Cut Your Grocery Bill Challenge (week 3)

We’re kicking off the year with an 8-week Cut Your Grocery Bill Challenge. I’ll be sharing a weekly post here every Thursday with a task or challenge for you to complete/focus on to help you tweak, improve, or overhaul your grocery budget.

My hope is that we can all work together to crowd-source new ideas and fresh inspiration to be more thoughtful and intentional in our grocery budgets + hopefully save some money and instill some practices and principles and habits that will continue to save us money throughout the rest of the year.

In week #1, we talked about setting up a grocery budget. That’s the most important first step in cutting your grocery bill.

Last week, we discussed why you need to recognize potential roadblocks. Be sure to read through the comments here to hear about others’ roadblocks. I think it will encourage you to know you’re not alone.

Week #3: Choose One Thing to Change (For 3 Weeks)

This week, we’re going to take those roadblocks that we acknowledged or the potential obstacles we see that we could face, and we’re going to use them as motivation to get creative. I want you to choose one area you’re going to commit to change.

Think about what is realistic, what is doable, and what would make an impact on your budget. It could be that you are going to add up your groceries as you’re putting them in the cart so that you make sure to stick with the budget. Or, that you are going to plan your menu around what’s on sale at the store. Or, that you are going to try shopping at a different store. Or, that you will make your bread from scratch. Or, that you’re going to buy primarily only the fruit and veggies that are on sale and simplify and save money by doing that. Or, that you’re going to only bring cash to the store to shop with.

Need some more ideas? Sign up for my FREE cheatsheet with 10 Ways to Cut Your Grocery Bill by $50 This Week.

Really consider what you’d like to focus on for the next three weeks. And I’ll challenge you to make it something that’s going to lower your grocery budget by 1-3%. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but baby steps done consistently can add up to big change. Plus, smaller changes are much easier to actually stick with.

I went through the comments on last week’s post and picked a few to give an idea on one simple change they could commit to for the next three weeks:

Kelli said: “i hate grocery shopping! great at planning, like baking, LOVE cooking, often make food for others, etc etc do not enjoy grocery shopping.”

Idea: Try grocery pickup for the next three weeks. This way, you get the best of both world — you get to plan but you don’t have to mess with going in-store to shop. This can also help if you struggle with impulse shopping, too.

Crystal said: “One of my roadblocks has been that I don’t have a menu plan so supper time comes and everyone’s in a whirlwind. Working on it though.”

Idea: Challenge yourself to create a simple menu plan for the next three weeks. If you need help, I love a service like Eat at Home — they plan all of the menus for you, there are 4 completely different menu options to choose from each week, and they put together a color-coded grocery list for you, too! You can try it out for two weeks to see if it works. If not, just email to ask for a refund before the two weeks is up. (Psst! If you sign up here, you’ll get to see sample menu plans + get a coupon code for the menu-planning service!)

Tiffany said: I always forget something on my list or someone eats something that was panned for. Then I end up going back to the store later in the week and always end up impulse buying random things.

Idea: Commit to only shopping once per week. If you forget something, get creative and make do with what you have. Or, you could also say that if you make any extra trips for a specific item, you only bring enough cash in to buy that specific item so that you’re not tempted to impulse buy.

What are you going to commit to change/try/do for the next three weeks? I can’t wait to hear!

I went to Kroger again this week — but back to my normal Kroger where they do a better job of tagging things and updating prices so I didn’t have the same issues I had last week!

They didn’t have that many great weekly deals I was excited about (the $1.99 Kellogg’s cereal deal was decent and the sliced cheese for $1.79 was a pretty good deal), but I found some good mark downs. Plus, I stumbled across this potato deal — I don’t think it was advertised and maybe was just our store? $1.99 for 5 pounds of potatoes, which is a good deal on potatoes right now!

Here’s everything we got! It was $76 total. So I’ll roll over the extra from this week + last week to next week and hopefully there will be some more stock up deals!

I’m loosely planning chicken/cheese croissants, steak/peppers over rice, potato soup, cheese/chicken quesadillas, and Curry over rice for dinners this upcoming week. I don’t have a set-in-stone menu plan because I like to see how I feel each day and how much time I have to cook, etc. We also usually do one leftovers/fend-for-yourself night (which often means the kids eat cereal for dinner, which they love!!) and one night we get takeout.

Week #3 Project: Commit to Change One Thing & Share It!

Are you in for the Cut Your Grocery Bill Challenge? If so, I’d love for you to leave a comment and let me know what one thing you are committing to change for the next three weeks. This will inspire others with ideas, too!

Plus, if you have a minute, go through the comments and leave a comment or two replying to someone and cheering them on or giving them more ideas!

We’ll check back in later on in this challenge on how our three-week commitment is going and what we learned from it and how to apply what we learned.

Need some practical ideas for ways to cut your grocery bill or one thing you could do to commit to change? Be sure to sign up for my free cheatsheet with 10 Ways to Cut Your Grocery Bill by $50 This Week!