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When budgeting for a large family of four or more, the grocery bill can often get too high before you know it. Believe it or not, you can get it much lower than you think. Here are six ways to save on meals for a large family.
Stick to Foods Everyone Enjoys
By focusing on meals that everyone will eat at the same time, you can save on having to buy food for additional meals. It also cuts down on the hassle of having to prepare multiple meals, which also saves you time. Many families try to make multiple meals to satisfy everyone’s taste buds. But this makes mealtime much more expensive than it needs to be. Have a family discussion to plan for meals everyone can enjoy.
Make Meals That Can Be Repurposed
Beyond just having leftovers, you also want to prepare meals that can be combined into other meals. For instance, if you make a fried rice as one meal, you can use the leftover rice to make tacos, to put gravy over, or to sauté with vegetables. This can help you make multiple meals instead of just one.
Buy Items That Can Be Used for Multiple Meals
If you can, try to buy items that can be used for the preparation of several different meals. For instance, say that you want to make tacos, meatloaf, spaghetti, and stir fry for a few of the meals. You can buy chicken, ground beef, rice, and vegetables that can be used for most of those meals, as well as some extra meals that can be created with those ingredients. Then, the remaining ingredients besides those can be used to create other meals as well. Try to avoid buying separate food for every single meal.
Check the Clearance Section Frequently
Sometimes you can find the exact items you buy often or a new item you didn’t think of when shopping the clearance section. Closeout and clearance items can help you stock up for the future, as well as save on everyday purchases.
Save on Snacks by Preparing Your Own
Preparing your own snacks with your kids has a couple benefits over buying prepared or prepackaged snacks. Snacks such as trail mix, salsa, and guacamole can be prepared yourself. It costs about the same for the ingredients, but it makes far more quantity. A little more prep a involved, but the end result is far less processed and better for you. and more for the money.
Have Fresh Fruits and Veggies Ready
This is one way many don’t think of to save on meals for a large family. When you are cooking, keep fresh fruits and veggies on the table for everyone to snack on. Not only is this a healthy habit, but it also cuts down on some people getting more than one helping. This means there will be more leftovers for another meal.
It is sometimes hard to choose meals for the family. I never know what to cook.But thanks for this interesting article.
I don’t have a large family but I do try to save money by cooking meals that use same type of ingredients, so that I can buy them in bulk, when it’s cheaper. I agree that sometimes shopping at clearance can give you some great deals.
These are good tips, my hubby and I love ordering off services such as Greenblender or Freshly where they send you the ingredients and recipes and you make your meals. It has made our lives so much easier and we are eating healthy by default.
Yes, I love this list and I do every one of them. In fact, for our family of 6, I’ve got my grocery budget down to $300 a month.
I have a large family so I found this post really helpful. I am always trying to find ways to save money especially on food. Awesome post.
This is such a helpful post, I am always looking for ways to save money so I definitely learned a few new tricks here!
Some good tips here! I always like to encourage my kids to try new things and as a food blogger I I’m constantly trying to come up with new and interesting meals coupled with ways to save money!
What great tips! I really loved the the suggestion on repurposing food. Really smart idea!