No more shopping lists with free app

We have eliminated paper shopping lists by using a free app called Our Groceries. You can link the app via entering one email address, so everyone who does the shopping at your house has the up to date grocery list at any time. The best thing is, you can customise the list to be very specific about what you want. There is a paid version of the app but we have been successfully using the free version and love it. No more wasted paper and no more forgetting things as the list is always with us!

Going vegetarian has saved all round

Going vegetarian has been a great move for me in every way. For me, it was an ethical decision as I no longer wanted to eat animals but as an added bonus I have found it saves a lot of money. Pasta sauces don't need meat; beans and lentils are just as tasty and filling and cost a fraction of the price of meat. These days I make all kinds of delicious vegetarian dishes such as pasta bakes quickly and easily, for less than $1!

Save money by ignoring pamphlets

People are constantly amazed when we tell them that we have managed to whittle down our weekly grocery bill to just $100 for our family of four. Our income may not be all that we would wish, but with a little dedication, we have made a huge difference.

For example, in recent months, we have saved $50 per week on our grocery bill, since we have started throwing away our supermarket circulars! For years, I eagerly awaited the arrival each Sunday of the supermarket 'junk' mail. I would plan our eating to a large extent on the weekly specials, and would stock up on a few of them, believing it was saving me money.

However, once I began throwing them away without even a glance, it had an unbelievable effect! Not only did it cut down on the clutter in the house, but amazingly my grocery bill plummeted. I now buy only what I need - as opposed to what the stores want me to buy - and the benefit is showing. By throwing out the junk mail alone, our weekly grocery shop reduced from $150 per week to around $100, saving $2,600 per year!

I still use a menu plan to help me stick to my budget, but now it is food of my choice, rather than being influenced by supermarket advertising. A typical weekly menu might look like:

Monday - Baked chicken and salad (whole chicken $2.50 from local butcher)
Tuesday - Fish and chips (fish $2.00 per pack at ALDI, I use potato gems or
chips about $2.00)
Wednesday - Pasta bake & salad
Thursday - Taco's
Friday - Baked beans (ALDI's are really cheap at around $0.40c for two cans)
Saturday - Chicken legs, pasta and salad (chicken legs $2.00 per kilo)
Sunday - Quiche & salad

I usually have all the meat I need already available, as I buy in bulk, so all I need to buy for the week are any other items to complete the meals. I buy salads and vegetables on alternate weeks - one week we have salad with everything, the next week I buy vegetables for all our meals. It may sound an unusual way of shopping, but this way there is no wastage; unlike when I used to buy both.

I don’t buy everything in bulk, but some items work out more economical, such as:
Bread - I buy bread from Coles after 6pm to take advantage of the markdowns - for example, $0.50c for a packet of bread rolls, or a loaf of bread.
Chickens - Patton’s, our local butcher have many great specials, including chickens for $2.50 each. I buy ten at a time and freeze them; they may not be huge, but plenty enough for a family meal, plus leftovers for sandwiches.
Fish - ALDI have oven bake fish for $2.00 per packet (the cheaper of the two
versions). They are like large fish fingers, and perfect for us. Combined
with the chips or potato gems, the whole meal for a family of four comes to $4.00.
This is a standard meal for us, and I make sure I buy plenty to last between ALDI visits. Ice cream - I wait for special offers so I can purchase five litres for $5.00 and buy in bulk.
It also pays to buy washing powder and toilet paper in bulk when on special, as they don't go off and you will always need them!

When I was planning my meals around the supermarket brochures, my shopping list was actually doubling - that was without any impulse buying as well! Another thing I also now do to cut down costs, is alternate a meat meal, with a non-meat meal. You will see from the menu plan above how we eat meat and vegetables one night, baked beans the next, or pasta bake and so on. We enjoy our meat, but find we can cope with every second meal being meat based, and it really keeps costs down.

We don’t eat cereal every day for breakfast, it works out too expensive - it’s actually more expensive to eat than steak! We have toast, eggs or grilled tomatoes. With the children, lunches are mainly sandwiches; the kids like their Vegemite, peanut butter and Nutella; the adults make use of any leftover meat. For school lunches, I dropped most of the expensive packaged goods (for example, Rollups) in favour of two sandwiches and a piece of fruit. They still have a lunchbox treat now and then, but it’s sometimes, not everyday.

One tip I have learned which has really helped me is that the family actually prefers me to cook from their range of ‘family favourites’, rather than consulting cookbooks or fancy magazines. If this is what they enjoy - stick to it and save yourself the time and money!

Break your expensive shopping habits

We've saved at least $10,000 this year alone, simply by changing our shopping habits!
 
Almost every day, we'd stop at the supermarket on our way home to buy fresh ingredients for dinner – however, we'd also buy a couple of impulse items while there. The daily grocery bill was at least $30; an extra $150 each week on top of our weekly 'big' grocery shop!
 
To reduce the number of trips we made to the supermarket, we analysed our spending habits. We looked at all the grocery items we purchased and separated them into three categories:
 
1. Perishable items that need to be used within a week or so, for example, milk, bread and vegetables.
 
2. Items that had a longer shelf life or could be stored so they last longer, for example, meat that could be frozen, canned items, pasta and rice.
 
3. Items with an extended shelf-life such as toilet paper, detergent, toothbrushes and so on. We then estimated how much of each item we would use in a year.
 
We looked at what we could make or grow ourselves, for example, bread baked in the oven or herbs and vegetables grown in the garden. That left a limited number of items we needed to buy on a weekly basis including milk, fruit and vegetables; at least until the garden was established. These were all items we could buy from the local fresh food market, avoiding a trip to the supermarket, which meant lower prices and fewer impulse buys.
 
The next step was to develop a monthly meal planner - five meals per week with two nights of leftovers or 'invention' cooking using whatever was in the fridge, freezer and cupboard. We put all the recipes in a folder and worked out a monthly shopping list based on these recipes. All non-perishable ingredients are now purchased in this monthly shop. Meat is also purchased monthly from a butcher who offers bulk purchase discounts; the meat is frozen in meal lots ready to be thawed in advance for each meal.
 
We don't tend to cook in bulk, as we enjoy the process of creating fresh meals each day, but we do cook enough to provide the next day's lunch and occasionally cook a couple of casseroles or 'one pot' dishes at the same time and put them in the fridge - the flavour seems to build and is even nicer after a day or two.
 
Our menus also change depending on the season and what produce is available at that time. We're in the process of developing 'summer', 'autumn', 'winter' and 'spring' meal plans with enough recipes to get us through each season.
 
Finally, during each monthly shop we'd buy extended shelf-life items when they were on special until we had a year's worth. It takes up some extra cupboard space but we never run out of essentials and don't have to duck out to the supermarket.
 
Our ultimate goal is to reduce our 'big' shops to once a quarter rather than monthly – this will save us even more time and money by further reducing our exposure to the supermarket.
 
We have saved $150 a week by eliminating daily shops – this adds up to $7800 annually. We've saved even more by shopping at fruit wholesalers and butchers, buying in bulk or taking advantage of specials. By changing our shopping habits, we estimate we've saved at least $10,000 this year!