How to stay in your grocery shopping budget starts way before you make it to the store. You MUST prepare before you shop! Before you go any further you need to make sure you have a budget. Silly to stay in your budget if you don’t have one. So sit down talk to your hubby make a household budget and get a grocery budget as well!
A good starting point for a food budget is to have $100 per person per month. Now if you are spending way over that now try knocking 10% off each month.. For example if you spend $1,000 per month knock of 10% would mean your new budget is $90.
Keeping a well stocked pantry
So I just created a video which you can see below around my pantry. A well stocked pantry looks different for everyone. 3 months, 6 month, 1 year or more. The basics of a well stocked pantry is to buy 1 for now and 2 for later.
Personally I do not like the pre-done lists for how much to buy for food storage. Why? Because every family eats differently. You may want to start there but it is only a guideline. See what your family really eats. Our family in winter eats about 20 lbs of oats a month. So if I want a year supply I would go off of my larger amount of 20 lbs of oats. So the 20lbx 12 or 240 lbs of oats.
I then buy things in bulk or on sale at there peak price. Let’s say my favorite ketchup is on sale. I am completely out of ketchup and the normally $3 bottles are marked down to $1. I might buy them all or say I allotted $9 for my buy 1 now and $2 later I might buy as much as $9 would buy or 9 bottles. AS you continue to buy things at their best price it starts freeing up more money.
Let’s go back to the oats recently I have been paying between $4 and $7 per lb for rolled oats. On top of that they have not been having enough so I have used ALOT of my food storage for them. Well I found them for under $1 a lb! So I bought 6 bags or 100 lbs of oats which is my year supply! The month prior I would have spent over $300 for 2 bags yet this month I got all 6 for this prices! Talk about jump for Joy!
But that also meant that my grocery budget needed to focus around that. At the same spot I could buy a 5 gallon tub of honey. But that also cost just under $300. SO $600 of my $1500 budget was spent on those 2 items. If I always shopped for what I needed just for that month I would not be able to budget in that amount. But because I plan menus around my well stocked pantry I can buy in bulk.
Freezer Meals

For me my sanity and my wallet keeping freezer meals is so important in keeping in my grocery store budget! Keeping freezer meals mean that or nights or days that are busy I do not need to think about supper. Just pulling something out. Even at that there are many times I forget. SO I soak a freezer meal in hot water for an hour then plop in my instant pot add a cup of water and 5 mins to the intended time and tada supper! It keeps us out of restaurants and at home eating good nutritious food. It keeps our grocery budget inline as well.
Types of Freezer meals
So there a few different types of freezer meals.
- Dump and go- these freezer meals are usually a meat that you dump additional ingredients in to make it more super yummy! For instance Cranberry chicken you dump in the chicken then add cranberry sauce, onion soup mix and catalinina dressing. Those would be dumped in a bag then frozen. I prefer to lay these flat to make more room. These work out great as well if you only have a fridge freezer as you can stack these flat. Add a sheet of paper inbetween to keep them from freezing together.
- Casseroles- These are premade meals like enchilada casserole or lasagna. They take up alot more room but can be frozen into 9×13 pans and are a one pan type meal. These do need more prep to be taken out the day before.
- Bulk convience foods- To me these are things like premade meatballs or meatloaf. Maybe chicken strips stuff like that. I love meatballs because they are so versitile tomato sauce, sweet and sour, BBQ sauce can all make such different meals when it comes to meatballs. I also add goodness like greens powder or squash to my meatballs to pack alittle more nutrition.
- Bread type things- SO this might be baking bread and freezing it or preparing dough. This might mean making one of my favorite quick bread for breakfast so bananahttps://mommabear2many.com/2023/04/20/the-best-gluten-free-banana-muffins/, pumpkinhttps://mommabear2many.com/2023/06/06/gluten-free-pumpkin-bread/, blueberry bread are some of our favorites.
The Shopping List
SO what I do is I keep a running grocery store list on my white board that anyone can write on. The rule is if you bring the last on in the house you write it down. But with 14 children that can be a little tricky. So a day or 2 before I go to the store I go out and check everything. I know now that I should have a specific amount of certain items. This is usually dictated but the amount of space I have given a specific item.
In this same grocery trip at the oats and the honey my daughter noticed that she was bringing up the second to last coconut oil in. Its very unlike me to have so little so I allotted enough to buy 12 coconut oils. Using up $120 of the budget. As you can see here I have already spent almost half of my budget. If I needed to buy every ingredient for every recipe it would be super hard to keep in budget but because I shop the way I do it was not that big of a deal.
Once I see what I need I start a list or what I need. I also think ahead to what might be coming up like birthdays or holidays. Things like this time of year we eat away from home alot. It’s nice out might as well enjoy it so I buy alot of rice cakes and pb and more chips then normal. Things like guacamole or hummus ect
Knowing your stores
It might help when you get started to get a note book and write down what cost what where. I have been doing this a long time and have an odd math brain that reminds me of these things.
So I have a mental note of all that we buy on a regular basis so I know the cost of each item then when making a list I write the cost next to.
SO next I would tally up how much each item cost and where my total was at. Then decide if I need to add or take away. Normally my adding is adding more of what I need or maybe added say small guac packs for travel or something like that. Taking away may be really reevaluating what my needs are maybe ordering less. Or taking away some convenience foods.
Let’s put all this together
So let’s put it all together get your budget!
Looking for a good low cost menu plan? Check out some tips and tricks I share in this post.
https://mommabear2many.com/2023/05/29/low-cost-menu-planning/
Like what you are reading but just wanted alittle more. Or are a visual learner or hey maybe you just want to see what a momma to 14 looks like heehee? I created a video to go with this post.
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