7 Easy & Effective Ways to Save Money on Your Grocery Bill

1. Shop once a week

Have you ever gone to the supermarket for a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread, and you've left with $50, $75, $or $100 worth of groceries that you think is such a great deal?

Psychology is a tool that supermarkets use to get you to shop more and spend more money. Shopping once a week keeps you out of the store, which is the best way to save money on your grocery bill.

2. Shop with a list

Make a list before you go to the supermarket and stick to it. If the tomato sauce is buy ten, save $2, or buy three and save money; if it's not on your list, don't buy it.

Sometimes those deals save you pennies; sometimes, you're not saving money at all. If you only need one can of that tomato sauce, and it's buy ten and save, then next thing you know, even though your budget is for specific items, you're buying ten bottles. Stick to your list.

3. Go only to the aisles you need to

Go to the aisles that you need to go to and get out. Before I knew what was going on at the supermarket, before I had a budget, and before I had a list, in my head, I knew what I needed, but I was overspending by over $100 a week.

Once I started having a list and meal planning, I saved over $5,000 the first year alone on food and groceries. My meals didn't change.

It's not like we went from having steak to eating eggs. The price and the savings at the end of the year were so big I paid off my first credit card with that $5,000 I saved.

4. Snack before you shop

These four words saved me so much money and were so easy. Oreos were the best thing that would always end up in my cart because I was hungry.

When I'm hungry, and I shop, I spend more. If you don't have it written down in front of you, that list you had in your head suddenly goes out the window because you’re hungry.

Snacking before grocery shopping could save you so much money and calories. I can eat a whole pack of Oreos if you give me ten minutes with a big glass of milk, and I'm hungry when I get home. So snack before you shop.

5. Save on organic fruits and vegetables

If you like to shop organic for your fruits and vegetables or have a few items on your list that you feel more comfortable buying organic, then you know the price of organic fruits and vegetables is crazy at the supermarket.

I highly suggest that you try Misfits Market. It's a website that you go on, and you order what you know you need, and they ship it to you. It is a game changer when it comes to organic fruits and vegetables.

The best part about Misfits Market is that you can't beat the price of organic fruits and vegetables. The premise of Misfits Market is they have organic fruits and vegetables that are little misfits the supermarkets weren't going to take for whatever reason.

Maybe they had enough, or maybe they had like little knobs on them or something less than perfect. So Misfits Market, instead of having that produce go to a landfill where it would rot, sells it to you at a discount, and they ship it to your home.

6. Reinvent leftovers

If you've gone through making a meal, many people will say, my family doesn't eat leftovers, or I don't like leftovers. If you don't like leftovers or your family doesn't, there are other ways that you can repurpose them.

See what you can make one day, and then the leftovers become entirely different. I made burgers, and I repurposed the leftovers into baked ziti. That way, nothing goes to waste in your fridge and gets thrown out. So it saves you money.

7. Shop online

When I can shop online, ordering groceries and being able to go pick them up curbside saves me a lot of money. If you have that option in your town, take advantage of it.

One, it's a free option. They don't charge you extra for it. The magic for me in shopping online is that I know exactly what I need for the week because I've meal planned, and I add it to the list, and then I see how much of my grocery budget is left over.

I have that running total as I add things on, and then I can use whatever I have left over to save as grocery money in the future. That's when I stock up on things that are on sale, poultry, meats, vegetables, or anything extra that I know I don't need, but I still stay under budget. I can stock up on it and stick it in the freezer.

Shopping online has also helped me cut spending because you can see exactly what you have on there. So if those oreo cookies, for example, snuck into your cart, you could just hit delete. I stay on target every single time by doing that, and it saves me so much money.

Ways to save money on your grocery bill

Make simple changes to your usual grocery shopping routine, saving thousands of dollars a year. You don't have to change what you're eating; you have to change what you weren't planning on buying. Add your favorite way to save money on your grocery bill in the comment section below.