With the cost of groceries being so high right now, it’s difficult to stay on budget especially when you have dietary restrictions. As a vegetarian, I know how expensive specialty items can be. My partner also requires a gluten-free diet, which can be tricky to shop for as well. My family has used these five strategies to stay on track with our budget and still eat a healthy diet.
Download Rewards and Sales Finder Apps
One of my favorite tools for earning rewards while grocery shopping is Fetch Rewards. You can scan all your receipts to earn points towards gift cards to places like Starbucks and Amazon. It’s a nice treat for things you’re already buying.
Another great app is Ibotta, which gives you cash back for grocery purchases. You can also get cash back at participating online retailers. The process is simple—all you have to do is scan your receipts or link your store loyalty cards and you’re ready to start earning.
My family also uses FlashFood. This app alerts you when a store near you has discounted food. You can easily purchase right in the app and then pick up your food from the store. Many of these discounts are as high as 50% off. I’ve been able to get expensive items like baked goods and ground beef and chicken for my spouse for half of the usual price.
I’ve also heard great things about Flipp, which is an app that allows you to browse sales flyers from multiple grocery stores in your area. If you input your shopping list, the app will also find the best deals on the items you need. I haven’t been able to make use of it because I have limited grocery store choices in my rural town, but it may be useful if you have more supermarket chains in your area.
Check Out Meal Delivery Services
Many meal subscription boxes have options for people with dietary restrictions like vegetarians and keto dieters. When you do the math, the cost per serving can be very reasonable. Many companies have great introductory offers, so you can try out the service for a few weeks with no obligation to continue. I tried out Hello Fresh and Hungryroot when they had promotional discounts and enjoyed the convenience and portion control, which helped reduce food waste. Thanks to the introductory discounts, I didn’t even exceed my usual weekly grocery budget when testing out these services.
We also use Thrive Market for the gluten-free and vegetarian specialty items that we can’t live without. We’ve made an effort to reduce our consumption of specialty items and stick to the perimeter of the grocery store to save money. However, every now and then we enjoy mixing up our usual diet of rice, beans, oats, tofu, and produce with some vegetarian meats and gluten-free treats. This helps us avoid getting food fatigue and blowing our budget by ordering out.
Thrive Market helps us buy the specialty pantry items we love like gluten-free pasta and meatless taco crumbles at a much more affordable price. Thrive offers a wide variety of specialty items, including pantry, frozen and produce items at a discount. The only downside is that there are item minimums for certain products. We like to stock up though, so it works for our family.
My family also appreciates the convenience and accessibility of Thrive Market. Because I live in a rural area, the nearest health food store is about an hour and a half away, so Thrive saves me a lot of gas money.
Always Look for Store Brands
It may go without saying, but store brands will always be more affordable than name brands. We find that for staple items, store brands are the way to go. By saving on the basics, we can spend a little more on specialty items as a treat. We find that the difference in taste is very minimal as well.
Make Your Own Convenience Items
Have you ever noticed that cut fruits and vegetables are so much more expensive than uncut? Just by doing some prep work at home, you can save a good amount of money each week. To cut down on chopping, we purchased a vegetable chopper from Amazon that makes it so easy to slice and dice produce. Finding workarounds like this can be super helpful so you don’t feel like you’re sacrificing time or convenience to save money on groceries.
Another strategy we use to reduce our grocery budget without sacrificing convenience is making our own frozen foods. Instead of buying an expensive gluten-free frozen pizza at the store, we make pizza dough from scratch and freeze it. Then all we have to do is thaw it out and top it with whatever we have in the fridge on nights when we don’t feel like cooking a whole dinner from scratch.
We also can convenience meals like soup in our pressure canner. This helps us avoid paying inflated prices for canned soup at the grocery store. I save veggie scraps and freeze them so I can make broth-based soups and can them later. For my spouse, I hunt for deals on meat and make a big batch of chili to jar up and pressure can. However, make sure that you’re always using safe canning recipes and practices when you pressure can at home to prevent foodborne illness.
Switch Up Your Grocery Stores
If prices seem especially high at your usual grocery store, it may be time to switch it up. You can try discount stores like Aldi, membership stores like BJ’s Wholesale Club or Costco, or local grocers that aren’t part of a chain. You may find better sales or value at these stores.
Although I don’t have many grocery store choices in my area, I make sure to stock up on deals when I go out of town. This week I have a dentist appointment in a bigger town about an hour and a half away. It has an Aldi, which usually has great prices on tofu, canned goods, and some of our other staple items, so I’ll definitely be stocking up!
I hope that with these five ways to save money on groceries even with dietary restrictions, you’ll be able to stay on budget and eat well. Happy shopping!
Read More
Enjoy Great Foods While Still Being a Frugal Foodie
Healthy (and Cheap) Winter Entertainment
3 Powerful Reasons To Do a Credit Card Detox
Come back to what you love! Dollardig.com is the most reliable cash-back site on the web. Just sign up, click, shop, and get full cashback!