5 Easy Ways to Keep Your Grocery Budget in Check: my grocery list on a budget!

With five kids in sports and a busy schedule it can be very easy to bust the grocery budget on snacks, meals and eating out. These 5 Easy Ways to Keep Your Grocery Budget in Check help me get everything on my grocery list on a budget!

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Easy Ways to Keep Your Grocery Budget in Check

Weekly Meal Plan— I can not overstate the importance of having a meal plan. Now, I know, whenever I mention a meal plan people always say they don’t know what they want to eat next week so how can they plan? Well, let me tell you something—you don’t have to plan it down to the day, just have a plan! Check your sales fliers before heading to the store and see what is on sale, check your freezer at the beginning of the week and plan some meals based around what is available. Make a quick list of easy meals and then make those meals throughout the week. Click here to print out my weekly meal planning worksheet to help you get started with a meal plan as well.

Grocery Shopping List–Make and list and check it twice! Keep a running list of items as you run out of them and then bring the list to the store with you. This will keep you from impulse buys and from forgetting an important item from the meal plan. Click here to print out my Grocery Shopping list.

Buy in Bulk, especially meats–This is something that I do all the time. I love to buy in bulk, especially when it comes to buying meats. I’m lucky in that I have a big chest freezer so when I see that meats like chicken and ground beef are on sale at my grocery store I stock up. Yes, I might be spending more on that grocery trip that I would normally but by stocking up that means that I don’t have to buy meats every time I go to the store. This makes other visits cheaper, so it all evens out in the course of a month.

Utilize freezer cooking more–do you do freezer cooking? I love to do it as it is an easy way to always make sure that you have something you can pull out of the freezer and cook for dinner–even when you are a meal plan failure. You know those days where everything goes wrong and its 4 pm and you have no idea what you are going to do for dinner? Well if you have freezer meals all ready to go you don’t have to resort to takeout. Click here to learn how I do freezer cooking and to check out some awesome recipes.

Take advantage of online deals, especially deals through Amazon Pantry–I love to have items shipped directly to my house because it saves me money and saves me time….less time in the store means more time with my family and less opportunities for impulse buys at the grocery store.

I’m sure by now you are hearing all about Prime Day on Amazon, which starts on July 16, 2018. Well apparently, the deals have already started because I grabbed a great Amazon Prime pantry deal today where I got over $40 worth of stuff for just $17!

I first saw this deal mentioned by Jessica over at The Mom Creative and I wanted to see if I could get some great deals and boy, did I ever!

In order to grab this deal (and also to be ready for Prime Day) you first have to sign up for an Amazon Prime account. I have had an Amazon Prime account for years and I LOVE it! Trust me, it really does pay for itself over time.

Next, sign up for Amazon Pantry and use code PANTRY for new-to-Pantry customers get $10 off $40 Pantry order and free delivery! Not new to Pantry? You can still get free shipping if you spend over $40.

Okay so this is what I grabbed in my order:

First things first, you can get a FREE box of Honey Nut Cheerios Family Size (19.5 oz) with your Pantry purchase of $40 or more. Simply add the product to your cart and receive the full discount at checkout so add that to your order first.

Then check out the Prime Pantry savings: Buy 5 select items, save $6 on your order. Many of the items that were on sale were items that I often buy at my grocery store and they were actually cheaper online so I stocked up on items like Glad Freezer Bags and the Pine-Sol Cleaner as well as treats for the kids like the Quaker Chewy Granola Bars.