What are some good ways to control costs for groceries?
For a while I tried shopping multiple grocery stores, checking fliers each week from three different stores and then making the trip to all three stores to save ten cents on each item. After a couple months, I decided it just wasn't worth it.  So, I picked my favorite store.  I shop once a week, after reviewing the flier and making a list.  I clip coupons and try to only buy what's on my list.  (I confess that coupons sometimes get me to buy a brand or item I wouldn't have otherwise... it's my weakness!) The biggest place that we save money though, is by paying attention to meat prices.  I know that chicken and pork go on sale for $1.99/lb every 4 to 6 weeks at my grocery store.  When it does, I buy a enough to last until the next sale, and freeze it in single-meal portions.  Steak and fish are special treats, but on the rare occasion that they're less than $4/lb, I'll buy those.  We also try to limit our meat consumption to every-other-day. It's not worth it for me to obsess over the price of ketchup that I buy twice a year, but on expensive items like meat, and items we use daily, I become familiar with their regular prices and sale prices, and buy extra when it's on sale.  If, like me, you don't have room in your brain to keep track of the prices of everything, stick with the things you spend the most on, either because they're expensive, or you buy a lot. Probably my biggest cost saving is to make my own sandwiches for lunch. I take this one step further by buying joints of meat to roast and slice for the filling. This not only tastes better but is quite a bit cheaper. For example today I roasted a 5 kg ham (about 11 lbs), it cost me £16 to buy (around $25), but I've sliced it, wrapped the slices in foil and frozen them. I've made around 20 packs, each pack has enough ham for sandwiches for me and my wife for a day. I also do this with beef, chicken and turkey and just get a pack of whatever we fancy out of the freezer the night before so it's defrosted enough to make sandwiches in the morning. Definitely don't grocery shop when you're hungry.  Also, watch for sales, and then buy in bulk and freeze it. Also make a menu and make a shopping list from that.  It will help you control how much you buy, and help to enforce only buying what you need.  You don't need to limit your menu, but buying what you need in appropriate quantities will help.  Don't forget to add snacking and desserts to your menu. Check out the bulk stores like BJs, Sam's Club or whatever else is available to you.  You can definitely save money shopping there but you also need to keep your wits about you as well.  Example, if you're buying in bulk only to let food go to waste, obviously that's not good either... Cooking cheaply is time consuming. We cook cheaply, but we take more time to do it. May be hard for a busy family.  If you cook everything from scratch, it's usually a lot cheaper. Also pre-planning meals helps.  If you can coordinate your ingredients, you can save money.  Saving money takes time and practice. I find that when we're rushed, we waste a lot more food than when we properly take the time required. Set aside the amount of grocery money you want to spend in a week in cash. Then buy groceries only from this money. The first week make it a generous amount so you don't get rediculous and give up. And stick to it when you are out of money (make sure you have some canned goods or something around if you run out of money a day short). And do not shop when you are hungry. All excellent answers.  Scott W. already mentioned to look out for sales and many other answers are ways to be smart with portions:  don't overbuy, or be smart with bulk buys. But, I'm surprised nobody mentioned one of the things I'd consider obvious about saving money on groceries:  coupons! Coupons can save cash.  We'll sometimes use coupons for brands we'd be buying anyway, or other comparably-priced brands that we're willing to try.  The thing to be careful of with coupons is when the manufacturer is attempting to up-sell you to a premium brand, or trying to get you to buy a product you'd never have bought anyway. Anyway, we especially like the coupons that Costco sends in the mail once in a while, or those they hand out at the warehouse entrance.  What better way to save than to: All the better if the items aren't perishable.  When we have the space and those grocery savings stars are all in alignment, we load up on such items as paper towels, oatmeal/cereal bars, soap, etc. If you are willing to use one main credit card for shopping, use a grocery points rewards card like PC Financial Mastercard.   Pay for the groceries using the card to earn points and use those points to reduce costs.  The only limitation is that you must shop at Loblaws, Superstore, No Frills, Zehrs, Fortinos. It works out to $1 = 10 points and 20,000 points = $20.  So that works out to spend $1 to earn back $0.01. This may not help with the overall grocery issue, but I find that there are items that I can do without the name brand version of.  A handy rule-of-thumb is to start with the least-expensive brand and work your way up, until you find one that your family likes.  For instance, I've learned I can do without French's mustard in favour of no-name, but there's no way I can live without Kraft peanut butter. "Keep a notebook. (or spreadsheet, etc. whatever works) Start to track what things cost as few can really commit this all to memory.  You'll start to find the regular sale prices and the timing of them at your supermarkets. I can't even tell you the regular price of chicken breasts, I just know the sale is $1.79-1.99/lb, and I buy enough to freeze to never pay full price.  The non-perishables are easy as you don't have to worry about spoilage. Soap you catch on sale+coupon for less than half price is worth buying to the limit, and putting in a closet.  Ex Dove soap (as the husband, I'm not about to make an issue of a brand preference. This product is good for the mrs skin in winter) - reg price $1.49. CVS had a whacky deal that offered a rebate on Dove purchase of $20, and in the end, I paid $10 for 40 bars of soap. 2 yrs worth, but 1/6 the price.  This type of strategy can raise your spending in the first month or two, but then you find you have the high runners ""in stock"" and as you use products from the pantry or freezer, your spending drops quite a bit. If this concept seems overwhelming, start with the top X items you buy. As stated, the one a year purchases save you far less than the things you buy weekly/monthly." "Please stay away from snakes. Don't use a credit card to buy your food. Those credit companies will eat you alive. Those are reward points they're giving you. It's like the casino giving you a free $50 to start out with. They designed the game. They are going to win. As for groceries, if you are a coupon clipper, check out thegrocerygame.com: ""Teri's List is a weekly publication of the lowest-priced products at your supermarket or drugstore matched with manufacturers' coupons and specials - advertised and unadvertised. Teri does all the hard work and research, and presents it to you in a straightforward format. Log in each week and print your list!"" Nathon HouseholdBudgetNerd.com Family Budgets for Both of Us" You may use an app called Flipp (or one that serves your area) to check fliers while in the store. If your preferred store has a price match policy, this can save you a few bucks every trip. Just look up at the app what you are buying and price match it over the cashier. It may or may not work on your store, always ask first. Try to learn some of the products you always buy regular prices. That way you can tell a real special from a fake one, like I write here about the 2/$5 specials. Buy generic brands for things you don't care that much, like bleach and other cleaning products that does not have a real quality difference from the branded ones. Try different cheaper brands until you find one that is ok for you. There are lots of ways to save money on groceries, you just need the will to do so ;) Good luck!
"One trick is to make all purchases end in a particular number of your choosing, say ""3"". From now on, all restaurant meals,gas purchases, and anything in your control, end them in 3. When you glance at the bill, you can skip these charges, and look carefully at the rest. It's not 100%, as you couldn't easily impact supermarket charges and many others, but it's half of my routine charges." "I have the same problem. The people above are right to an extent. You have to be more disciplined. But there is no reason why you can't get there in stages. If you try to do too much too fast you'll just give up. You need to find a system that removes some of the passive barriers affecting you.  You need to think what in particular is overwhelming you. For me it was sitting down at the end of the month to write it all down. Writing it all down at the end of the week or even each day didn't work either because it was too much and I had forgotten what stuff was. I'm like you.  The bank account is a record so why do I have to retype it or worse, hand write it out? Bleh. What I ended up doing was divide my expenses into four categories: food (to include all medical) shelter, transportation, spending -- with the first three being needs and the last being wants.  Eating out is spending. I have four checking accounts with four debit cards. I saved up some money. I put a paycheck's worth of money in each because I didn't know how much I spent each month in each category, but knew I didn't spend an entire paycheck in any one category per month. Voila.  No more work. At the store you just put things in the basket by category. At Target you pay for the food and toothpaste with the medical card and the DVD with the spending card. The cashiers don't care that you pay separately. And if you are buying so much crap that separating items by category is a problem, why the heck are you buying so much crap? At the end of the month you will now have a record of how much you spend on transportation, housing (electricity would be paid online from this account for example), medical and fun. That's all anyone needs to help you get started. You can then see if your housing is 35% or less (or whatever percentage you feel is right). The person trying to help the author above is right. A Target charge doesn't indicate whether you bought some oil for the car or cold medicine or a lock for the cabinet door that broke. But when you pay for each of these things under the right account, you do know how the money is allocated.  Doing it this way requires little discipline. Before you put the item in the basket, you just ask yourself, is this a want or a need (which is something you should be doing anyway). If it's a need, is it for my car, house, or body. The house is what I use if i can't figure it out (like paying for the renewal of my professional license).  that's it! You have to stand at the register for longer but so what.  If you are spending all your salary and you stop when you have no more money (assuming you've run through all of your savings, which you will soon if you don't change), then you have no more money to spend. So if you are honest when you put things in the basket(need vs want), you are going to run out of spending money real quick. Your spending money account will be empty but you will still have food money. Set your debit card up so that it denies your charge if you dont have enough money.  Once you realize how much you truly spend for needs in each category, yoy will only put that much in each account. Therefore, You can't use the house card to just ""borrow"" from it till next month. If you do, you won't be able to pay your bills. If you have so little discipline that you knowingly spend your bill money, then there is a deeper issue going on than just finding the right budgeting/cash flow system for you.  Something is seriously wrong and you need to seek professional help. When someone is trying to help you, the first step is to determine what category you are spending too much in. Then when you realize it's the house category, for example, you will need to figure out why you are spending so much in that category. A bank statement wont tell you that. So you can do what we did. On every receipt --before you walk out of the store-- write down what each purchase is on the receipt. Then you can hand over the receipts to whoever is helping you.  Most items are easily recognizable on the receipt so you wont have to write everything down.  you should be doing this for insurance purposes anyway.   Again, if your receipt is so blooming long that this is onerous, probably everything you just spent is not a need and maybe you need to turn right around and return stuff. Maybe you need to go to the store more often so there are only a few purchases on each receipt. Groceries are groceries.  You don't need to detail that out. For Ikea when you have to purchase pieces to a set, we get a separate receipts for each.  So the brackets and shelving for the bedroom will be on one receipt and the brackets and shelving for the other room will be on another receipt. Even at the store I cant figure out what all the little pieces are! But really, if you are making a decent enough salary, then you are probably spending too much on wants and are calling the items needs.  So really your problem is correctly identifying needs from wants. Define a NEED. YOU. Make up your own definition of need Dwell on it.  Let it become meaningful for you.  Oranges are a need. Chocolate is not (no, really it's not! Lol!).  So when you are putting the stuff in the basket, you dont even have to think about whether it's a need or not after a while.  Wants go in the child seat if at all possible (to keep the number of items smaller).  When you are ready to check out, add up the items roughly in the want pile. Ask yourself if you really want all that stuff. Then put some stuff back! At this point ask yourself is the 8 hours I will have to work to pay for this worth it? Am I really going to use it? Will using the item make me happy? Or is it the actual buying of the item that makes me feel powerful? Where will I put it? How much time will I need to maintain it? Then put some stuff back! Get some good goals, a kayaking trip or whatever. Ask yourself if the item is worth delaying the trip. How will I feel later? Will I have buyers remorse? If so, put it back! These are controls you can put into place that don't take a lot of discipline. Writing the items down on the receipt is a more advanced step you can take later.  If you are with friends, go first so that you can write down the items while they are checking out. If you are private and don't want to share your method with your friends, go to the bathroom and in the stall write it down while they wait. Writing the items on the receipt while in the store is sort of a trigger mechanism for remembering to do so.  That pulling out of the card triggers your memory to get out your pen or ask the cashier for one. The side benefit is catching someone using a cloned copy of your card.  In the medical account if you see an Exxon charge, you know it's not yours.  Also, while that one account is shut down, you have three others to rely on in the meantime.  My spouse hated fumbling for the right card. They all look the same. Color code your cards. We have blue cross blue shield so it feels natural to have the food/medical account with a blue sticker (just buy a little circle sticker and place it on the edge so half is on the front and half is on the back -- nowhere near the strip). I've never been given a hard time about it. Our car is red so the car card is red, etc.  If you think four cards is a lot to carry, ask yourself if you would rather carry four cards or keep track of every little thing?  Good luck. I know you will find a system that works for you if you keep trying." Do a monthly budget, unique to each month, before the month begins, spend all of your money on paper. Use envelopes to help you keep track of how much you have left for things you buy throughout the month. Have separate envelopes for things like groceries, restaurants, clothing, entertainment. Put the amount of money for each category in cash in the envelope. Only spend the money out of the correct envelope and don't mix and mingle between envelopes. Pay in cash, with real money. Don't use credit or debit cards, it's proven you spend more when you are not paying with cash. "Spend less.   As @jldugger said, shop around for textbooks.  Make sure to look for used books: you can sometimes save a lot of money there. Be smart about food money.  I could go to our on-campus grill and get a sandwich and a salad for lunch.  If I packed both with toppings, the salad could be a 2nd meal for the same day.  If you have the option, get a meal plan that is just 1 meal a day, and eat a lot that meal. Don't do the starbucks ""pay several dollars for a coffee each day"" thing.  Small-ish regular expenses add up quickly.   Quit smoking (if applicable). Ditch your car if possible.  Some colleges are in cities with good public transportation or are small enough that a bike will do.  Cars are very expensive.  Try to find free activities to do in your free time.  Usually college towns are great places to find free fun.  Pick-up sports, student concerts/art shows, playing board/card/video games. Make sure to track how you're spending money to look for areas where you could be spending less.  There are plenty of tools available to help with this.   Some on-campus jobs involve sitting around and occasionally doing something: IE working the checkout desk at the library.  A job like this (if you can find one) can effectively pay you for doing our homework. One other very important college-related financial tip is to not take out more loans than you can afford.  I've heard a good rule of thumb is not take our more loans than you expect to earn your first year after graduating.  Look up average starting salaries for the career you realistically expect to have after you graduate.  If you would need to borrow much more than that to get your degree, rethink your plans.  Being a slave to a bank for years is a crappy way to spend your life." "What you are doing is neither one.  You are simply watching to make sure you don't overdraw, which itself suggests you might be living hand to mouth and not saving.  Keeping track of your money and budgeting are useful tools which help people get on top of their money.  Which tends to have the effect of allowing you to save.   How much did you spend on groceries last month? Eating out? Gas? If you were ""keeping track of your money"", you could say immediately what you spent, and whether that is above or below average, and why.  How much do you plan to spend in the next 3 months on gas, groceries, eating out?  If you knew the answer to that question, then you would have a ""budget"".   And if those months go by, and your budget proves to have been accurate, or educates you as to what went wrong so you can learn and fix it... then your budget is a functioning document that is helping you master your money.  Certainly the more powerful of the two is the ""keeping track"", or accounting of what has happened to you so far.   It's important that you keep track of every penny without letting stuff ""slip through the cracks"".   Here you can use proper accounting techniques and maybe accounting software, just like businesses do where they reconcile their accounting against their bank statements and wallet cash. I shortcut that a little.  I buy gift cards for McDonalds, Panera, Starbucks, etc. and buy my meals with those.  That way, I only have one transaction to log, $40 - McDonalds gift card instead of a dozen little meals.  It works perfectly fine since I know all that money went to fast food.  A little more dangerous is that I treat wallet cash the same way, logging say two monthly entries of $100 to cash rather than 50 little transactions of left $1 tip at restaurant.  This only works because cash is a tiny part of my overall expenditures - not worth accounting.  If it added up to a significant part, I'd want accounting on that." "As THEAO suggested, tracking spending is a great start.  But how about this -  Figure out the payment needed to get to zero debt in a reasonable time, 24 months, perhaps. If that's more than 15% of your income, maybe stretch a tiny bit to 30 months. If it's much less, send 15% to debt until it's paid, then flip the money to savings.  From what's left, first budget the ""needs,"" rent, utilities, etc. Whatever you spend on food, try to cut back 10%.  There is no budget for entertainment or clothes. The whole point is one must either live beneath their means, or increase their income. You've seen what can happen when the debt snowballs.  In reality, with no debt to service and the savings growing, you'll find a way to prioritize spending. Some months you'll have to choose, dinner out, or a show. I agree with Keith's food bill, $300-$400/mo for 3 of us. Months with a holiday and large guest list throws that off, of course." It's hard to be disciplined when the money is right there to be spent. So what you should do is have two bank accounts. One for savings and one for spending. Figure out how much you need to spend per week and have your pay automatically deposit that much into the spending account and divert the rest into these accounts.  Never touch your savings account unless it is an emergency or whatever. In fact, if you really want, you should put it as a termed deposit which you can't touch. As the only thing you see is your spending balance, you'll be forced to get used to living within your means. After a while, you're going to forget that you have that savings account at all. Put your budget down on paper/spreadsheet/tool of choice (e.g Mint, YNAB, Excel).  Track every cent for a few months.  Seeing it written down makes The Financial Conversation easier.  One simple trick is to pay yourself first.  Take $100 and sock it away each month, or $25 per paycheck - send it to another account where you won't see it.  Then live off the rest. For food - make a meal plan.  Eggs are healthy and relatively cheap so you have breakfast covered.  Oatmeal is about $2 for a silos' worth.  Worst case you can live off of ramen noodles, peanut butter and tuna for a month while you catch up.  Cut everything as some of the others have answered - you will be amazed how much you will not miss. Dave Ramsey's baby steps are great for getting started (I disagree with DR on a great many things so that's not advocating you sign up for anything). Ynab's methodology is actually what got me out of my mess - they have free classes in their website - where budgeting is about planning and not simply tracking. Good luck. My wife and I set up a shared bank account. We knew the monthly costs of the mortgage and estimated the cost of utilities. Each month, we transferred enough to cover these, plus about 20% so we could make an extra mortgage payment each year and build up an emergency fund, and did so using automatic transactions. Other shared expenses such as groceries, we handled on an ad-hoc basis, settling up every month or three. We initially just split everything 50-50 because we both earned roughly the same income. When that changed, we ended up going with a 60-40 split. We maintained our separate bank accounts, though this may have changed in the future. A system like this may work for you, or may at least provide a starting point for a discussion. And I do strongly advise having a frank and open discussion on these points. Dealing with money can be tricky in the bounds of a marriage. "Budgeting is the key.  Saying that you need to eat out less and cook more is good, but ultimately difficult for some people, because it is very difficult to measure. How much eating out is too much? Instead, help him set up a monthly budget. Luckily, he's already got some built-in motivation: He's got a saving goal (trip) with a deadline. When you set up the budget, start here, figuring out how much per month he needs to save to meet his goal.  After you've put the saving goal and the fixed monthly bills into the budget, address what he has left. Put a small amount of money into a ""fast food"" category, and a larger amount into a ""grocery"" category. If he spends everything in his fast food budget and still has the desire to go out, he'll need to raid his grocery budget. And if that is depleted, he'll need to raid his vacation budget. By doing this, it will be made very clear to him that he must choose between going out and taking the trip.  In my opinion, using budgeting software makes the whole budgeting process easier. See this answer and this answer for more detailed recommendations on using software for budgeting." "I see you have posted other questions regarding household budgets.  This is a huge first step.  Once you see what is coming in, then list everything that goes out regularly...and then try to break down what is leftover into spending, household maintenance, gifts, haircuts, whatever...it becomes very obvious if you have x to spend and you spend 3x. I budget a certain amount of discretionary money for both my husband and myself to spend each month.  All of our basic expenses are covered under other categories, but I found out long ago that we each need some money to blow on Starbucks, DVD's, books, etc without having to defend or explain it.  If we spend too much, it digs into the next month's amount, or if we are careful, we get to carry it over. I can impulse shop guilt free because it's budgeted in. Long story short, if you set up a budget and have an amount budgeted for most reasonable expenses, and see what is left over...it becomes harder to ""unwittingly"" overspend.  When you are paying attention to your money, and start looking carefully at how you are spending it, you'll notice." One approach is to control your budget more effectively. For example work out your essential living expenses things like food, rent and other bills you are committed to and compare this to your regular income.  Then you can set up a regular automatic payment to a savings account so you limit the disposable income in your current account. If you keep a regular check on this balance it should make you feel like you have less 'spare' money and so less temptation to spend on impulse purchases.  Similarly   it may help to set a savings goal for something you really do want, even if this is itself  a bit frivolous it will at least help you to discipline yourself.  Equally it may be useful to set a fixed budget for luxuries, then you have a sense that when it's gone it's gone but you don't have to completely deny yourself. Amazon Prime members and Peapod users. Love shopping for grocery online and will try Amazon Fresh. What shocks me is how WalMart and Meijers (MPerk user) have let us leave w/o a fight. 4 kids and we spent ~$200 - 350 a week on groceries. Never heard anything from the brick and mortar stores. Bizare to me. Your company wants to raise $25,000,000 for a new project, but flotation costs are incurred by issuing securities (underwriting, legal fees, etc) First you must determine how much of the $25,000,000 is going to be debt and equity. The company's target D/E ratio is 50% (or .50). For every $0.50 of debt raised they want to raise $1.00 in equity. $1.00 + $0.50 = $1.50 $0.50/$1.50 = 1/3 debt, that leaves the equity portion being 2/3. $25,000,000 * (1/3) = $8,333,333.33 (DEBT)  and $25,000,000 * (2/3) = $16,666,666.67 (EQUITY) Using the Weighted Average Cost then you would do something like this: = (1/3) * .04 + 2/3 * .12 = .09333333 =$25,000,000/(1-.093333) = $27,573,529.40 You will probably never see it.  The startup at some point may start issuing dividends to the shareholders (which would be the owners, including you if you are in fact getting equity), but that day may never come.  If they hire others with this method, you'll likely lose even that 5% as more shares are created.  Think of inflation that happens when government just prints more money.  All notes effectively lose value. I wouldn't invest either, most startups fail. Don't work for free on the vague promise of some future compensation; you want a salary and benefits.  Equity doesn't put food on your table.