How I Cut My Grocery Spending By 50% & Still Ate Healthy | Making It Work

Through weekly video essays, "Making It Work" showcases how *real* people have upgraded their personal or financial lives in some meaningful way. Making your life work for you doesn't mean getting rich just for the sake of it. It means making the most of what you have to build a life you love, both in your present and in your future. And while managing money is a crucial life skill for everyone, there's no one "right way" to go about it — you have to figure out what works best for *you,* full stop.

Video by Grace Lee

Based on an essay by Laura Marie

Video narration by MacKenzie Koppa

[xhauntedpassionx]

As someone working towards becoming a motion designer, the formatting and design of these videos just make me so happy and inspired. And the transition sounds are total ASMR for me.

[aguilazul]

you should do a video about grocery shopping sustainably without breaking the bank. We are using way to much plastic everywhere.

[Mloofylicious]

There's only one rule that applies to clothes as well: don't enter a grocery store unless you need something specific and planned. That way you avoid impulse purchases and save money. I know for a fact that if I get into a store, I'll leave with something I didn't plan to buy. So it's more about self-control.

[BeppyCat]

"I will get no cheese at all, " might be the bleakest sentence in the English language.

[bluejedi]

Yes, I'm a HUGE advocate of planning and meal prep. I spent a small fortune year or so ago on about 60 meal prep containors with lids-that are reusable AND freezable. Depending on how low we are on our frozen meals-we'll take a day or two where family and I will make massive amounts of meals, label them and freeze them. When I do cook meals at home, I always make up an extra portion and put in the containor to freeze. I take one with me when I go to work, heat it up and eat. The extra work pays off when we have those nights where it's been a crazy day and/or we just...don't feel like cooking and would rather order out-we have a stock pile of meals to choose from where we just heat it up and eat. The meal prep containors have more than payed for themselves.

[levellife]

How to save money and eat healthy:

Buy steel cut oats and rice and beans.

[yeseniacl]

Dude, 215 dollars its still a lot, i'm a student. Ask me for tips.

[ruthcorson]

I love this type of video content! My husband and I did a total rehaul of our grocery budget about 6 months ago. We’ve failed and learned much along the way.

Some of my favorite tips including knowing where to shop for what. I get my bulk, dry goods from a local grocery store chain. We’ve saved a small fortune alone just from buying spices for the bulk section rather than in glass containers in the baking aisles. I go to Trader Joe’s for my olive oil and certain produce items that cost less than my local grocery chain. I shop at Costco for rice, eggs, and nuts. I get most of my “staple” produce delivered through Imperfect Produce (avocados, broccoli, potatoes, beets, etc) and the prices are very reasonable. It may feel daunting to coordinate what to buy where, but I only grocery shop once a week at most, but I bulk buy from each store. So one Saturday I’ll stock up on meats from the butcher and freeze them. The next Saturday, I’ll refill my pantry with canned goods. And so on. Then we meal prep. Oh, and I make food from scratch when I can. Home made almond milk not only is cheaper, but much tastier. Greek yogurt (a breakfast staple in our house) takes a couple hours in the instant pot and is super easy. Even homemade bagels take half an hour, if you don’t include rising time. It’s not nearly as big of a commitment as it might seem if we just plan accordingly. Making a hobby out of cooking and being creative with your food makes it way more interesting, too!

I plan each week by taking a picture of what’s in the fridge, freezer, and cabinets. If I can’t see everything in there, I probably have too much food to begin thinking about grocery shopping. But if I’m in need, I open Pinterest and start looking for recipes to use up what I already have and I adapt them to best fit what I currently have. So if a salad calls for mandarins but I only have oranges, I’ll just cut those into smaller bits hahaha. If a recipe asks for quinoa, I just swap it for rice. If the dish requires roasted butternut squash, I add whatever winter squash I have available. Once I have the recipe idea in my head, I pin it on my “Meals for the Week” board and add any missing ingredients to my personal shopping list in Wunderlist. I then repeat until I’ve planned a week’s worth of food for two. I shop on Saturday, prep most on Sunday (make rice, boil eggs, chop onions and then assemble some of the meals), then do another mini prep on Wednesday night using up the remaining stuff from Sunday that I prepared in bulk. I’ve seriously cut our grocery bill in half and our eating-out bill by like 70%!

[jacobdriscoll]

It really sucks that so many of these money-saving tricks boil down to "have more time." Planning meals, cooking meals, having a dang *garden*... If I had the time to do these things, I wouldn't need these tips!

[sarahcook]

Switch to Aldi and you're good to go 👌

[kestrels.]

I’m still struggling to kind of make an ends, so, I have to penny pinch.

This means my grocery bill, is super low, I don’t always have food, but it’s made me a super smart buyer.

I cut out much of what’s not essential.

But two things I do, I make one meal, and stretch it through the week. If it’s a soup, I’ll make rice to stretch it more and fill my belly.

I do make smoothies, but I get frozen $1 bags. Not the best, but not the worst. To be honest, I could cut that out and just eat cereal or something. But this is also part of a trick I use to make sure I eat.

I have depression, and some times, it’s hard to eat. Having a smoothie that I can sip through the day, till I come home and eat my soup or whatever, helps me eat. I make it before I leave in the morning and have it all day.

To be fair, I really don’t spend much at the store, my average bill is maybe $30/week. Or more if I’m out of some staples.

[clairebradbury]

Nuts are one of just 2 food groups to have been scientifically proven to make you live longer. The other is leafy green veg. I try to buy frugally but I'm more interested in eating healthily.

[johnofdebar]

I have been a vegetarian for 25 years now and I talk from experience when i say that it costs more to have a diet based solely on fruits and vegetables than on a diet which includes meat

[lavane]

I'm just starting to get the hang of meal-prepping, but it has helped me at least to make sure that the things I buy don't go to waste, don't spoil before I finally decide to use them. But these are some really good tips, and I think I'll take on that challenge. It will probably somehow simplify my meal-prepping and planning.

[plantpoweredpanda]

$430 per month would be a goal for me. For my husband and I, we spend 200- 250 per week depending on the season and for most months it's a 1000 for the whole month. And we do not eat meat, cheese etc, but we do buy a lot of nuts and greens which are pricy. Even though I try to stay conscious about how much we spend on food, eating healthy for us is an investment and it's worth it.

[patriciacorlis]

Excellent video. Very helpful. Before you go grocery shopping for say the next two weeks, check your fridge and pantry (cupboards) for what you do have. With that in mind figure out a meal plan and go from there. You don’t need to buy meat every time you go shopping but I love the wiggle room idea because when you see a deal on meat, grab it. That is what a freezer is for.

[MrNidhog]

Good suggestions. The next step now is to cut back on food waste so that 1 month of food may last a week or two more. As part of a young family of 4 it is tricky but using a blackboard of sorts to layout what we have eat, need to buy, and could make from scratch really helped. I mounted it to the pantry door next to the fridge and actively update it. I also took advantage of some cheap freezer safe food prep storage boxes to portion and save food in the freezer instead of letting it go to waste or allowing to be so big and cumbersome you never open it back up. Net result: Wife is finally taking lunches to work and not starving herself (side benefit is she no longer eats out on the way home), no more spoiled food found hidden in the back of the fridge, no more wondering what there is too eat, and lastly i know exactly what i need when i walk into a supermarket.

[authenticallytrish]

Quarantine has changed my mindset to “use what you have, as often as you can.” It helps me find new recipes and come up with my own fun creative recipes!

[blinkDanna]

My boyfriend and I did something similar in Sep 2018 we made the rules ourselves but it was essentially what was outlined in the video. We did so well that we did it a second month. Then a third month. Now it’s just our budget. We went from $400 or more to $260 or less for a family of THREE( including household products). We still a deep freezer stuffed with meat, full shelves and eat a ton of veggies. When you start too looking at what you are purchasing and why, and how much of it you are actually using up vs throwing away it becomes super easy to make permanent reductions in your food budget. One of our biggest helps in this is writing out our meals before shopping, using what we already have as a base and buying only the extra ingredients with a few things that we buy in bulk when on sale. (Also note: BF and I both work from home so we eat every meal here)

[littlemusicx]

I don't really get how you could replace bread with quinoa or pasta in some dishes but ok :D I personally would never limit myself to a certain price of meat, because I feel like meat is one of those things where you can totally tell if you spend more money on it. It just taste so much better. We don't eat meat during the work week most of the time and try and buy organic or local meats, always have shopping list and try to plan out the meals you will eat and love.