How to Fund Your Goals With Grocery Savings
Why not repurpose your grocery savings to either cover your holiday shopping, pay down your debt or help you meet another goal?
Let’s calculate how much you should be spending on groceries per trip to meet that goal.
According to Statista, the average U.S consumer goes to the grocery store 1.6 times a week.
Let’s say your goal is to save $500 for holiday shopping so that you don’t have to depend on your credit cards. How much do you need to cut your grocery bill by per trip to do so?
The last thing any of us needs is more debt right? You don’t want to start each new year with a load of shopping debt to payoff!
How much do you need to cut per trip?
Ok, let’s say you go grocery shopping 1.5 times a week- so that’s roughly 6 grocery trips per month. Now, let’s say you want to start your Holiday shopping in November.
So you have from Jan 1-Nov 1 to save. That’s 10 months.
If you go grocery shopping 6 times a month for 10 months- that’s 60 trips to the grocery store.
If your goal is to save $500 for your holiday shopping then:
Goal is $500 / 60 trips = $8.34 to cut from your grocery spending per trip
That’s it! Less than $9 less per trip !
Now you know how much you should be spending per grocery trip to meet your goal.
We are just going to focus on cutting grocery spending in the article. But-you will start seeing how little cuts in any type of spending can get you to your goal.
Baby steps!
If you start watching the prices and make a few changes- this is totally doable.
Perhaps plan 1-2 meals a week so you know what you will need in advance.
We make batches of shredded chicken in the Instant Pot so that we have some on hand for quick meals like tacos, salad, wraps, soup, stuffed sweet potatoes, casseroles, etc.
I wrote an article about using the Instant Pot for shredded chicken as well- since it has saved us time and money with meal prep.
Buy some items generic instead of brand name. Or, see if another store sells some of your favorite items cheaper.
For example, my cat food and dishwasher pods are cheaper on Amazon than at Walmart or Target- so I get them both online.
I only buy my Ozarka bottled water at Walmart because not only is it cheaper per case than my local grocery store, but they give me 32 bottles instead of 24 like the grocery store. So I get more water and pay less.
See if your grocery store has a grocery pickup option because it will seriously allow you to avoid all impulse buys. I truly recommend you try this to try to see how much you can save by only getting what you really have on your list.
To me- if I step one foot in the grocery store – there is no WAY I’m sticking to the list.
Impulse buys are real y’all!
Electronic coupons!- Most likely, your grocery store has electronic coupons you can load to your card- so you don’t have to have the paper ones with you when you go. It’s so easy to forget them at home, so electronic is great.
And don’t forget about Ibotta! The cash back that you earn can be used towards this goal. One of my grocery stores links my card automatically so I don’t have to scan my receipt any longer- it does it all for me. Nice!
Yes- you can find quality generic items and save money
I get generic on some items and save a lot. I always thought generic would be gross and not taste the same. So not true!
I’m not going to lie though- some are different so you have to try them out. Like generic canned tomatoes/dry pasta/canned beans/dry cereal….the same. Generic peanut butter, soda, coffee- not the same – at least to me.
Another thing we do now is instead of getting kcups- we use the refillable kcup and buy bags of ground coffee. We still buy the coffee brands we like, just as ground instead of as kcups.
Not only are we saving over $30 a month just by using ground coffee versus a kcup – but it’s also less plastic waste that could end up in the environment (poor ocean!)
To see how much you can save just by changing your coffee brewing/drinking method- have a look at this post I found on The Coffee Detective.
So just by making a few changes-you can totally save for either the holidays or use it to payoff debt!
Groceries are the area we tend to overspend in the most when it comes to a budget- and the easiest to start making a dent into.
Track it by writing it down – doesn’t have to be fancy
Track your grocery spending too. You will never know how much you can cut if you have no idea how much you are actually spending each month.
Just write down (or use a spreadsheet-I’m a spreadsheet addict) what you spend from your receipt.
Write it on a piece of paper and stick it to your fridge. That way you just write your next total from your receipt when you are unpacking your groceries.
You don’t have to itemize- just write it down each month so you can get a total. Then try to beat that the next month.
When I first started doing that it was eye-opening I will tell you! Gone are my days of blindly grabbing whatever looked good and then figuring out what to make when I got home.
I wrote an article about using Walmart Grocery Pickup. It has seriously saved us so much money because it cuts all impulse buys. Plus- their items are usually cheaper than the grocery store I was visiting before. Your grocery store may also offer this- hopefully for free like Walmart does.
Break it down to see how doable it is
When you break down your main goal ($500 saved in 10 months) into small weekly goals (cut grocery spending by $8.34 each trip)– you can see how doable it is.
If you truly only go to the grocery once per week- redo the calculations for only 40 trips versus 60. If this is your scenario, take $500 goal / 10 months. Take that total and / by 40 trips = $12.50 you need to cut per trip.
See how quicky you can personalize it based on your true shopping habits?
It may take a few trips to get your new steps down- but just trying one or two ways to cut less than $10 can really help you reach your goal!
Start putting your savings into a separate account so you don’t just end up spending it on something else because you see it sitting there available.
You can do this! Your bank account will thank you come holiday season!
Many different financial goals you can accomplish
And it doesn’t have to be holiday spending!
Maybe some vacation spending money rather than using your credit cards?
Maybe paying down some debt or even an emergency fund? We ALL need an emergency fund.
If you have a goal in mind with several months left in the year to let your savings work it’s magic- then great, use it for that!
Once you set the $ amount of what you need to reduce your spending by- you can make this budget work for anything.
Granted- we are not talking about exorbitant amounts of money in a years time. If you have for example $10,000 in school loans to pay off then no, cutting grocery spending won’t be done in a year –BUT- it will keep getting you closer.
It’s a snowball effect.
If school loans are your pain, then imagine if you had an extra $50 -$100 each month to pay towards it that you didn’t have now. That’s $600 -$1200 more you are paying down every year and it starts to add up.
When I first started paying attention to my grocery spending and using a budget, I easily cut my monthly grocery bill by $150 consistently. I was shocked!
Once you get the hang of it- you just gain momentum and make it work. Imagine if you could also save $150 per month? That would be $1800 a year!
You will also start to notice other areas you can cut your spending by, once you see the impact extra payments can have for you. When you combine your efforts in other areas on top of cutting your grocery spending, it will really get that snowball rolling and get you closer and closer to your goals.
What could an extra $1800 a year help you with?