The first entry of my money saving strategies.

I have never blogged before and so please forgive me as I learn as I go. But after much consideration I realized that this process could indeed help me on my journey to attain our financial goals.

So the biggest money saving strategy for our family is reducing our grocery and food budget. With 3 children 2 who are very athletic teens our food bill was spiralling out of control! So my grocery reducing strategies come in two forms...

DON'T EAT OR TAKE OUT!Well certainly reduce it to the bare minimum.

And

REDUCE OUR GROCERY BILL!

To reduce our eating out I am implementing two strategies...
1) have fast to prepare or prepared food available for hectic evenings.
2) use the slow cooker (I love that thing!).

To reduce our grocery bill, I am using many strategies and I am coming up with more every day..

The number one strategy is to reduce processed food consumption and pre-prepared foods. This has multiple benefits beyond just saving money..
It has health benefits. Processed foods are often high in salt, and fat and contain other ingredients that may have few health benefits like MSG etc.. Also by not buying processed foods you will often save packaging (reduced waste), and it is easier to select locally grown foods.

Today I came back from shopping from Save-on foods. I used cloth totes (they give 10 points per bags, and points can be put twords free food, they do add up). I used coupons from their mailer. And stocked up on canned foods.
Canned Tomatoes were .99 each, Pineapple .79 each, english muffins 1.99 each, 5 lbs potatoes 1.49 (I bought two bags). I also bought oranges. They were a great price. Organic apples and bananas. Milk, cheeses, eggs, brown organic rice, canned organic beans. All for just under $80.

One of my strategies is to buy to fill the pantry with on sale products and then menu plan from the pantry and freezer...
Gotta go.... more later.