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Evaluating How To Cut Costs When It Comes To Food – Ep. 132
Ready to save money on groceries without sacrificing your health or lifestyle? In this episode, let’s go through the process of evaluating and cutting costs when it comes to food. Let’s explore practical tips and strategies to manage grocery budget without compromising on quality. So, here we go!
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Podcast Key Points
0:00 – Episode Overview
1:25 – Tools That Still Work
3:39 – Revisiting The Kitchen Inventory
4:57 – Go To Meals
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Saving Money on Grocery Budget: A Simple Guide for Busy Families
Do you need to cut costs when it comes to food and your grocery budget, this is something that I have been reevaluating, looking at currently and I thought might be helpful helpful if I walked you through the process that I’m using. So, here we go!
This is the Your Money Your Life podcast. I’m your host, Aimee Cerka, a money confidence coach for female entrepreneurs on the path to six figures. After over 10 years in the personal finance industry and multiple personal financial and medical crisis. I was fed up with the lies that are being shouted from the rooftops by the Gurus.
And the media said I help you simplify, solidify and scale your money. By blending tactile money strategies with mindset work, you can create unstoppable finances together, you’ll finally figure out the money thing. So you can make more money in less time without living off of beans and rice, or sacrificing your lifestyle.
Episodes here on the podcast are short and sweet. Being married, having four kids at home, homeschooling being the CEO running the household, I’m kind of busy. And I know you are too. So let’s keep it simple and get to the point. Welcome, I’m so glad you’re here!
Welcome back to the Your Money, Your life podcast. I’m your host, Aimee Cerka. And today I’m walking you through the process that I’ve been using, and of course, is the one that I always teach on how to evaluate what loss that you need to cut. And specifically, let’s talk about food today.
So, I don’t believe that the solution ever is to like, you know, cut everything and just as cheap as possible, because you’re going to sacrifice your health. And your health is just as important if not more so, because I would rather you spend a little bit more on good quality food, you know, that herd nutrition, taking care of yourself, and then not having to spend more money on the long run on health bills, etc, all those things. Because if you are not able to work because your health is poor, then you’re not making money there.
Strategic Shopping for Savings
So see where I’m coming from your health is always important. So I still use a lot of the same strategies that I’ve always used, you know, buying in bulk where it makes sense. So there’s some things that I won’t buy in bulk, because we don’t use enough of it for to make, like logical sense.
But I love using Sam’s, we go to Sam’s quite frequently, then grocery pickup is another one that I use all the time I’ve actually used grocery delivery, now I have the Walmart plus. And honestly, even just the amount that we save on the gas from their member benefits pays for the subscription itself. You can do the year one, then it’s even cheaper when my groceries are delivered to my front doorstep.
And you could turn off substitutions, all the things they normally do all right, with, you know, picking things out, produce wise, etc. Overall, like it saves me quite a bit of time because I don’t have to run to the store and drive all the kids with me. It also saves me money because we’re not tempted to impulsed shop pick things up.
Now, of course we can dive into this another day like grocery shopping smartly. You know, don’t go to the grocery store when you’re hungry, all those things. But even if you just take like that aside, you’re not impulse spending, doing things, buying things that you probably won’t necessarily eat, won’t necessarily want.
You’re not even tempted to do that when you do the online, either grocery pickup or delivery. But what am I leaning into right now. So I have always done a strategic meal plan, you know, rotating meals, less decision fatigue that we have to go through. Let me know if that would be helpful. We can do another episode on that.
Kitchen Inventory: A Key to Savings
And like how we meal plan for success. That’s really not as much when I’m leaning into right now. I have revisited our kitchen inventory. So I keep an inventory. Everything in the pantry freezers. I’m looking intentionally at things that you know, just kind of keep getting missed that we haven’t eaten.
What can we utilize on hand that we already have? What are we actually eating right now? Because we’ll make these lists we’ll make these inventories and we’re keeping things on hand.
But like our preferences change over time, so that list has to constantly be evolving. So re-evaluating re looking at what we have and if we have extra of one thing on hand like a lot. Okay, how can I intentionally what are some recipes that I can look on Pinterest like Okay, right now there is several cartons of egg whites in the fridge. I don’t even know like how that happened.
But like wait, what can I use intentionally this week to use up some of this and then next week, let’s find something else. Keeping mindful in just like the planning there. Okay, so that’s the first part being intentional with the kitchen inventory.
Go-To Meals: Budget-Friendly and Time-Saving
The second thing that I’m really leaning into right now Just there’s been a lot going on. So I’m leaning into my go-to meals. I’m, What else can I add to the go to meals? What can I do to kind of freshen it up, make it different.
If you haven’t heard before, go-to meals or like just budget saver. So that whole, “you’ve been busy”, “you had this plan probably for dinner”, you know, at the beginning of the day, but you get to whatever five o’clock something frappe it’s dinnertime, you don’t know what you’re gonna make your go-to meals is a list of simple meals that you can get on the table in about 30 minutes.
You keep these things on plant on hand with your kitchen inventory, whether it’s you know, breakfast for dinner, or chicken, I get some mac and cheese, keeping it simple, but keeping things on hand so that when those tough moments hit, and you’d love to make something for dinner, and you don’t want to make you have those resources available to you, and you’re not going to just go get pickup, or takeout. There we go. We’re not just going to go by takeout because we don’t we’re going to make for dinner.
Balancing Health and Budget
So, have a list right now my goal is to expand the list, what else could I put on my go to meal list to help keep varieties because if we’re leaning more into that right now, I don’t want to burn us out. But I also want to make sure we’re getting what we need to. So coming up with different ways we do a lot with, you know, like grains and stuff in the morning.
So I know we’re at least getting one dose of vegetables, but there’s always more, we’re gonna get to eat salad from my arrow garden that I got from Christmas, which is super exciting. But using more of the things that you already have, and just taking a fresh look at it because we can get into this autopilot where we just do the same thing over and over and over and over again. Which is good to an extent until you’re burnt out on it or it’s no longer working. And that’s what you really need to spend the time and reflect on.
Meal Planning Made Easy
So if this is helpful, we are going to bring update to the Meal Planning Made Easy workshop. But see, we can figure out how to make that available. Like I’ve done okay, go to aimeecerka.com/meal if you want to be notified when that’s available.
We’re doing more of these live, bite-sized workshops this year. And of course, if you’re inside Money Mastery Academy, you get everything. So if you’re just ready to finally figure out the money thing in the next 12 weeks, put the link to the academy in the show notes as well.
Recap: Smart Strategies for Grocery Savings and Healthy Living
Alright, let’s see, talked about that I still buy in bulk still recommend grocery pickup grocery delivery, those things haven’t changed. We’re still strategic meal planning, all those three things are keeping the same but the kitchen inventory and updated realistic kitchen inventory and leaning into the go to meals and being more intentional with that what’s included different things that can work.
I know you’re busy, I know there’s a lot going on and these tools can definitely help you. So if you want to learn more about the Meal Planning Made Easy workshop, go to aimeecerka.com/meal. Alright, that’s what I got for now. We’ll see you next time.
Special Gift for You
Thank you so much for listening to the Your Money, Your life podcast. I’ve got a special gift for you for sticking around to the end. And if you’re tired of your finances being a mess, this is for you.
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