Saving money: saving on grocery bills.

We only go grocery shopping twice a month in this house. As I type that, i realize how crazy it sounds. We are trying to save money, due to the upcoming birth of our second child. Food prices only seem to get more expensive by the day, and even though I've tried couponing, I've never really been able to make it work. Still, there are a few other ways we've managed to save a few bucks at the grocery store. Here are a few tips we have learned along the way.

1. Schedule grocery store trips around your paydays. 

I'm a teacher, so I only get paid once a month- at the end of the month. This is really hard sometimes. If my husband didn't get paid twice a month, we'd really struggle. For this reason, we only go grocery shopping twice a month and we schedule those trips the day after he gets paid. This makes things much easier. Of course, there are still times when we need to make a grocery store stop because we've run out of milk or forgotten something, but that's not usually a big total, so it's OK.

2. Plan your meals ahead of time so you'll have a better idea of what you need. 

This one can be tough. Each Sunday, I sit down and plan meals for the next two weeks. This way, I can add the needed ingredients to my grocery list and then I'll know exactly what's needed and it helps curb impulse buys.

3. Keep a working shopping list. 

We have a grocery inventory magnetized on the side of our fridge. We also keep a shopping list pad here. When we run out of something, I immediately add it to our list so we don't forget later. I also remove the item from our grocery inventory. 

4. Shop the sales 

We have three major stores here in our small town, and one of them is the ever popular national retailer big box store. The weekend before I know I'm going to the store, I look at the sales for the week at all three stores, see which ones have the items I plan to purchase on sale, and then that's where I go. This past week, both Food Lion and Piggly Wiggly had several of the same items on sale, and quite a few of them were things I needed. I'd really been wanting some produce, so I decided to go to Food Lion, since they had better produce prices. In the end, I got a whole fridge full of yummy goodness for far less than I usually pay. 

I hope you've enjoyed my tips for saving on groceries. Tune in tomorrow for a post on my recently re-organized refrigerator. 

Linking to Stonegable, Worthing Court, Cedar Hill Farmhouse, Confessions of a Plate Addict, and French Country Cottage!