Another things is that in a few years, when Funnel and I are parents, we’re planning on living on one income so that I can be a stay-at-home mom.  We’ve been trying to practice this as much as possible now and live below our means so when that day comes, it won’t be a huge lifestyle adjustment. 

The thing that overwhelms me the most in my weekly to-do list is grocery shopping.  Even without trying to be frugal, grocery shopping is a challenge!  I think it’s hard to plan meals that are healthy, taste good and fun to make, and most of all, share common ingredients with one another so that I have less to buy and don’t have a lot of random left-over stuff.    Then when you add the saving-money factor, it’s even more overwhelming!

But I really want to work towards saving significant money in this area.  I know some super-women who clip coupons, only buy things that are on sale (even if it means visiting multiple stores to complete their shopping), can their own veggies and fruits, make and freeze meals ahead of time in bulk, and spend probably half of what I do on my weekly grocery bill (and their families are double the size of mine!)  It requires a lot of planning, extra time, and commitment, but I’m hoping to makes some small steps in this area.  My goal for the next year is to slowly implement some steps for saving money in my grocery shopping, and hopefully soon it will be second nature!

A couple of things I am doing now:

1.  Making a big batch of soup on Sundays to use in our lunches the following week.  The first week I made black bean soup with a bag of dried beans I had on hand, last week I made beef vegetable soup, and this week I am making a vegetarian 16-bean soup.  I’ve made the soup in my crock-pot on Sundays, then divided it up into Tupperware containers for our lunches during the week.  Funnel isn’t a soup person, but he’s really liked the soups I’ve made so far.  Dried beans are dirt cheap, and before,when we packed in the mornings before work, it was a common occurrence to be running late, not have time to make sandwiches and end up spending $5 or $6 to eat out.  A week’s worth of  soup costs less than that!  And the crock pot is so easy – you just dump all the ingredients in and let it do it’s thing!

(( the beans for my 16-bean soup.  Aren’t they pretty? ))

2.  Avoiding “convenience foods”.  This week on a radio program I was listening to, they had a guest talking about how to save money at the grocery store.  Her biggest tip was to avoid convenience foods – anything pre-cut, pre-washed, pre-cooked, pre-mixed.  I didn’t think this tip applied to me because I usually make my food from scratch, but then as she went on,  I realized how many things in my pantry and refrigerator were convenience foods: pancake mix, individually packaged applesauces, flavored oatmeal packets, bagged lettuce, rice & black bean mix… and I could go on.  She said you spend 4 to 5 times as much on convenience foods than if you prepared it yourself.  Yesterday, I didn’t buy any convenience foods at my weekly shopping trip! 

I’m going to slowly start doing more and more things to save money and I thought it might be helpful to blog about this ongoing journey of cutting expenses, because I’m sure other people would like to work on this too!

What are your best tips for saving money on food?  I would love to hear them!