water and don't need a filter, look at how much you are spending on other drinks. The results may surprise you.

This is just a short list of some ideas to help you save money that have worked for me. I have also found fantastic information at the following links:

http://www.simplesavings.com.au/ I have not yet fully investigated this website but there is some great advice just on the first page.

http://mortgagefreejourney.blogspot.com.au/ Stacey has some awesome tips to save money and did a 3-post series on reducing your food bill. She counts every penny and budgets every day.

http://onelifeand3kids.blogspot.com.au/ This single mother of 3 kids saves money by using her crockpot. Check out some of her money saving recipes.

http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com.au Rhonda's site is full of tips for saving money, has great recipes and information on how to make homemade cleaners.

If you decide to try and save money on your groceries let me know how you are going with it and offer your suggestions. Keeping this list down to 20 was for the purpose of this post but there are many more ways to save. This is just how I started...we will see how I go over the next few weeks.

Menu Planning Monday 4

Creating a menu plan every week is certainly making life easier in terms  of creating a healthy balanced meal for dinner. I did veer slightly from the set menu this week, purely to use up leftovers. I have set myself a mission not to waste any food from my fridge or cupboards and have been monitoring daily what I have in stock and when it needs to be used. I will keep up this habit when I get back to work. Our fridge is always chock-a-block full and things get squished to the back so I forage daily. I made a beautiful pasta sauce yesterday from the Cherry Tomato Relish I made a few weeks back, and we still have plenty more so I will utlise the freezer and store some for when I am back at work.

My other challenge this week was to create a menu that would utilise the beautiful greens I have been harvesting from the garden. Every meal this week I can add chopped greens to the mix, and accompany with a fresh salad. Last night I made a Thai chicken curry using the dahl which I made from leftover vegies last week. I made a whole crockpot-ful so had tons to use. All I added was chicken breast, light coconut milk and chopped greens. So quick and easy.

Monday - Thai Chicken Curry With Rice
Tuesday - Beef Rissoles with Mashed Potato and Onion Gravy
Wednesday - Chicken Burritos with Salsa and Guacamole
Thursday - Chicken Sausage Casserole
Friday - Tuna Mornay
Saturday - Creamy Tomato Beef Pasta
Sunday - Almond Crusted Chicken with Garden Salad

Anyway, every week as promised, I am publishing the most popular meal from the week before (as judged by my family and the lack of leftovers). This week it was the  Baked Tomato Meatballs pictured above. This meal is so quick to make, perfect for those who work and low in calories for those who are dieting.

Baked Tomato Meatballs (Serves 5)

500g lean beef mince
1 egg
5 slices bread, processed into breadcrumbs
1/2 Zucchini, grated
1 small onion, finely chopped
Olive Oil
1 x 500g jar of pasta sauce or 2 cups home made tomato pasta sauce
1 cup grated low-fat cheese
Mixed vegetables or pasta

Prepare your vegetables and place on stove to steam, or boil pasta.

Combine the beef, egg, breadcrumbs, zucchini and onion in a bowl. The use your hands to ensure all ingredients are thoroughly mixed, and form into meatballs. I like them to be about 1/2 desertspoon size and the mix makes about 25-30 at this size. You can make them smaller and have more if you like.

Add a little olive oil to a frypan and gently brown all over. Transfer the meatballs to a baking dish with a wire rack. This will ensure any fat drains whilst cooking. Bake in the oven for about 15-20 mins.

I made these the night before and left them in the fridge covered in plastic wrap. Now put your meatballs into a microwave proof dish and pour over the tomato sauce. Mix it around the meatballs and cover with cheese.

Microwave on high for two minutes or until cheese melted.

My boys prefer to have theirs with pasta and they usually add extra cheese. Parmesan works well too.

Grocery Budget

As part of this weekly post I will keep you up to date with my grocery budget which I am hoping to reduce by $50/week.

I decided to get my fruit and vegies from our local farm fresh supplier, as an alternative to going to the markets on Sunday. I only spent $18 which is well below my grocery spend of $35.00.

They had pumpkins for 50c each which is amazing value and the button squash was only $2 for a half kilo bag. I even bought free-range eggs and am itching to get my chook pen happening.

In total this week I spent $142.00, which together with last weeks spend puts me at $374 for the fortnight. This is $26 below my budget of $400 which is a good start. $13/week towards my goal of saving $50/week. I have plenty of meat in the freezer and the stockpile cupboards are full so I am hoping to continue the save in weeks to come. Will keep you posted.

If you menu plan join me and link up with Becci's Domestic Bliss. I would love to see what you have planned for dinner this week.

Focus on Financial Balance

Today's post is about me working towards achieving financial balance. You may remember that I identified it as an area of my life that requires more control (Balance) and there are many ways I could be doing better. When I started my health and fitness journey on New Years Day I never envisaged just how far it would take me. Being physically fit and giving up smoking led me to make changes to other areas of my life, which as we know, has snowballed....in a good way. 

With regards to my finances, I want to focus more closely on my personal spending. Every fortnight when I get paid I put money into a joint account to pay for bills and our mortgage. Any surplus becomes our savings. Earlier in the year I examined everything we pay and shopped around to get the best deals. These are some of the things I did:

1. Insurance - combined the policies for mine and my daughter's cars, saving $20/ month.

2. Home Loan - we looked at refinancing to a lower rate but when I rang our current bank they offered a reduction of .25% as we were looking around. Bank's don't want to lose your business. This really surprised me and I urge everyone to do the same. Talk to your current bank first as the cost of refinancing with exit and entry fees can sometimes outweigh the reduction in interest that another bank offers. This saved us $50/month.

3. Credit cards - As much as I try to pay my balance off every month, this year has been a difficult one and we do owe money on two cards. ANZ bank offered a credit card with 0% balance transfer for 9 months so I transferred my balance to them and am saving about $100/month interest for 9 months. The interest rate after that time is also 7% less than what I am paying now so if they are not completely paid off by then, I will still be saving. But, I will pay them off by then, right?

4. Electricity - We made the decision to install solar panels as we registered for the high feed tariff of 44c. Origin gave us another 8c on top of that making it 52c. As our electricity costs are regulated in QLD the retailers all have to charge the same tariff but their running costs vary. I joined The One Big Switch which 40,000 Queenslanders registered for, and as well as cheaper admin fees, they gave us another 2c feed in tariff. So we feed electricity into the grid at 54c and buy it back at around 27c. I finally got our first bill and we are $38 in credit. Although we are paying $300/month for two years for our panels, after that time we will have no energy bills. Yippee!! This will save us around $2000 per year.

5. Fuel - I can't control the fuel prices but I now fill up at Coles Express so that I can use my Fly Buys Card (this is fairly new too) and where I can get at least 4c off per litre using my Coles dockets. Coles are more expensive than Aldi so I don't shop there all the time but twice now I have collected enough Fly Buys points to get $20 off my spend there. So it works for me.

6. Phone and internet - Unfortunately the only service we can get here is Telstra who are the most expensive. I did manage to score NBN Satellite internet as our wireless service here is too slow. This gives us a slightly faster internet service with 30GB more usage per month, and saves $30 per month in fees. Well worth it! We are on the waiting list for ADSL but that could take years now the Government has changed here.

So, I have examined all of my major expenses this year and reduced as many of them as I can. Now let's start on my personal finances. Every fortnight I have a budget as follows:

Groceries  $400

Fuel        $  80

Savings    $100

Me          $  80

Total       $660

The only factor I cannot change with this budget is the fuel. It costs at least $80 every fortnight to get to work and back because I live out of town. I do restrict my driving on weekends however and try to avoid going to town. For example, I do my groceries on a Friday night after work to avoid going into town on Saturday.

The $100 savings I automatically transfer to another account when I get paid, and I then take the rest of the money out in cash. I keep the grocery, fuel, and my money in separate compartments of my wallet. Generally the $40 a week I have left for myself gets spent at the pharmacy or if the boys need money for school. I take my lunches to work every day and drink water from the bottled supply at work.

So, the only area left that I can save on is my groceries. I have already made steps towards this by making my own cleaning products and buying a water filter so we don't have to buy bottled water.

However, my grocery bill is still around $200/week. That's $10,400/year! Where does the money go? I decided to analyse my dockets more closely and see exactly where my money is going, in order to try and work out where I can make some savings. It was a fiddly process crossing items off the docket as I entered them into the calculator. This is the result for my grocery spend on Friday last week.

Non Food = $12.46

Re-usable bags = $8.94

Meat = $54.69 (nine meals,bulk buy)

Fruit & Veg = $31.10

Dairy = $20.03

Ingredients/Staples = $35.58

Ice Cream = $6.18

Freezer = $8.78

Wraps/Bread = $8.66

Drinks = $14.44

Lunchboxes = $17.95

Biscuits/Snacks = $6.71

Nuts = $6.98

Total $232.50

I did replenish my supply of re-usable shopping bags which is a one-off expense, but the rest of the results when I categorised them were surprising to me. My biggest expense besides meat is my fruit and vegetables. I did not realise I was spending this much. I do tend to overstock and last week before the shop I made a huge dahl (lentil and vegetable curry) in the crock pot to use up the leftover vegetables. Some of this I froze and the rest I have used for lunches. I won't be growing enough vegies to totally wipe out his expense so I think a weekly trip to the markets may reduce this expense...and better planning as to how much I actually need to buy.

The other areas I will target are the soft drinks ($7 of the drink spend) and lunchbox snacks for the boys. I will try switching over to cordial which is cheaper (there will be protests) and making some of their lunchbox food from scratch. I have the luxury of time this week to experiment, and at the end of the day, this switch will be healthier for them.

Anyway, I have now set a goal to reduce my weekly grocery bill to $150 instead of $200. This will save around $2600/year which is easily a nice family holiday or Christmas presents paid for. Even if I can only reduce it to $175/week then I will still save $1300/year.

I can almost see the pina colada with the colourful umbrella sticking out of a wedge of pineapple, and the blue ocean in the background as I lounge on the deck of the cruise ship....what great motivation to do my shopping more wisely and think about what I am buying. To make things more accountable I will track my spending on my blog each week and keep you updated with how I am progressing. It will force me to keep dockets and control my purse strings by being accountable to you.

How do you budget for your groceries? Do you overspend? 

Is $150/week for a family of five achievable or am I dreaming?

Personal Accountability

Anyone who knows me well says that I think way too much...and they would be correct. Sometimes I can't turn my brain off and one thought leads to the next and the next. This is where my thought process led me last night....

The word that has been playing around in my mind this week is accountability. I don't necessarily mean in a financial or organisational sense such as a company being accountable or answerable to its shareholders. What I have been thinking about is being accountable as an individual with the various aspects of your life that you are balancing. Accountability means taking responsibility for your actions or, in other words, to account for them.

With some areas of our lives we are accountable to someone, just as companies are to their shareholders. We are expected to perform in certain ways just as we expect doctors or teachers to do. For example, we are accountable to our husbands to be a loving wife, to our employers to do our job well, to our children to be a good role model and responsible parent. If our actions contradict what is expected of us then our husbands, employers and kids will hold us accountable and expect us to explain or justify our actions.

So, what got me thinking is, what about those areas of our lives where we don't have to be accountable to others? What if we don't have husbands, children and employers to be accountable to? In these instances I can only surmise that we are only accountable to ourselves, or to our conscience or beliefs perhaps. We only have ourselves to answer to if we err in judgement or give up on a goal.  This is dangerous ground for me because I have found that I am persuasive and can talk myself out of being accountable.  I don't need to go to the gym after work, I've lost weight this week, I need a night off... or... I really need that chocolate bar right now, its been a stressy day. I am the boss of me so I can break the rules when I want to, and accept my rather weak justifications.

It therefore takes strength and sometimes willpower to be accountable to oneself. Sometimes I feel like Sylvester from the Tweety Bird cartoons with that little pain in the butt conscience angel talking him out of or into things. So, with all this deep thinking about being accountable today, I realised that I have already taken some measures to take the accountability away from just me.

For example, I have joined a gym with a program where I get weighed every week and measured every month. My mind then sees that I am accountable to my trainers Nikki and Kerrie, as well as myself. I want to do well and I hate going backwards. I want them to be proud of me (as I am of myself)  for getting fit and losing the weight. There is my accountability. Works for me.

Being a writer is a big goal of mine and starting this blog is making my writing accountable. Instead of thinking yeah okay I will watch television instead of doing that article or writing that chapter, I now have a regular pattern of writing. It has become less sporadic and more disciplined, I am more productive and savouring every minute of it. My writing will improve every day and I will reach my goals. Works for me.

So, now I just have to extend that personal accountability theory to those other areas of my life that are unbalanced. The main area that needs work is my personal finances.

 I work, I spend, I buy. Yes, I do have a budget, but there is still that voice that tells me I need to buy something or I can make it up next week. I have met a pretty amazing lady Stacey from the UK who knows exactly how much she is spending and saving every single day...and she documents it on her blog Mortgage Free Journey. It has inspired me to take a closer look at my personal spending (what I have left after paying my bills) and make it work towards my goals of a holiday and reducing my credit card debt. I have already started by growing my vegies and making my own cleaning products, but the rest needs a closer inspection and I will be doing that in further blogs.

So, there you have my theory of personal accountability. I have since Googled it and others define it simply as responsibility. That's where I am heading...towards responsibility and taking control of those neglected areas of my life. I imagine the little Sylvester or mini-me will still sit on my shoulder and try and talk me into things....sometimes he/she will win because no-one is perfect. We do the best we can. But with my goals in sight, only I can formulate and put into action the plan to get there...and the best thing is...I am working on it.

Do you have a plan? What do you think about personal accountability?