10 Things We Took Off our Grocery List to Save Thousands!

10 Things We Took Off our Grocery List to Save Thousands! Of course while living tiny!

1. Soda
2. Bottled Water
3. Chips
4. Name Brand Items
5. Rolls and buns
6. Single individual meals ex) banquet, hungry man, etc
7. Deli salads
8. Rotisserie chicken
9. Individual yogurts
10. Individual Taco Packets

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Instead of buying soda and bottled water, we actually bought ourselves each a water bottle to refill with our tap water.  If we decide to have something other than water, we will buy the box of 10 flavor packets to turn our water into tea, lemonade, etc. Buying a 12 pack of soda can a week can cost over $285 a year vs buying flavor packets for only $61 per year.

Chips are often a big buy for many households including ours, but we shy away from them because a bag of chips for $3.99 can add up especially if they are snacked on daily. This can add up to over $200 a year if you buy them each week!

Brand name items…you want to know something funny, we used to switch the ketchup and ranch.  What we would do was save the name brand bottle and place the store brand product in the bottle to fool people it was the name brand item!  They never even knew that it was not the brand name product!  Give it a try! This can save you a little $2 – $4 each time you buy it.

Often in our household, we use regular bread for everything we eat from hotdogs to BBQ pulled pork sandwiches and hamburgers. Why spend an extra $1.50 each week when most of the time the rolls and buns go bad and have mold on them by the time you get them out of the cupboard again.

Hungry man $3.50 a meal!  This is a lot and if you are feeding a family with these…that can add up!  Think about it this way buy 4 a week for your family of 4. $728 a year for those individual meals!  Why not spend that making a homecooked meal of spaghetti and meatballs or chicken, veggies, and potato?  It is call convenience, but we have to find ways to save money right now. 

Deli salads, these are marked up a lot!  Being in the retail business, I know.  Just do not buy them. End of story. Same with rotisserie chicken – we used to do contests on these to grow our gross profit.  Please stay away if you are trying to save money! I know what you are saying to me, but they are so quick and easy after work when I do not feel like cooking.  Well, meal plan and cook all your chicken in 1 night for the entire week and then you can just warm it up in the microwave and wow its done.  We do this often!  We cook our entire family pack of chicken in the crock pot on low all day and bam we have chicken for 3 nights!

Individual yogurts, yes these are delicious and healthy but if you buy 7 each week.  Here is the savings on this… are you ready? Plain old Yoplait $218 in savings and if you like Chobani $487 in savings!

I don’t know about you, but in our house hold tacos are a staple.  We usually have some kind of tacos each week whether it is tacos in a pasta shell, beef tacos, chicken tacos, or pork tacos.  We do not even bother buying the individual packs of taco seasoning because that would cost us $51 per year for a 1.5 oz packet on our weekly budget and we spend $6.99 for a 21 oz container.  This is a savings of $34 per year!  Small wins here my friend!

Bonus grocery saving tip…

Eat everything you have before going shopping at the store.

This means…

Eat left overs — yes, eat them for lunch or save it for a leftover dinner night!

I always packed my lunch for work and then when I became pregnant. I could not eat sandwiches anymore, so often I would take the left overs from the night before and eat them for lunch. Now, both my husband and I do this since I stay home.

It is easy and saves you money!!

It doesn’t have to be forever, but I am not joking these small changes can help you win!

Actually the other night, we used our left over corn, chicken breast, and salsa and made chicken tacos plus we had a can of refried beans and this was our dinner! Cost = $0.00 we had everything already at home. We made our 7 meals into 8 meals!

We are actually turning our 7 meals into 9 meals because another leftover we have is chili and we are going to poor this over some rice and have chili rice!

Little things make a big deal!

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Yes, we live tiny with a baby. We budget to save more and are working on paying off our “mortgage.” We want you to live your best life with financial freedom. We want you to enjoy what God created us for!

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