Help with grocery frugality!

[Charmie981]

Okay, I have a really hard time admitting that we need to cut back our grocery spending, but looking at the last month of pay periods (8-28 to 9-29), we are spending way too much of our income (about 20%) on groceries. If we were spending this and not eating out AT ALL, I'd probably have less issue with it, but both groceries and eating out are over. I don't want to eat crap food like hot dogs and boxed mac and cheese and I have a real issue with feeling entitled to buy whatever groceries I want because, after all, it's FOOD! I want to find the happy medium between feeling guilty for spending money on food (which is where I used to be before I decided that I'm entitled to spend money on food w/o feeling guilty) and spending too much of our income on food.

I'm pretty good about buying on sale and cooking ahead/freezing. We have lots of freezer meals usually, but lately I've been bad about defrosting them ahead of time. I'm also having issues because I'm packing DS1's lunch for school and I feel like I'm in a prepackaged food box with him (Quaker granola bars, capri-suns, fruit leather, applesauce, etc).

We currently have three children and I'm pregnant. Our sons are 8, 6, and 1 and my DH, who has been out of the house for lunch will start a new job that will allow him to be home at lunch every day starting on or around the 15th. I'm making a grocery trip this afternoon and am working on planning right now. What can I do to bring our grocery spending down, still provide healthy foods for our family, and stop the eating out habit?

[jessaroo]

one big step you can do is stop buying individually packaged foods. You can buy a large jar of applesauce and pour it into containers. If you want your child to have juice, buy a large bottle of juice and put it in a reussable container. Popcorn is a really cheap lunch snack-especially if you make it yourself.

[Alyantavid]

Go through your store's flyer and stock up on what's on sale, that you eat. Then plan from that. I'd plan dinners and lunches.

Don't buy individually packaged stuff, like the pp said. A huge jar of applesauce is the same price as the individual cups and you get more.

Make your own snacks. Muffins and granola bars, even cookies are easy and cheap to make yourself. It's cheaper to buy more whole foods and make meals/snacks yourself than buy something someone has already made for you.

[Amys1st]

Buy the healthier hot dogs and serve them infrequently. Mac n cheese can be made from scratch too. Buy a larger box of elbow macs and make a cheese sauce from scratch. I always do it and its very yummy.

[karkli]

Here's an idea for taking advantage of your freezer meals and reducing eating out:

Every evening when it is time to think about dinner, think about what is for dinner the following night. If that's a lasagna that is prepared and in the freezer, get it out and put it in the fridge. If it's a slow cooker meal, assemble all the ingredients in the slow cooker and stick the whole thing in the fridge to be put in the next morning. If it's a meat entree with side dishes, make sure to get the meat out of the freezer to defrost overnight. And so on.

This will help to eliminate eating out because it means you'll never have a day where you're standing in your kitchen thinking "What's for dinner?" If you've had a long day and are just too lazy to cook, you might find yourself thinking twice about ordering in or eating out if you already have everything you need for dinner ready to go.

The best part is that it doesn't require any additional planning or thinking. You have to decide what is for dinner every night anyway.

[park4]

have you checked out couponmom.com? It allows you to print coupons for the store and also checks local deals if you put in your zip

[maryeliz]

I think something that can help with feelings of deprivation is to have everyone prioritize the items that are important to them and then choose a couple items each week-so your son might not get to have all the pre-packaged foods he has been taking to school, but he could choose one or two things that are more important to him.

For me, I do like to have fancy cheese every once and awhile and we all like having something for dessert. I have some friends who are "food is fuel" type people who can eat a really basic diet and not care. I know how to cook and shop that way, and I'll do it if we are really broke, but I do need to balance between budget and foods I really enjoy, otherwise I end up getting pizza or eating huge bags of chips because I feel deprived.