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You know that shopping with a circular like a Kroger Ad saves people money but who knows which items are great bargains – and who has time to sift through that?! Now you don’t have to! Let me show you how to start saving money on groceries by spending 5 minutes flat!
I love giving wife hacks like how to save money on groceries without cutting coupons. Is it possible? Absolutely! There are more easy ways to save, but let’s get on with the simplest saving hacks (Vlog and resources below).
1. Get a Kroger Plus card A.S.A.P.
They’ll hand you an application at the store for a Kroger Plus card as you are checking out (you can use right away), or you can apply online before you head to the store. Trust me, this is a no-brainer because you will save a lot of money even if you do nothing else. Don’t believe me? Ask the cashier if you can give her your Kroger Plus card at the end of your transaction so you can watch the number drop dramatically from the retail price.
2. Find a local coupon matchup site
Do you know of a website that does your local deal-matching for you? This has been a game changer for me because I had no idea what “good sale prices” on food items were. The deal site that I use is fabulous and services those on the east coast from the deepest south, over to Louisville Kentucky, and up to the Mid Atlantic states.
Our local website scours the Kroger Ad (and many other stores) and finds the Kroger sales for each week. A simple list is there for us to scroll through quickly. From the list, you can “check” the ones you want to buy so that a printable list can be taken with you to the store.
The amazing part of this scenario is that I no longer even have to look at the Kroger ad at all. Woot! Type into Google, “Coupon Matchups +Your nearest city” to find your own deal-matching site (try with and without quotation marks). Don’t let the words ‘coupon’ scare you. We are ignoring coupons at the moment.
3. Decide weekly budget
So the experts say $100 per person- per month is what a frugal American family should be spending on groceries. For example, a family of four would only spend $400 (only 100 a week). That’s pretty low, wouldn’t you agree? I’m ready to try my hand at this and make the stakes a little higher by setting the challenge as only $65 a week instead of $100 (I’d love you to join me).
I went grocery shopping yesterday and only had about five minutes to look over the deals list for the Kroger ad (that’s how I know it can be done), and then I only had about thirty minutes to run in the grocery store and get everything. How do you think I did? Watch my quick video and see if I was able to stay within my budget:
Woohoo! What do you think about that? I originally planned to spend $75, so that’s why I mentioned that I had $10 left over. I was also able to give to something that made my heart happy. Oh, and for the record, I only used ONE of those free coupons by mail that I received from Kroger. It was 40 cents off of the Kroger Salsa. My savings came strictly from only buying those items in each category (meat, produce, packaged, dairy, etc) that were on sale.
Here’s the simplified version in my mind:
I needed to make sure that I bought enough to make about five dinners throughout the next week (we eat bars, oatmeal, or eggs for bfast & leftovers for lunch). For each of those five dinners, I know that I need a meat, a vegetable, and a carb. For example, when I looked at the site listing the sales for my Kroger ad, I chose the type of meat that was on sale (this week it was chicken and pork loin). I chose the type of carbs that were on sale (this week it was sweet potatoes-I already have plenty of rice and pasta at home), etc.
Do those examples make sense?
Practice definitely makes this easier and I’m sharing what dinners I’m making with my $65 grocery haul. Don’t overcomplicate this as I did for years. It’s really very simple. I plan to have chicken quesadillas, pork roast with veggies over pasta, chicken and veggie stir fry over rice, leftover pork roast and veggies with leftover potato salad, and taco soup with tortilla chips and a green salad.
My resources:
An envelope for cash
Are you joining me on this Kroger ad challenge?
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Published on HuffPost, Okefenokee Living Magazine, and more, Shan is a Family Travel Journalist with a passion for helping women lose the overwhelm of planning family-friendly trips in the south. She shares travel reviews & insider secrets that Women REALLY want to know about Georgia, Florida, & the Carolinas vacations.
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Hmm, we have Ralphs, not Kroger in So. Cal. I know they are the same company, do the same suggestions apply? Thanks for sharing at the Blogger’s Pit Stop.
We don’t have a Kroger by me, or any U.S. stores actually, but these are great tip for when we will again. I’ve moved to where it takes me about a half an hour to get to the grocery store, so now I have to be super organized. I’m learning. Thanks so much for linking up to Tips and Tricks. I hope to see you again this week. Have a great weekend.