If you’re thinking with coupons, you’d be wrong. While I do enjoy watching Extreme Couponing on television, my environmentally-conscious mind won’t let me purchase newspapers simply for the coupons. Even using things like the Ibotta app aren’t always convenient because it requires a bit of action on my part that I sometimes forget to take and the cashback is lost. When grocery shopping on a budget, there are a few things I do that take little effort but lead to cheap meals on the table.
Looking For the Produce Rewrap
If I’m being honest, this is my favorite part of a grocery. I don’t actually know what qualifications produce has to fall under in order to make it to the produce re-wrap section. There generally is no visible “sell by” date on things like fruit and vegetables and the produce I’ve seen there has never looked old or rotten. From what I can tell, it looks like singles of items that they combine together to sell in one bulk bunch. Ex. when someone pulls a banana off the bunch because they don’t want all of them. Speaking of, it’s where I normally score things like bananas, potatoes, apples, eggplant, Portobello mushrooms, things you’d find in the non-“sprinkler” section of the produce area. It likely varies by store, but it’s usually a bag of some kind of fruit or vegetable for a $1 when those items are usually priced by weight.
Seeking Out “Sell By” Meat
I’m sure that’s not the official term for that, but I’m referring to the meat that needs to be sold by that or the next day, so it’s priced to sell. It’s usually marked down drastically and the number one way I get a lot of my organic and all-natural meats from some stores. Even though I’ve pretty much stopped being a meat-eater, my family hasn’t and I still want to make sure the meat I’m giving them falls into the organic category without spending all of my grocery budget.
Downloading the Store App
Most of my favorite grocery stores have apps and you better believe I have them on my phone. It usually leads to savings in the form of in store coupons, special “member only” discounts like with Whole Foods if you’re a Prime member, or just a general cash amount off of your purchase with no maximum spend amount required – one of my favorite things about the Publix app.
When you’re grocery shopping on a budget, what are your tricks to finding cheap groceries? Please, let me know in the comments and as always, thank you for reading!
