Podcast Episode #026 - 5 Unique Strategies to Save Money on Groceries || Go From Broke

Podcast Episode #026 - 5 Unique Strategies to Save Money on Groceries

Struggling with the rising cost of groceries?

With inflation and supply chain issues, the cost of groceries keeps getting higher every week. But there are some things you can do to stretch your dollars.

In this episode, I'll give you 5 ways you may not have thought about to help you save money on groceries.

Links from today's episode:

Rewards Credit Cards

Rebate Apps

Articles & Podcasts

Enjoy the show?

If you thought this episode was helpful, I'd love it you could leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

And don't forget to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode!

Thanks for listening!

Have a question or an episode idea? Email me at podcast@gofrombroke.com or DM me on Instagram @GoFromBroke

Prefer to Read?

Below is the transcript from today's show. Or you can download the full transcript as a PDF.

Welcome to the Go From Broke podcast where you'll learn how to take control of your money so you can stress less and save more. If you're tired of living paycheck to paycheck or constantly wondering where your money is going, you're in the right place. This podcast is all about giving you actionable tips and advice so you can get started improving your finances today.

Today's episode is going to be a little bit different than previous episodes. I recorded a video on the Go From Broke Facebook page that I think is valuable enough to also repeat as a podcast episode.

It explains some unique strategies that you can use to save on groceries and with the rising costs of groceries lately with inflation and supply chain issues. It's just a good time in general to find whatever savings we can. So in today's episode you're going to learn five unique strategies to help you save money at the grocery store.

Okay. Let's dive in.

Today's episode is five ways that you can save money on groceries.

The first one you may be aware of, but you may not have done it. It is to sign up for your store's loyalty program. And I know a lot of people have privacy concerns around this, but if you're looking to save money, you're just going to have to bite the bullet and let the store know what you're buying, if you want to save money on those products and any other products.

Because the way that the store loyalty program works is in order to qualify for store specific deals, you have to have a loyalty card. In order to get store specific coupons, you need the loyalty card. If you want to earn points towards gas. If your grocery store has the gas component, you need the sword loyalty program.

So tip number one, sign up for your store loyalty program.

Tip number two is to create an account with the store's website or their app.

It's different than the loyalty program, because you actually have to create the log-in but once you have that, you get several perks that make it worthwhile.

First, you can actually get copies of your prior receipts. This is helpful if you want to compare prices to see what you actually paid. If you have multiple people shopping at the store, sometimes you might lose a receipt or the purchase might not get put into your budget. So you can look it back up to see.

If you're like me, I actually break down my grocery purchases. So if it's a food item versus a household item, versus medications, those are all separate areas in my budget, so having those receipts, will help me split those receipts across the multiple categories that they're in in my budget.

That's one reason to do it. Another reason is by having an online account with these stores, you have access to all their coupons digitally.

So you can quickly scan through to find coupons for the things you buy and just with a click of a button, add it to your loyalty card.

You also have access to their sales flyers and any announcements they have. You can quickly see, like when they have those five for $5 deals, what all is included in that. All of those things are easily found on their website if you have an account.

And finally, If you have the online coupons you add to your loyalty card, you can also stack those with manufacturer coupons.

So the coupons you find in the Sunday paper or if you go to coupons.com. Even the manufacturers themselves may send you coupons. When you have those manufacturer coupons, you can combine them with store specific coupons.

So if they're loaded on your card already, you can also add some paper coupons alongside that and get double the rewards.

So that's tip number two, make sure you sign up for the online membership as well.

Okay. Now time for tip number three, shop online using store pickup.

Now best thing about this is right now, it's free. I don't know, if it's always going to be free, it used to cost $5 for us. And then the virus happened and then it's been free for like the past two years. So hopefully it stays that way.

Even still, I think for five bucks, it's probably worth it. The amount of time you save, but also one of the big reasons to shop online and do store pickup is that it prevents you from making impulsive buys.

So they always say don't shop when you're hungry or, you know, only buy what's on your list. Well, that's a lot easier to do when you're doing it online.

Everything's right there. You're not as likely to have cravings and actually search for items that you want to buy. If you're walking up and down an aisle that has Oreos on it, you're a lot more likely to buy them than if you're online and you never think to search for the word Oreo.

Now I will say there is the caveat that they will suggest things to you. And that might trap you a little bit. But again, you're going to have more discipline when you're at home and you've got your list and you may or may not be hungry, but you can always get up and walk away and come back and, you know, review things that way.

Another reason is you can see what's on sale and compare prices a lot easier. As well as see if there's a coupon for something. You could search for like the phrase bacon and it will show you all the bacons they have. Like little pictures of them all, and you can see the price for every one of them, as well as the unit amount. So you can see like, oh, this is 16 ounces versus eight ounces or whatever it may be.

But, there's two bacon products in particular that we tend to buy. And normally they're about the same price, but one of them always seems to be on sale. So I don't know which one it is. And if I go to the store, am I really going to think, oh, let me look and double check, or am I just going to buy whatever one I see first?

So online, I can see side by side, this one's on sale. Let me do that. But even better than that, I can also see, they put a little coupon sticker on it so I can see if there's a coupon. Click it. Add that coupon to my loyalty card and boom, you know, I'm saving money with literally the only effort being clicking a button.

The other thing that I really like to use online shopping for is to keep a running tally of how much the bill's going to be.

So typically with my budget, I'll look and see how much do I have in a category before I go spend it. With groceries, I'm not as disciplined with that because I never know what it's going to cost.

I'm not going to run around the grocery store with a calculator. I'm not doing that.

I also am a lot less likely to price check in store. Like if it's side by side, I'll get the cheaper. But if I have to run all over the store to find the deals, I'm not going to do it. But online, I can do it all really easily right there.

I can look at my budget and see, "oh, I've got a hundred dollars this week for groceries." And then as I'm adding things to the cart, whether it's from the list or from their suggestions, I can see that running total. And as I'm approaching a hundred dollars, I can go, " okay, well, do I really need that this week or can I hold off on that?"

It's actually helped a lot to be more intentional with our grocery spending, because it's really easy to say like, "oh, we go through a lot of bacon, let's go ahead and buy four of them" or something.

But if we don't need four that week and they're not on sale, then I can see with that running total, "oh, I can save some money by just holding off till next week and maybe they'll be on sale next week." So I can make sure I'm only buying what I need and then I'm more likely to stay under budget.

So that is tip number three, use online shopping and store pickup.

Tip number four is to use reward credit cards.

So there are two in particular. Well, maybe three that I would recommend because they're the ones I use.

The first one is the American Express Blue card. Now there are two varieties of this.

The free one will get you 3% cash back on groceries. and I think they have a couple of other little perks there.

But the preferred one is, I think it's $95 a year, which sounds like a lot, but you get 6% cash back on your groceries, 3% cash back on gas and online subscriptions. So for us, I think last year we brought in between $600 and $800 of cash back.

So it more than pays for itself for us. Now, if you don't shop as much, if you're single or if there's only a couple of you, you may not get as much use out of it. Do the math that's for you to figure out.

If you like doing online shopping through Instacart, Amex will not give you that 6% through Instacart. In that case, what I've done is use our Chase Sapphire preferred card. Now that's a travel card. So instead of cash back you're getting points. But you get three times the points, if you do grocery shopping and they do include Instacart in that. Another perk with the Chase card is that currently you're able to get Instacart Express for free.

That's limited time. I don't know if it's going to be available into the future, but for right now, you can save some money on that too.

The other card I'll mention is if you're not as interested in, being strategic and optimizing which credit card you use for what.

If you just want one credit card for everything, the Citi Double Cash Back card gives you 2% on every purchase. So it's better than nothing. It's 1% cash back when you make a purchase and then 1% cash back when you pay it off.

The trick with this whole tip is you have to pay off your card. If you carry a balance, those points are not going to make up for the difference that you're paying in interest.

So the credit card reward sort of tip/hack, whatever you want to call it, is only valid if you're paying off your card. If you're carrying a balance, don't use this tip.

Okay, now on to tip five, use a rebate app.

I've talked about this before, rebate apps are fantastic. You can get cash back or points towards gift cards just by a scanning in your receipts. I've got a podcast and a blog post and I'll link those up in the show notes.

My favorite app is Fetch Rewards. It's super simple. All you do is take a picture of your receipt and it works for pretty much any receipt, whether it's gas, groceries, fast food. Pretty much any receipt, you'll get some points for.

If you happen to buy the things that they're partnered with, you'll get even more points and you can check the app to see what their specials and deals and stuff are.

But for the most part, even if you don't get all the bonus points, you're likely to have enough receipts that you can start cashing in.

The other app that most everybody knows about is Ibotta. It's a little bit more work because it's not just about scanning in any receipt.You have to actually match up purchases with the products they have deals with. But the biggest plus to Ibotta is it's cashback. So you can get an actual cash withdrawal to like your PayPal.

I have a blog post that goes over several others if there's others you want to try. And the thing with all of these is that you can combine them. Like I can take one receipt and scan it into all of those to get points. So just make sure that you're optimizing as much as you can.

So there you have it. That is my five tips to save money on groceries.

Again, if you're interested in any of the links that I mentioned, they're going to be in the show notes.

Okay, so that was the recording from the Facebook group with five unique tips on ways that you could save money on groceries right now.

So for your action task this week, I want you to pick one of those, if not multiple of those and actually implement them.

Signing up for your store's loyalty program is super easy and will probably save you the most. If you're not already doing it. If you are doing it, pick one that you haven't done. Research the credit card options or start scanning in your receipts for points and cash back that way.

Whatever you do, just do something because grocery prices do not look like they're going anywhere but up in the future. So anywhere that we can start saving money, let's do it.

If you enjoyed today's episode, don't forget to leave a rating and review to help other people find it.

And remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

As always take action and make it a great day.

Powered by RedCircle