How I Saved $228 with These Grocery Tips

Grocery Tips Saved Me $228.07 on Groceries in 2 Weeks!

Home Ever After has partnered with Oscar Mayer and Ellie Kay to bring you grocery tips that can revolutionize the way you spend your family’s grocery money!

To prove it, I took the 2 week Oscar Mayer “Get Savings Savvy Challenge” myself to see just how much money I would save.  Below are a few of the tips that my family tried, how they worked for us, and most importantly, how much money they saved us: $228.07! Disclosure: Home Ever After was compensated by Kraft Foods to create this post.

Tip #1a- Pack a lunch to take to school. Savings: $12.10. 

This tip might seem insignificant until you figure out how much lunch really costs.  A child buying hot lunch at school can easily be spending a large chunk of your grocery budget ONLY on one meal per day.

For my daughter to buy hot lunch for 2 weeks, it would cost $30! By way of comparison, I figured out how much a lunch from home cost (calculated from actual prices and serving sizes of the ingredients): Peanut butter and jelly sandwich: 72¢, Yogurt: 59¢, Snack crackers: 10¢, Orange: 38¢ = Cost for lunch from home: $1.79.

The savings from packing her lunch for 2 weeks was $12.10, which might not seem like much, but for the entire school year our savings would be $193.60!  Keep in mind we only have 1 child in school; imagine if we had 5 school-aged kids, like my friend Toni at Happy Housewife. She’d be saving $968 a year.

Tip #1b- Pack a lunch to take to work.  Savings: $80.

My husband ate lunch at home every day for the last 2 weeks instead of eating fast food on his lunch break.  He’d normally spend $8 per meal at Taco Bell (near his work). By my husband eating leftovers at home, we saved $80!

Tip #2- Big to Little. Savings: $20.

Repackaging large quantities of food into single servings was my favorite tip (and one that I was already practicing). Example: a 3-pack of Hannah Montana lunch-sized packs of dried cranberries cost $4.12, while a whole bag of dried cranberries cost only $1.68! I saved approximately $20 by using this tip for 2 weeks’ worth of snacks.

Tip #4- Have a soup and sandwich night. Savings: $20.

As directed, we had 1 soup and sandwich meal per week (and it saved me time, too!). Making homemade bread would lower the cost even more.

Tip #5- Fast Food Switcheroo. Savings: $60.

We bought enough convenience foods for 2 meals (think frozen pizzas) to take the place of going out to a restaurant when I didn’t have time to cook dinner. Considering that our restaurant tabs would’ve been between $40 and $50, this tip worked wonders.

Tip #12- Go Beyond the List.  Savings: $35.97.

I often find the best sales when I least expect them. It’s important to allow myself to buy things not on my shopping list when I find these great deals, and to stock up by buying a large quantity to maximize my savings.  To take advantage of this tip, don’t just look for your list items; keep your eyes open for clearance tags and sale signs for unadvertised specials.

This week I bought a lot of items that weren’t originally on my list because they were on sale, such as: 6 loaves of bread to freeze, coffee, crackers, 11 pounds of ground turkey, pomegranates, and more.  By watching for these sales and stocking up, I RARELY pay full price for the grocery items I need. You can do the same!

This challenge proved a valuable point to me:

Grocery shopping is a large spending category in which we can plan ahead and shop smarter to spend less on groceries without sacrificing quality or nutritional value.  Now get saving!

Disclosure: Home Ever After was compensated by Kraft Foods to create this post.