Budgeting {Saving Money Grocery Shopping}

A few weeks ago I asked a question on Facebook about how you save money on groceries.  Man that post was popular!  I had lots of tips, and tricks which was great!  Our grocery bill is out of control, and while I honestly don’t think we could spend less than $100 a week, I do want to slash that bill.  I figured the blog would be a good place to share our attempts!

I am fourante to live in area with a lot of choices in shopping.  In no partiuclar order we have the following stores within a few mile radius:

~Busch’s
~Kroger
~Meijer
~Walmart
~Aldi
~Fresh Thyme

That is a lot of options. Plus, of those stores, I get fuel points from Kroger (up to $1 off a gallon), and Meijer offers mPerks.
So what on earth is a mom who wants to save money to do?

The first thing I figured was that with Kroger fuel points I could save up to $16 on gas if I spent enough money to get $1 off. As it is I was averaging about $0.30 off, which saved me about $4 on a trip to the pump, so close to $5-6 a month. I wanted to see if shopping solely at Kroger was worth it for the fuel points.

This month I decided to do something different, and did the bulk of my shopping at the same time.  I got all my canned goods from Aldi, then went to Kroger and Meijer (the stores I frequent the most) to see how much I would spend on the same canned goods (I calculated the price based on the store brand).

And here is what I found:

As you can see, on what I bought from Aldi was $11 cheaper than Meijer and $13 cheaper than Kroger.   This kinda shows me that Aldi is a better deal, even when I take into account the Kroger fuel points.  From this I think I am sold on going to Aldi at least once a month for all of my canned goods.   I can’t commit to all of my shopping there since the meat selection is smaller, but I do think I will try getting as much as I can there.

I then bought all the meat from Kroger/Meijer for the month.

After that, all that needs to happen is to pick up some produce each week.

I’m hoping that this system will help cut my spending a little bit, but we shall see.  I am trying to remember to save the receipts so I can calculate out how much we spend.  If anything it will be a starting point.

What about you?  How do you save money shopping??