If you’re on a tight budget, you may think that eating healthy is not possible. But, I want you to know that it can be, if you focus on changing a few foods at a time. In this article, we’re going to walk through how you can grocery shop on a tight budget and still eat healthy.
Whether you’re a stay-at-home mom who wants to be a good steward of your family’s one income, or you’re spending the majority of your income on paying back a large debt, we can all learn how to use our money more effectively at the grocery store. You’ll notice that when you change even a few foods in your diet, you’ll start saving money in other areas. For example, as you switch from processed snacks to snacks made from whole, fresh foods, you may find that you no longer need those mid-afternoon energy drinks.
Before we can get to the practical steps of eating healthy, we must first define what it means to eat healthy…
What Does it Mean to Eat Healthy?
It’s important to, first, define what healthy eating is. Many say you only need to eat whole, fresh foods instead of processed junk food. However, I believe there is more to eating healthy than that. If eating healthy and exercising was the solution, then you shouldn’t keep gaining weight or struggling with staying focused and energized throughout the day.
So, what’s the problem? Is there more to eating healthy than eating vegetables?
First, we have to start thinking about how foods are produced. Is a food that is sprayed with pesticides and herbicides, processed, and then fortified with man-made nutrients the same as a food that is not sprayed with any chemical, grown in nutrient-dense soil, and sold fresh? If you answered no, you are correct! Though foods may all look the same on the outside, only some foods have been produced in the way God intended them to be.
The unfortunate thing is that our culture is so money-driven that the cheapest version of a food item is seen to be the most valuable. However, as I say to my husband, anti-freeze is cheaper but you wouldn’t buy that to drink. Furthermore, we know that the cheapest furniture piece will fall apart in a few months, so why do we not apply that same concept to our food?
Food is able to be cheaper when corners are cut. Corners are cut, for example, when pesticides are used instead of working to improve and protect the soil, or when foods are processed to extend shelf-life instead of using raw, whole foods that have a much shorter shelf-life. (I talk more about the cost of convenience foods here.)
What I’m trying to get at is that the food we eat is less about the what – what to eat, what not to eat. It’s about the why – why do we need food?
We need food because our bodies have been designed to use the food that has been designed for our bodies. If the food we eat has been changed from its original design (i.e. chemicals are added to them, they’re processed), then how do we know that the food will act as the fuel we’ve been designed to eat? (Hint, we don’t know.)
So, step zero to how to grocery shop on a tight budget: buy foods that are closest to their original design. These foods will have the most nutrients recognized by your body with the least amount of chemicals that aren’t recognized by your body. These foods will not be the cheapest. But, remember, cheapest often means corners were cut, which means that you’d be paying for a food that your body may not even be able to use correctly.
How Can You Tell What Foods to Buy at the Store?
Here are labels that are often used to describe foods that are closest to their original design:
- Raw
- Whole
- Grass-finished
- Wild-caught
- Non-GMO
- Organic
To get a better understanding of why I chose these labels, check out my post on How to Eat for Your Best Health.
DISCLAIMER: Just because a food company uses one of the above labels doesn’t mean that they understand what the labels are intended to mean. This is where you will have to do a little research to find companies that demonstrate an understanding of what makes healthy foods healthy.
Side-note: I’ll be creating a post in the future on what to look for in a food production company to help you find food producers you can trust. Until then, your best bet is the Farmer’s Market where you can ask the farmers questions directly on how they grow their food.
Now, How to Grocery Shop on a Tight Budget:
When you start adding up the costs of the foods with the labels in the last section, your grocery bill can get up to the $1000’s real quick if you’re not careful. So, to help you bring those costs down, here are the steps we’re going to talk about in this article:
- Budget
- Plan + Stick to it
- Minimize Expensive Foods
- Simplify
- Buy in Bulk
- Shop Produce in Season
- Store Hop (as able)
1) Budget
As with everything, you first need to decide how much you are able to spend on groceries each month. Only spend within your means right now. Later, you can re-evaluate your budget and add more to it, if needed. But, for now, let’s just focus on what you have to work with right now.
2) Plan + Stick to it
To decrease the opportunity for food going bad in the fridge, you need to plan out every meal. You don’t have even a dollar to waste, so you should only add foods to your grocery list that have been planned to be eaten. And once you make a plan, you need to stick to it.
Sticking to your grocery list is a discipline. If you’re not good at it right now, don’t worry! Discipline is a muscle we all need to work to strengthen (especially me).
Tip #1: I’m really bad about not sticking to my grocery list. There are just too many foods to buy in the store! So, what I’ve done recently is instead of writing “one bunch of bananas, one bundle of apples”, I write “2 types of fruit.” This way you have the flexibility to change your mind at the store but are still limited to what you and your family can handle each month.
Tip #2: If you really wanted to buy something at the store that you didn’t plan for, then the trade-off is that you have to add it to your meal plan once you’re home. If you don’t have time to adjust your meal plan, then don’t buy the last-minute food.
3) Minimize Expensive Items
The three largest food expenses are grass-fed meat, dairy products from raw, whole milk, and wild-caught fish. The best way to minimize your costs is to minimize your consumption of these items. Instead of eating 8 oz of grass-fed meat or wild-caught meat, could you eat only 4 oz and eat more beans or produce? Instead of eating a cup of shredded cheese, could you eat a slice of cheese on the side? (This one’s a hard one for my family.) Find a balance you (and your family) can handle now and work from there.
4) Simplify
One of the biggest expenses to groceries is buying few quantities of many items. Biggest example of this – snacks. Try to simplify your list to only a few types of snacks, a few breakfast items, a couple of items to drink, a few filler foods (i.e. rice, beans, noodles, quinoa), etc.. This will set you up for the next step…
5) Buy in Bulk
Once you’ve narrowed down your grocery list, you can buy those items in bulk. This will save you a good bit of money. Some stores even have bulk bins where you can buy certain foods by weight. Buying food from bulk bins saves you money because you can by in bulk (obviously) and aren’t paying for the typical packaging of pre-packaged foods. However, you do have to be careful because the food in bulk bins may not always be fresh.
6) Shop Produce in Season
Another way to save money on groceries is to buy produce in season. When certain foods are in season, stores and Farmer’s Markets have a larger supply of those foods. A larger supply often drives the price down. Different regions have foods in season at different times, so it’s best to take note of what foods are on sale when.
Tip #1: If you need help with when produce is in season here is a site to help you get started.
7) Store Hop (as Able)
Stores often don’t have the same prices for their products. Some of the factors that affect prices are brand, cost of delivery of item to the store, and everyday costs for that store. So, 8 oz of grass-med meat may be less expensive at one store than another. This is why price-checking the same type of foods at other stores can help you save money.
Tip #1: If you’re limited on time, go to a different store each time you grocery shop the next month or two. Save your receipts. After you’ve gone to each grocery store you want to price-check, compare your receipts and circle the least expensive items per store.
If it’d be helpful to have a template to price check different stores or track when certain items are, you can copy or download mine.
Summing Up How to Grocery Shop on a Tight Budget:
In this article, we talked about:
- What healthy eating means – eating food produced the way it was designed to be eaten
- How to grocery shop on a tight budget – budget, plan, minimize, simplify, bulk, in-season, and price-check
If you need more help understanding how to eat healthy and/or walking through how to eat healthy on a tight budget, my membership site may be able to help you do that Learn more about that here.
Do you have other tricks to how you grocery shop on a tight budget? Let me know in the comments below, and I might add them to my list here!