This is a sort of follow up to the top five ways we save money on food post that I blogged about over a year ago. I’ve changed some of my grocery shopping techniques, so I wanted to share what has been working for us!

The previous top five ways we saved money on food were:
1. Setting a budget
2. Meal planning
3. Shopping once per week
4. Using coupons
5. Visiting more than one store

Since that post, I no longer do two things on that list. I don’t coupon anymore and I don’t physically visit more than one store.

What changed?

1. I started shopping at Aldi around June of last year and haven’t looked back. Since beginning to shop at Aldi, we’ve been able to cut our weekly grocery bill down by over 30%.

I’m not sure if everyone is familiar with Aldi, but it’s a grocery store that’s unique for a few reasons:

• Aldi does not bag your food for you. If you want bags, you must buy them or bring your own. You can also use cardboard boxes that are in the store.
• They don’t sell a lot of name brand items. Most of them items in Aldi are their own brands.
• Aldi sells mostly weekly must-haves like bread, milk, meat, cheese, etc. This allows the store to be smaller in size, which saves money.
• To use their carts, you have to have a quarter (which you get back). This saves the company money because they aren’t paying employees to retrieve carts.

2. Whatever I can’t buy from Aldi, I purchase on Jet.com.

I’ve found that I don’t love the Aldi brand dishwasher and laundry detergent. They also don’t have a huge selection of toothpaste, shampoo, body wash, and other personal items. Basically, I fill in the gaps with Jet. You can see my explanation of Jet in this post.

These two techniques have saved Jimmy and I a lot of money and hassle over the past six months! It has definitely taken some experimenting to figure out what works for us, but it has been worth it.

I’m sure I’ll be back again in the future with more tips and tricks as I continue to experiment with different approaches to grocery shopping 🙂

How do you save money on food?

P.S. This post isn’t sponsored in any way, shape, or form. It’s just me sharing what works for us!