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Cheap Easy Snacks on a Budget

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Looking for easy ways to stock your pantry with cheap snacks for kids? These are my best tips!

You CAN afford snacks and treats for your kids on a tight grocery budget! Here's how!

One thing I’ve promised the kids over the past few years is that any time we cut our grocery budget back, I would still find ways to buy treats and some of their favorite foods for them. So I’m always on the lookout for markdowns and deals on items that they especially love or that I know will make them excited.

These items aren’t necessarily the best deals ever, but if I can afford to purchase treats for them in our budget, then I’m all about that. Also, it becomes easier to have wiggle room in your grocery budget the more you stock up and buy multiples of items when they are at their lowest price.

How to FIND the Cheapest Snacks

Here are some of my tips for being able to afford snacks if you’re on a tight grocery budget:

  1. Follow KrogerKrazy.com. So many of the great deals I find at Kroger are thanks to tips from KrogerKrazy.com. I can’t recommend this site enough! It’s fantastic if you have a Kroger or Kroger affiliate. I may check it something like 3-5 times per day. Yup. I’m THAT weird girl who gets so jazzed about new deals! By the way, the Friday-Saturday/weekend sales recently have had a LOT of great deals on snack foods.
  2. Find a local blogger. Don’t have a Kroger? Search for the name of you local store and “deals” or “coupon blogger” to see if there’s a similar site where a blogger is covering the deals at your local store. (There are so many IHeartPublix.com, TotallyTarget.com, and many more! If you know of a great blogger doing a really great job of covering deals exclusively at one store, please leave a comment and let us know!)
  3. Look for markdowns and closeouts. As you know, I always walk around the perimeter of the store looking for markdowns. If I have extra time, I’ll quickly walk through the aisles looking for the white closeout stickers at Kroger. Other stores like BigLots, have clearance carts that sometimes have really great deals on snack foods. Check at your local stores to see what they offer in the way of clearance and markdowns. I know that Target often has great markdowns on snack foods, too. (Tip: Check out my post on How to Find Great Markdowns at Kroger.)

Buying Cheap Snacks on a Budget:

  1. Stock up when you find a great deal. This is one of those tips that I assume every knows, but when I talk to so many people most people are not stocking up when there’s a great sale. If you know it’s something that your kids love and it’s on a great deal and you can afford it in your budget, get as many as you can! That way, you won’t have to pay full-price for snacks OR you won’t have to tell your kids that there just aren’t any snacks because you didn’t have wiggle room in your budget. I try to buy ahead at least $5-$8 worth of snack type foods each week and then we always have a good selection to choose from.
  2. Set up a stash that the kids can’t get into. Okay, so some of you might think I’m a crazy mom to do this, but I actually have a high shelf in our pantry that is known as “Mom’s Secret Stash.” It’s not really that secret since all the kids know about it, but it’s snack foods that I’ve bought extras of that they aren’t allowed to get into until I get it down. The reason is: if I leave the snack foods easily accessible, my kids go through them at alarming rates. So instead, I will put one or two bags or packages of something in the pantry that they can get into and the rest are saved for the following week (or for whenever we are running low on snacks in the other shelves of the pantry). It’s weird, but by doing this, the kids pace themselves and the snacks last much, much longer.

While packaged snacks can be fun and my kids love them, they also love homemade snack foods, too. Here are some options that are favorites around here:

8 Homemade Cheap Easy Snacks

  1. Hard-Boiled Eggs
  2. Veggies
  3. Fruit
  4. Homemade Yogurt in the Crockpot
  5. Homemade Instant Oatmeal Packets
  6. Popcorn
  7. Homemade Crockpot Pear or Applesauce Sauce
  8. Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Smoothies

8 Freezer-Friendly Cheap Snack Ideas

When you have a free day or a laid-back weekend, use some of that time to make meals and parts of meals to stick in your freezer. Things like homemade popsicles, homemade gogurts, homemade cookie dough, homemade muffins, and homemade smoothie kits are great to have on hand.

  1. Freezer-Friendly Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches
  2. Freezer-Friendly Banana Bread
  3. Easy Morning Glory Muffins
  4. Homemade Energy Bites
  5. Brown Bag Burritos
  6. Homemade Pizza Pockets
  7. Southwest Roll-ups
  8. Best Ever Chocolate Oatmeal Bars

Best Cheap Snacks (Even More Ideas!)

Cheap Snack Ideas from our Readers:

Thanks to many of you for leaving comments and/or submitting your favorite frugal snack ideas!

  • Yogurt and granola
  • Smoothies with frozen fruit
  • Cereal
  • Chips and salsa
  • Frozen grapes
  • Produce from your own garden
  • Celery or apples with peanut butter and raisins
  • PB & J sandwiches
  • Toast or bagel with cream cheese or peanut butter

What tips and advice do you have for saving money on snacks? I’d love to hear!

Reader Interactions

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  2. Keri | Families & Finance says

    Thanks for all of the homemade snack ideas! I need to work some into my meal plan!

    I follow the Krazy Coupon Lady(great for Idaho!), and coupon for snacks at Walgreens on occasion, but my favorite places to buy snacks are Costco and the Grocery Outlet.

    At Costco, I only buy what is on sale that month. They usually have atleast one item a month that my family likes. It’s the best price around-even compared to couponing! The boxes are huge, so they last a couple of months when we mix them with the little things I grab from other stores. I toss all of the snacks into a big bin and stir. It’s like a treasure hunt!

    In my local Grocery Outlet, the perimeter of the store is definitely where you find all of the deals! This is where I usually find yogurt, baked goods, cereal, you name it. I’ve actually noticed that there is a lot of crossover between Costco’s snack sales and what I find at Grocery Outlet!

  3. Candice says

    We have four snack bins, and use one bin per week. So whenever I get a good deal on a snack item, I stock up and put a box/bag in each bin. When it’s time to pull down a new bin for the week, it’s filled with a nice variety of snack deals that I snagged over the past month. This really helps us pace our consumption and provides more variety. Oh, and the bins that are not in use definitely go on the top shelf out of the reach of little hands. Haha

  5. Judy says

    I used to take really special snacks out of the container (like snack size chocolate candy bars) and put in oatmeal containers in the freezer. Other containers work too, just so it’s one that doesn’t appeal to your kids. And of course, it only works for freezable foods. You have to be pretty sneaky to pull it off but it is very effective! If your kids are used to seeing all kinds of food stored in the freezer, they think nothing of it!

  6. Need Anap says

    Another simple tip is to portion out the food. Of course Ziploc bags work well. My mom was surprised that we could finish off a whole bag of chips at once or she could portion it out and it would last a whole week!!

  7. Sarah says

    I also have a separate extra snack space in our pantry! Even though everyone knows what is there, the act of separation creates a mental barrier that my family knows not to cross. In November this is also where we start to store the extra ‘treat’ foods that we buy each week in the run up to the holidays to lessen the burden of Christmas grocery shopping!

  8. Keri says

    Your suggestions have helped me find a lot of great deals at Kroger lately! I was wondering, if you stock up that much on yogurt when it is on clearance, are you able to use it all before it goes bad?

  11. Judy Follis says

    Do you know how many times you can use the Kroger weekend digital coupons? I know you can buy up to five per transaction but how many times can you do that?

    • Jennifer says

      At my store , once you use it, whether you buy 1 or 5 , the coupon is deleted from your account. So only one time.

    • Crystal Paine says

      Unless it’s something like the Simple Truth coupons from last month that stayed in your account and could be used in more than one transaction, they are typically only good for one use — whether you buy 1 or 5.

  13. Akaya says

    I just wanted to comment that if your family likes popcorn, investing in a Whirley Pop is a FUN and very inexpensive way to enjoy popcorn. They’re $20 at Bed Bath and Beyond, but they often have 20% off coupons so you pay just $16 + tax. We use popcorn kernels and coconut oil to make delicious popcorn at home for just pennies, and we have fun doing it!