Our Costco receipts used to be downright scary. Now, not so much! Here's how we did it …
Our monthly Costco trips used to be in the $500-$600 range pretty regularly. This used to contribute to groceries and household spending in the $1300+ range, which was way too much.
Now that we've begun budgeting in earnest, and tracking our spending carefully, those monthly Costco bills are now $200-$300, which is far more reasonable and helps us to get by with something like half of what we used to spend on groceries and household.
Average Grocery Bill 2: The Halving
The tactics I'll talk about below didn't involve chasing loss leaders at seven different grocery stores or clipping a zillion coupons. (We do use iBotta but the savings, though awesome, are icing on the much bigger cake.)
We shop at the same places that we have over the past few years: Costco, Walmart, Wegmans, and occasionally other places, without changing our schedule to hit sales.
Here are five ways that we've changed our habits to cut our grocery bill in half:
- We make a “need list” of staples we're getting low on. Certain things we buy regularly, so we have a whiteboard just off the kitchen to capture a list of what's getting low. It's organized loosely by store. The list helps us gauge when we need to shop, and for what. Here's what part of ours looks like now:
- We take a list and stick to it. There's a good chance you've heard this trick before. The reason is that it works. Having a list takes a lot of the power out of the gigantic marketing efforts exercising warfare on your senses the moment you step into the store. You know what you're there for, so all of the colorful displays and exciting endcaps don't make any difference.
- We've gotten far better about shopping alone and together. When we shop alone, we shop with a purpose. When we shop together, we hold each other in check. This used to not be the case; we'd egg each other on, and we'd come home with a lot of stuff that we didn't need. When I go to Walmart by myself with the shopping list, I'm usually texting my wife to see what we really need, what will work if Walmart is out of something, how much to get, etc. This isn't codependency; it's saving money!
- We have a better idea of our inventory. We have three large containers of garlic salt. This is enough garlic salt to last until I retire. When we pass the spice aisle in Costco, I ask my wife if we need more garlic salt, as a joke. The need list (above) helps us with this. In addition, we also do a rough inventory every so often not only to catch things that we need but to reassure us of things we don't need.
- We don't shop just for something to do. Maybe this kind of thing happens after having been married a bit. (We went to Costco this past Friday night and ran into another friend, and were commiserating that date night was beginning to evolve into these kinds of things.) But going to a store without a plan or to alleviate boredom has the potential to be costly.
What strategies do you use to keep your grocery bills in check?
