Special note from Jamerrill: Good morning, friends! You know I love to talk about saving money on groceries and getting creative in the kitchen, so much so that I’m spinning off a 2nd YouTube Channel and blog called, The Large Family Table practical strategies for feeding a herd! That’s why I wanted my friend, Lauren, to share with us how she drastically reduced her grocery budget to help her family work out of $40,000 in debt!  Read more from Lauren below:

How to get out of Debt by Drastically Reducing your Grocery Budget

When my husband and I faced the reality that we were in $40,000 of debt, we had to do something. Things could not stay this way. But, we had no idea how to budget and were running a $1,000 deficit each month. That’s $12,000 more debt annually if we stayed the course. We had a real challenge in front of us, but we just had to make it work. What would you be willing to sacrifice for the sake of your family? But here’s the amazing thing – what we thought to be a sacrifice was actually a blessing. It completely changed our lives and our financial lifestyles – for the better!

So here’s the deal – our family of 3 was spending $1,000 a month on food. I realized that if I could somehow reduce that to $50 a week, I could save us $800 a month just by doing something that I was doing anyways – buying food and making dinner.

My first experience on an all-cash shopping trip took a lot of work. To be honest, it was a nightmare. But it was worth every penny. I was determined to not give up. This was a big step for me. This all-cash, coupon-toting shopping trip was the start of a new life for me. I was putting my stake in the ground.

I saved $150 on that one trip! It felt like I got paid $50/hr for the three hours I spent preparing for the trip! We were able to get so much food at such a good price! Because I was planning ahead now, we completely stopped eating out for a while. That saved us an extra $50 a week!

I know food prices vary based on location, you may have a larger family, and I know many stores have changed their coupon policies over the years, but if you implement these principles, I guarantee you will see HUGE savings in your food spending. This may mean the difference between a balanced budget and more debt for some of you. It was for me.

Here’s how I turned a $250 a week food bill into a $50 a week grocery bill.

1) Meal Plan

Using the weekly sales ad as your springboard, plan your meals for the week based on what is on sale. If ground beef, bread crumbs, crushed tomatoes, and cheese are sale that week. Boom! You’ve got spaghetti and meatballs waiting to happen, probably a meatloaf, and most of the items you need to make homemade pizza. There’s three meals (plus leftovers) done! Not bad. Try one of those recipe ingredient matching sites if you need help. Also, check out some of Jamerrill’s awesome recipes!

2) Focus on cheap (but healthy) products

To get your absolute best bang for the buck on food, you’ve got to shift your focus away from what you’ve been eating in the past. Chicken breast, most cuts of beef, lean hamburger… you may have been used to buying these in the past regularly. But they are overpriced for what they are. Chicken thighs are less than half the price of chicken breast, and in my opinion, much better tasting. For beef, cuts like a beef shank or chuck roast are much less expensive than sirloin or other steaks, and are PERFECT for slow cooking.

Or, you don’t need to use meat at all for many meals. If you have meals based around beans a couple nights a week, you will save a TON of money. Especially if you start with dried beans, you can add rice and vegetables and serve a large family for like $4. Check out Jamerrill’s beans, rice, and cornbread recipe here!

3) Minimize going to restaurants as much as possible

All of these steps build off of one another. Shopping what’s on sale sets you up to meal plan, and meal planning reduces your need to go out to eat.

You do realize that when you go out to eat, you are not only paying for the food, you are paying someone else to make it for you, and then someone else to bring it out to you. I’ve got nothing against restaurants, I love them. But when you are in money-crisis-get-out-of-debt mode, isn’t paying someone to cook and serve your food a luxury that you might not be able to afford?

And what if you go the cheaper fast food route? You can spend $7-$8 easy on that “value” meal, while that same $8 worth of groceries can feed your entire family!

Frequently, people go out to eat because they don’t have food in the house (they didn’t go grocery shopping) or they didn’t plan ahead for dinner. So, it’s not that they are going out to eat to celebrate something, just that they didn’t plan ahead. I know how busy life can be, but if you’re planning your meals, you can easily skip going out to eat and save a TON of money.

4) Freezer Cooking

Building off of step 2, something that takes meal planning to the next level is Freezer Cooking. Freezer cooking is where you prep a bunch of meals ahead of time, freeze them, and then put one in the crock pot in the morning and it’s done by the time everyone gets home from their busy day. It is amazing. And it ends up saving you even more money because you are buying larger quantities of ingredients, so you get a better value. Jamerrill has so many amazing Freezer cooking ideas you should definitely check out.

My husband and I started freezer cooking simply to remove the “What’s for dinner?” stress that looms over many of us all day, and to make our very busy days a lot easier.

5) The Secret Weapon: ALDI

If you don’t live near an ALDI Grocery store, I am truly sorry! ALDI is my favorite grocery store for many reasons. One reason is that many of their prices are already so low that they are either the same price or better priced than something you have a coupon for at other typical grocery stores. These days, the only reason I shop at traditional grocery stores pick up their loss leaders only, then do the rest of my shopping at ALDI. This method gives my grocery bill that one-two-punch it needs.

In my book, The Recovering Spender, I tell my story of overspending – how I got my family into $40,000 of debt, what happened when I broke the news to my husband, and then I give you the step-by-step plan we used to become completely debt-free in 4 years. Preorder your copy today and get $75 worth of freebies including a video course where I give you a practical and actionable formula to overhaul your finances.