Are you like me and just hate grocery store shopping? Yes, it’s a necessary evil and it has to be done. And, I don’t know why I dislike it so much, but I do.

I know I’ve given tips on grocery shopping in the past, but I want to provide you with a few more.  Plan out your meals for the week so you know exactly what you need.  Create a list and don’t vary from it.  Impulse shopping can run up your bill significantly.  Before you go to the store, check what you already have on hand so you don’t buy stuff you don’t need.  Check out what’s on sale at your store and see if you can find coupons for those items.  Finally, decide how much you’ve budgeted to spend for your week’s worth of groceries.

Here are a few other tips.  Never shop when you’re hungry.  If you can, compare the prices of your items.  Some stores post the cost per ounce or pound for comparison shopping.  Buy generic store brands when possible.  They’re often the same quality as the name brands but can be significantly less expensive.  Shop for produce items when they’re in season.  And, if you have the storage space, buy items in bulk.  Additionally, if you have the freezer space, buy meats when they’re on sale and freeze them.  Check for clearance items that may be discounted heavily.  We have an app that allows us to get half prices on a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, meats and other items because their sell by dates are coming up.  We freeze a lot of these items for use at a later date making the sell by date less important.

One tip that I recently learned was to track the things you throw out.  If you find you’re throwing certain items out regularly, then perhaps you don’t need to purchase as much of those items.

Moral of the story:

Be sensible when grocery store shopping to minimize waste and only purchase what you really need.  Groceries are expensive enough without over purchasing items resulting in waste.  Hopefully, some of these tips are helpful.