Buying Groceries on a Budget

Many families in the United States have to do their grocery shopping on a tight budget. The rising prices of essentials, like food and gas, only make it more difficult to stay within a budget each month. The tips below have proven to be helpful in saving money at the grocery store:

Get the best nutrition for your buck. When money is tight, skip the chip and soda aisles, which have little nutritional value. Go back to simple foods, such as skim and low-fat milk, eggs, beans, lean beef, whole grains, fruits, vegetables and nuts give you the best nutrition value for the money you put into them. 

Start cooking at home. Planning your meals is going to be the best use of your time. Use grocery store ads to plan your menus around what's on sale. However, think good nutrition, not just cheap food when meal planning.
Consider investing in a deep freezer. Having a full-size freezer allows you to buy food in bulk and stock up on sale items. This also allows you to cook a lot of food at one time and to prepackage foods into single servings for the entire family. Nevertheless, buying food in bulk is only beneficial if you will actually use it.

Plant a garden. You do not need a lot of land to grow your own food. You can grow tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, etc in pots in a full light window or outside on a patio. The more you grow, the less vegetables you have to buy at the store in the summer and fall. 

Healthful Grocery List

Having a general grocery list to reference makes grocery shopping less stressful. Below is a list of healthful products to guide your purchases at the store.

fresh fruits (example: citrus fruits, berries)
fresh vegetables (example: leafy green or orange vegetables)
skim or 1% milk
light yogurt
low-fat cottage cheese
lean meat (example: tenderloin, sirloin, 90% lean ground beef, skinless chicken breast, skinless turkey breast, salmon, herring, trout, tilapia)
whole wheat bread
whole grain cereal (with <6 grams sugar per serving)
oatmeal

Two important rules to follow during grocery shopping are to not go when you are hungry. People tend to buy more food and more temptation foods when they go grocery shopping when they haven't eaten for awhile. The next rule is always look at food labels. The claims on the box are not always true so do your research!