It’s the first week of the month and most of us are busy planning out our monthly household budgets. If there is one thing families almost always overspend on, that would be food. While my father taught me that good food has no price tag, we all should learn to be smart and learn to budget our groceries.

Take a look at these basic tips about saving money on groceries.

1. Shop for basics first. The bulk of your grocery budget should go for basic foods that form the staple of your diet. Milk, bread, eggs, produce and a basic protein source such as beans or meat. These items can usually be found around the perimeter of the store.

2. Next, you want to stock up on filling foods, such as pasta and rice. You can purchase whole grain pasta and brown rice for a healthy diet.

3. For the bulk of the remainder of your grocery list, buy generic foods whenever you can. Today’s generic foods are tasty and of high quality.

4. Avoid the sweets and processed foods as much as possible. Not only are they not as healthy, but they are also very expensive. Make your own sweets to control the cost.

5. Use coupons only on items that you would purchase anyway, and for the least processed foods. Coupons can make you overspend if you aren’t careful.

6. Reduce the number of times you go shopping. This can help you avoid extra purchases and find creative ways to use what you already have.

7. Create a grocery budget and stick to it. Better yet, challenge yourself to beat it by a little bit each trip.

Here are some ideas and ways to cut items from your grocery bill that will lower your costs without drastically changing your lifestyle.

Paper towels

Purchase reusable handiwipes, absorbent dishtowels or thin washclothes (check the dollar stores) to use in place of paper towels for everything from drying hands and wiping little faces, to cleaning spills from the counter and scrubbing the floor. To clean windows and mirrors use newspaper or the thin washcloths. Running one extra load of laundry (for the towels and cloths) every two or three weeks is worth the savings in my book.

Expensive cleaners

Baking soda, vinegar and bleach are inexpensive and clean very well. They each go a long way to keeping your home clean. In fact, as soon as I started to spray a solution of vinegar and water in my shower I noticed that I didn’t have to scrub it as often. The vinegar kept the mold away.

Convenience foods

Did you know that there are only two extra ingredients to add to flour to get a baking mix? Flour is much cheaper than those boxed mixes, and there isn’t much of a convenience to be gained. Plus you can avoid all of the extra preservatives that come with the mixes.

Likewise, anything that is in a kit or frozen can be recreated at home with fresh ingredients. Have you noticed the serving size of some of these foods lately? I could feed a family of five with double helpings on what it would cost to purchase just two or three of those frozen meals.

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