Grocery shopping usually needs to be done once a week but often gets pushed off until there is no food left in the house.  With the prices on items today grocery shopping almost seems like a chore.  We love to pick out the foods we like but cringe when the time comes to check out.  The bills for grocery shopping just seems to keep getting higher.  As college students we’re on a tight budget already and are willing to do anything we can do help save our money.  Even though must of us hate to shop for our groceries, it doesn’t need to be that bad.  Grocery shopping can be fun when we get good deals!  You ask how can it be fun?  Easy, there are many things you can do to help save your money and make grocery shopping more enjoyable.  Interested in knowing?  Continue to read and see how you will spend less money at the check out!

Only one time – When you go grocery shopping allow yourself to only make one trip.  Often people go out to the store a couple times a month or even a week.  Doing this causes us to spend more money and buy things we don’t really need.  Limit yourself to just going once a week. 

Make a grocery list – Not only does a grocery list help us remember what we need but it helps us limit ourselves.  We find out what we really need and go straight to those items.  You want to avoid going down every single isle at the grocery store.  When we shop every single isle we find ourselves saying “Hm.. this looks good.”  That then turns into a grocery cart that can’t fit anymore items.  Make it simple and cheap by making a grocery list.

Sales ads – Try to subscribe to the weekly newspaper if you can.  When you get the newspaper you will find sales ads for the week at your local grocery stores.  Look through all the ads and find the one grocery store that has the best sales for the week.  Try to avoid going from store to store, this tends to burn a lot of gas and defeats the purpose of the sale.  Find one store and stick with it if you can.

Is it on sale? – Only buy items that are on sale!  You never want to pay full price for anything these days.  Saving money comes with patience.  Sooner or later the items you want will go on sale.  Buying items on sale can easily cut your grocery bill in half!

Stock up – When the items you want go on sale, stock up for the next couple of weeks! You want to avoid buying the same items once a week because out of all those times you will be lucky to get them on sale once.  Don’t be afraid to stock up, it will save you a ton of money in the long run. 

Coupon Mom – Ever hear of coupon mom?  If not, it will become your best friend when it comes to grocery shopping.  When you get sales ads in the mail you want to make a folder just for the coupon books.  When you get a folder, write the date on every coupon book you get for the week.   Then when you need to go grocery shopping next go to couponmom.com.  What coupon mom does is it tells you when your local grocery store has the items you want on sale.  You can then clip the coupons and use them on top of the sale.  This sometimes will give you free items!  So for example, you have a coupon for $1.00 of of shampoo.  Then when you go to the grocery store it will be on sale.  Say it’s two for $5.00 you now can use that coupon and get away with spending $1.50.  So basically it tells you when to use your coupons by telling you when your store has those coupon items on sale.

Use a small cart – If possible grab a small cart!  This will force you to buy only what you need instead of what you want.  Since you have limited space you don’t have room for those little unnecessary items.  This can easily cut your bill in half!

As you can see grocery shopping doesn’t have to be that bad.  As a college student it is hard because there are so many expenses with college.  Save as much money as you can and start to enjoy grocery shopping by following these simple tips!