Less Waste, More Taste!

It's been a while since I blogged, but holy smokes it's been a busy few months! Between side hustles, my 9-5 and moving my significant other to the same city, it's been crazy! I'm happy to get back to regular blogging again!

I recently did a poll on my Instagram page to see what people would be curious to read about and it seems a lot of people really want to learn how to save money on groceries. So this week I'm focusing on that.

When I started my financial journey, I was really bad with grocery shopping. I mean REALLY bad. I bought groceries like I was buying for a family of 4 and I wasted so much food. One of my goals for 2018 was to get better at meal prepping and to make less food waste. So here are the tips I have to offer when grocery shopping.

1) Plan Ahead! This is the captain obvious tip but it is so helpful. When I sit down on Sunday and write out the meals I want to eat for the week, I waste less food because I only buy what I need. I've learned while living alone how much I can actually eat in one week and which foods I can now buy less of because I can't eat as much.

2) Meal Prep. This goes along with the first one, but meal prepping is key to less waste. When you have everything ready to go for the week, you just need to grab it and go. I even sometimes prep my dinners by pre-cutting veggies or baking chicken at the beginning of the week so that I don't have to do anything but warm it up after work!

3) Flipp App is GOAT. If you haven't downloaded this app, you're missing out. This is basically your one stop virtual grocery store flyer. You can search up all of the stores in your area and see what's in each weekly flyer. This also helps for price matching since you can have this easily accessible at the til when you need to match prices from other stores. You can 'clip' sales and have them on your virtual shopping list. It's so easy to use, and saves a lot of time with your pre-shopping planning.

4) Stick To Your List! This one is hard for me. I still sometimes buy things that aren't on my list and sometimes I've found myself having to use my debit card because I have too many items and not enough cash. This has gone down significantly since I've started planning, but it could use some improvement. Write out your list/meals. Don't go into any other aisles. Don't shop for anything you don't need. You'll be set.

5) Find Money Back Apps. I currently use Checkout51. Every week, they have new offers on there and you collect said offers when you shop. Sometimes it will be $1 off Dawn Soap. Other times, $5 off Pasta when you buy 3 or more. Checkout51 allows you to cash out your earnings once you get to $20. They send you a cheque, it's super easy. I find for myself it takes me a LONG time to get to $20, but it's one little additional step to save some money without much additional work. If you're already buying these things anyway, why not take advantage of money back?

These are my basic grocery tips. I hope to get even better at grocery shopping/planning this summer as I want to save as much money as possible for the fall. If you have any tips you'd like to share, please DM them to me on my Instagram page, millennialsmission.

Thanks for reading!