How to Beat Inflation at the Grocery Store in 5 Easy Steps

1. Create a meal plan

My very first tip is to create a meal plan. You can have a weekly or monthly meal plan, but the point of a meal plan is for you to know exactly what you're eating for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

This will help you save money because you will take away the decision-making process of what to have for each meal, which will require you to impulse shop less.

Your meal plan will help you spend only one day planning for the week, and then you don't have to think about it again.

2. Create a grocery list

Meal planning is the act of you deciding what you're going to eat each day, then making your grocery list as detailed as possible. Once your meal plan is created, you will craft a specific grocery list of what you need to complete that meal plan. Your list will have snacks, drinks, etc.

If you like to eat out, your meal plan can include that. Say, you know, on Tuesday, we're eating dinner out; or Friday, it's a pizza night; or Sunday, it's family dinner at Grandma's house. It's just making sure that you know where your money will go when it comes to food.

Have a clear plan of what you're eating each day and a clear grocery list of what you need to make those meals. This helps you save money because you won't be in the grocery store daily. The more you go to the grocery store, the more you'll spend money, and the prices are already higher.

3. Check your local stores besides just grocery stores

Shopping at one store is not always the most cost-effective. Buying in bulk at BJ's and Sam's Club, and Costco is not always the lowest price.

You will need to sit down and spend 30-40 minutes a week looking at your local stores. Local stores are your local grocery stores, your Walmart, your Target, BJ's or Costco, or Sam's Club if you have a membership.

You are going to look at all of their store ads, and based on that grocery list that you need to fulfill, you are going to decide what stores you're going to shop at.

I'm not telling you to drive all around town and waste gas, but for most of us, there are stores in our general shopping area. I like to choose one, maybe two stores to shop at every other week.

4. Set a clear budget

Setting a budget helps you save money because it forces you to be creative and only buy what you need.

If your weekly grocery budget is $100 and you only have $100 in cash when you go to Walmart and your local grocery store, you cannot impulse shop or buy anything not on your list because you only have $100 in cash.

When you set that budget, this is also helping to save money and beat inflation.

For example, if you want to cook chicken wings for your family, chicken wings are more expensive than chicken legs, so with your budget, you may decide that while wings are great, they're more expensive, so we need to get chicken legs.

Instead of spending $22 on a pack of chicken wings, we're spending $12 on a pack of chicken legs, and we can stretch our $100 further. We're still getting chicken. We're just getting legs versus wings.

A good rule of thumb with grocery inflation is to set your budget around $125 per person per month. Your monthly grocery budget for a family of four would be around $500.

5. Use coupons and rebates

We're not going to buy any inserts. We're not stressing about printing coupons. We are going to use the store app. I told you to check out your local area.

From that, you will download all of the store apps, set up free accounts, and then go in and clip any coupons or things you will buy. That's going to lower your cash out of pocket.

When waffles are "buy one get one free" at Publix, and then there's a fifty cents digital coupon at Publix as well, we're going to clip that 50 Cent's digital, and we're going to get our waffles for even cheaper.

Also, sign up for rebate apps like Shopkick and Fetch. Scroll through your rebate apps, and you'll see if there are rebates for anything that you need.

Rebates allow you to recoup some of your money. I would encourage you to download the store apps, clip all of those digital coupons, use those to your advantage, and then once you get home, scan your receipts to the rebate apps.

How to beat inflation at the grocery store

Those are my top five tips for how to beat inflation at the grocery store. To recap:

1. Create a meal plan
2. Take a detailed grocery list of the things you need to complete your meal plan
3. Check out your local stores to see what's on sale at what store, and decide what stores you're going to shop at for the week
4. Set a budget
5. Once you have your budget set clip all of those coupons and use your rebate apps to help keep your out-of-pocket as low as possible.

You can help ease how grocery inflation affects you by making a few changes in your routine.

What money-saving tips do you use to beat inflation at the grocery store? Comments below with your hints and tips.