Ran into my old neighbor at the grocery store and he changed my whole budget approach

Last Tuesday I bumped into Mr. Garcia outside the Safeway on 3rd Street. He told me he saved $4,200 last year just by meal planning around grocery store sales instead of planning meals first. Now I'm torn between thinking he's got a great system or that it takes too much time to match sales to recipes every week. Which side do you land on, planning meals first or hunting the deals first?

2 comments

2 Comments

taylor_moore8d ago

Started doing the sale hunt first about six months ago and it really changed things for me. I grab the weekly ads for two stores near my house, circle what's actually cheap, and then figure out meals around those items. For example, last week pork shoulder was on sale for 99 cents a pound so I made pulled pork, tacos, and froze the rest for later. It does take about 20 extra minutes on Sunday but I'm spending way less and wasting almost no food.

seth_nguyen7d ago

Yeah, the "figure out meals around what's on sale" part really clicked for me too @taylor_moore. I used to just buy whatever looked good at the store and then try to make something work, which usually meant expensive ingredients going bad in the fridge. Now I do the same thing with the ads, but I also check the clearance meat section first. Found a bunch of marked down chicken thighs last week for like half off, so I made a big batch of curry and some freezer burritos. That twenty minutes on Sunday is annoying but it beats throwing away ten bucks of wilted produce on Thursday.