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If you're currently working on eating healthier, there's no doubt that you may be experiencing a bit of tension surrounding the cost of groceries. Filling your shopping cart with plenty of lean proteins, fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, as well as whole grain pastas and cereals can leave you wishing you had a few more dollars to spend.
Fortunately, if you do make your food selections wisely, you can lower the overall cost of food without sacrificing proper nutrition.
Here are some tips on how you can cut costs effectively to get you started.
Choose Bulk Bins More Often
The first thing you should do in effort to save money as you work towards the goal of eating healthier is make sure you're choosing selections from the bulk bins as often as possible. Foods will typically be quite a bit cheaper in this section and often there is quite a high variety to choose from.
Good options that you can purchase from the bulk bins include dry oats, nuts, dried fruit, barley, and whole grain rice and pasta.
Watch Flyers For Discounts
The second thing that can really make a big difference over time in your grocery budget is watching flyers for discounts. When you see individual coupons for thirty cents, fifty cents, a dollar off, and so on, it may not seem like that big of a deal, however if you are routinely getting in the habit of using these coupons whenever possible, you can save hundreds of dollars a year.
Of particular importance is noting when there are meat and fish sales, as often you can get really good deals when a sale is going on. Additionally, some grocery stores run certain days of the month where everything you purchase is 10% off, so buying on those days is also important to save on your total grocery costs.
Make Use Of Your Freezer
Often women will overlook the benefits of regularly making use of their freezer when it comes to saving money as well. If you're watching for meat sales as mentioned above, you can easily store boxes of chicken breasts, lean steaks, fish cutlets, or even egg white containers in the freezer for up to two to three months.
Another great idea is to consider preparing larger dinner meals and then using the leftover's to store in the freezer for future lunches. This not only cuts down on the time you need to make your lunch for the coming day, but will also significantly reduce costs if you typically purchase your lunches rather than brown-bagging it.
Consider Going Vegetarian A Couple Days A Week
The health benefits of a vegetarian lifestyle have been studied for many years now and more and more women are choosing to live this lifestyle.
While doing so it is still very important to keep a few key factors in mind such as meeting their protein, iron, and calcium needs, as vegetarian diets can routinely fall short in these nutrients.
If you are being sure to look after this however, vegetarian diets do tend to be slightly cheaper than their protein-rich counterparts due to the fact that calorie for calorie, grains, fruits, and vegetables are less costly than meat.
Even if you would prefer not to be a strict vegetarian every day of the week, even making two or three days vegetarian would help reduce food costs.
So be sure you're keeping these tips in mind. Making sure to regularly track your grocery dollars so you can see exactly where they are going will help out tremendously. Reducing the number of times you have to eat out in a given month is another thing that will definitely lower your spending as regardless of how you slice it, restaurant meals will always be pricier than those that you can make in the home.
