Eating healthy doesn’t have to be expensive. It is possible to eat healthy on a budget. By using multiple money saving strategies, your family can eat healthy and save money too.
Eating a healthy diet can get pricey pretty quickly. However, you don’t have to spend a ton of money to eat a healthy diet. By using money saving strategies, it’s possible to eat healthy on a budget. When you use multiple strategies, the benefits you get from using each one accumulate and add up to big savings.
I have been using a number of these strategies for years. It has allowed my family to eat high quality ingredients at a fraction of the cost.
I hope you try implementing some of these strategies too so your family can eat healthy and save money too.
Know Your Budget
An important strategy for anyone is to have a food budget and stick to it. Food is categorized as an essential, so it’s easy for us to justify a pricey food bill. Why spend more money than you have to in order to eat a healthy diet.
By setting a budget and sticking to it, you and your family can save hundreds of dollars every month and you can use that money to help you reach some of your financial goals.
According to the USDA, a family of 4 can spend anywhere from $585 on a thrifty plan up to $1337 on a liberal plan. That is a pretty big swing between the two.
A family on a budget, typically doesn’t want to have that much flexibility in their plan. Currently, I budget $125 a month per person. So for our family of 4, I budget $500 a month.
My family shops twice a month. We try to spend $150 on produce and restocking what was used from our freezer and pantry. We save the other $100 for bigger stock ups if we find a few items that we normally purchase on sale.
This amount does not include our meat. That is a separate expense.
Pay Attention To Sales And Stock Up
One of my favorite strategies for eating healthy on a budget is watching the sales every week and stocking up.
When you find a good sale, you don’t want to buy one or two extra, you want to buy enough to last for a while.
Recently one of my grocery stores had avocadoes on sale for 49 cents. This is a great price. So I bought 30 of them because I know that I can leave them in the fridge and just take a few out at a time to soften up.
I also recently found frozen organic green beans on sale for 30% off. Since we don’t have any left from our garden this year, and this is something we eat often, I purchased 15 bags.
In order to take advantage of this strategy, you need to check the various stores in your area weekly. It only takes a few minutes to look up the weekly ads each week.
It’s also important to look for unadvertised sales. If you are not sure how to find this, all you have to do is call your grocery store to find out how you can easily access that information.
One of my local grocery stores has all of its regular prices listed online in black while anything on sale will have the price listed in red. So, when I check their ad for the week, I also go to the website and just type in organic and it will give me a list of all organic products including fresh and frozen produce. I just quickly look through and only look for the prices in red. If it is something we regularly purchase, then I’ll decide if I want to purchase any.
When using this strategy, you want to be courteous and not buy out the store. You want to stock up, but also, leave some for the other customers as well.
Buy And Eat in Season
Buying and eating in season is a great strategy to eat healthy on a budget because you are eating the freshest and most delicious food at its cheapest price.
You can also preserve it in some way to enjoy throughout the rest of the year. When you buy in bulk, you can typically get an even greater discount.
A few ways that I use this strategy is only eating fresh tomatoes and cucumbers from my garden when they are in season. I don’t buy fresh organic tomatoes and cucumbers from the grocery store any more because they are just too pricey and they don’t taste nearly as good. We have also canned cucumbers to make pickles and I always freeze whole tomatoes to use in soups and other recipes all winter long. Also, I purchase a bunch of butternut squash from a local farmer at a discounted rate to use all winter as well.
Grow A Garden
Growing a vegetable garden is the best way to enjoy organic produce and fresh herbs at a discount. You don’t need to have a lot of land or a large garden to see the benefits.
Obviously, the more you grow, the less you will have to buy. However, even a few herbs growing in your kitchen or a few potted plants on your deck can help reduce the cost of your food bill. They also taste so much better than what you can buy from the grocery store.
See benefits of growing a vegetable garden HERE.
Find A Farmer
If you like to eat meat, you may want to find a local farmer that produces good quality meat and buy directly from them.
I have found that the greater benefit here is the quality of meat you are able to buy. When you purchase from the grocery store you can’t talk directly to the farmer and find out exactly how that animal was raised and what they ate.
Buying directly from a farmer does save some money because you are able to cut out the middle man. Usually you see a dfference in price if you are purchasing a quarter, half, or even, the whole animal.
It’s important to remember that if you are purchasing 100% grass fed beef, or pastured poultry or pork, you will still be paying more than you would for conventional meat that you can find at any grocery store.
However, if eating good quality meat is important to you, a local farmer is the way to go.
Build A Pantry
Rather than creating a list and purchasing all the items you need for the week, build a pantry of healthy, wholesome ingredients that you can use to create meals from.
By creating a pantry of regularly used items and healthy, wholesome ingredients, you are able to find the best places to get your pantry items. This also allows you to find the best price and stock up when you find items on sale or save by buying in bulk.
Know The Dirty Dozen List And The Clean Fifteen
Developed by The Environmental Working Group, the Dirty Dozen list provides a list of the top twelve foods that contain the most pesticide residue. They also created a Clean Fifteen list, which lists the top 15 foods that contain the least amount of residue from pesticides.
These lists are very helpful when shopping. As a general rule of thumb, I try to grow or purchase the majority of my family’s produce organically. However, there are times when I have to purchase conventional produce due to budget or availability. When I do, I only buy conventional if it is on the Clean Fifteen list and I try to never purchase anything on the Dirty Dozen list unless it is organic.
Create And Stick To Your List
Whether you are shopping in person or online, it is easy to add a few extras to your cart. The problem is that these little extras can add up very quickly.
You can easily add a few items not on your list, that can quickly add up to an extra $20. You may not think of that as a big deal. However, if you shop every week that adds an extra $80 a month to your food bill. If you continue this habit, after a year you will have spent an extra $1040!
By always sticking to your list and skipping the extras, you are more likely to stick to your budget and you’ll make a big impact on your overall food bill for the year.
Know Your Prices
By creating and cooking from your pantry, you will quickly start to see that you tend to purchase the same things over and over again.
By taking the time to find the best price for the items that you purchase regularly, you can stock up on that item for months at a time and save big.
The best way to do this is to create a price book.
Shop Multiple Places
If you have ever compared prices, you know that different stores can have the same items with drastically different prices. That’s why shopping various places is a great strategy for saving money on your grocery bill.
With many retailers now providing grocery pickup without an additional fee, it is much easier to use this strategy.
If you don’t live in a big city, this is likely a necessary strategy for finding a variety of good quality, organic products.
In addition to shopping my local grocery stores, I also shop at Thrive Market and Azure Standard.
Thrive Market is where I like to go for organic products I can’t find at any of my local stores. There is a small yearly or monthly membership fee. However, they offer free memberships to low-income families, students, teachers, veterans, and first responders.
Azure is great for buying organic products in bulk.
Don’t Buy Prepared Or Processed Food
I have found that most prepared foods can be made at home using higher quality ingredients at a much cheaper price.
Even purchasing items like chopped or spiraled vegetables are more expensive, and often times you can use organic vegetables and do it yourself for less money.
Eliminating processed food is a great strategy for eating healthier and reducing your food bill. Even processed food that is advertised as “healthy” usually has some ingredients that aren’t ideal. Stick to whole foods like fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and pastured meat. By eating this way you aren’t paying for expensive processed foods that don’t really do much from a nutrition standpoint.
Prepare And Eat Your Food At Home
Everyone enjoys eating out for both the experience and convenience of it. Rather than making it a regular habit, try treating it more as an experience for a special occasion.
By choosing to prepare your own food at home, you are in control of the quality of ingredients in each meal. Also, the overall cost of that meal is far less than what you would have spent eating out.
Rather than spending a large portion of your food budget eating out for a few meals, it makes more financial sense to eat at home and use that money to help keep your pantry stocked.
Eat Your Leftovers
I’m still surprised when I hear people say that they don’t eat leftovers. Whether the leftovers are from a meal that you prepared yourself or from a dinner out, it’s important to remember that meal cost money to prepare. So by choosing to not eat your leftovers and throw them out, it is equivalent to throwing money away.
Start to think about how many meals and snacks you eat in a day. Every time you eat, it costs something. When leftovers are thrown out, not only is the cost of that food being thrown out, but you also need to pay to replace the meal that those leftovers could have filled.
Choosing not to eat leftovers once or twice won’t make an impact on your overall food bill. However, making it a habit to not eat leftovers will have a big negative impact on your food bill.
Calculate The Cost Of Your Meals
Most families have a rotation of meals that they eat repeatedly over a period of time. Taking the time to quickly calculate the cost of a meal lets you determine if it is a meal that you want to continue to make on a regular basis.
You can also try to figure out if there are any ingredients that you can substitute to bring down the cost of the overall meal.
By using this strategy you can eliminate pricey meals, or just save them for special occasions, and you can try to reduce the cost of the meals that your family loves eating regularly.
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