Things To Buy For Groceries

According to EducationData.org, college students spend an average of $260 per month on groceries. As such, students on a budget should avoid letting the aisles guide them into putting unnecessary items in their carts.

things to buy for groceries

Your college student grocery budget may not be particularly big, but you can still buy the food you want and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Here are five budgeting tips when it comes to buying groceries in college.

Understand that some roommates may not want to split the cost of groceries and would prefer to buy food on their own. In that case, you may want to designate a shelf for each roommate in the fridge or put your name or initials on food you bought.

If you follow my tips above on creating a weekly grocery shopping list, you will find it much easier to stick to a budget. In fact, from experience, it can be quite addictive to find ways to save money on shopping for groceries each week!

Think (when grocery shopping on a budget) about how you can make many things at home instead of buying them already made. Even items like tortillas for tacos and buns for hot dogs can be made at home instead of buying them.

Tuna sandwiches are a favorite of mine, especially on homemade bread. But you can also make things like tuna patties or substitute tuna for salmon and do the same. Add these canned fish with some noodles and vegetables to make a casserole.

For under two dollars, a large tub of yogurt will offer nutrition and a side dish. Packed with tasty things like protein and probiotics, you can customize it with sweetener, fruit, nuts, or granola. Good for breakfast or a snack, too

Though this seems less intuitive, H Mart's kitchen selection is pretty extensive. It's where nearly every newly minted Korean adult will go to buy a couple of key items for a starter pack to life: a rice cooker and this lightweight plated aluminum pot (which brings water to a boil way faster than a regular pot, making it ideal for instant ramen). Also, stock up on pretty chopsticks, spoons, forks, and little rice and soup bowls. Or if you're like me and secretly love kawaii things, don't miss THIS totally cute cat tea cup!

Using a recipe ingredient matching site (check out SuperCook.com) is also a great strategy as you look for ways to save on groceries. These kinds of sites help you with meal ideas based on what you have at home and what items are on sale in a given week.

Grocery stores in Iceland are actually super affordable places for foreigners to shop. Unlike almost everything else in Iceland [gas, liquor, accommodations, dining out], prices at grocery stores in Iceland are relatively similar to shopping at your average store in America or Europe. For example, Iceland groceries such as frozen pizza may cost $4-5 USD, chips may cost $2 USD, and bread will cost $3.

Brand snobs rejoice! Grocery stores in Iceland cater to their many tourist shoppers by offering tons of brands we all know! From Doritos and Lays to recognizable frozen and canned food brands, there are plenty of options for those who want a taste of home when buying Iceland groceries.

Although there are multiple different places to shop for Iceland groceries, you are going to want to shop at Bonus Iceland whenever possible. Bonus Iclenad stores are easy to find because they are bright yellow with a huge pink pig logo.

Netto is another one of the budget grocery stores in Iceland and it is quite large. Netto is one of the true supermarkets in Iceland because it sells more than just groceries. It is also larger than many Bonus stores and has lots of locations in the east fjords, west fjords, and north of Iceland. If you are looking for supermarkets in Iceland during your Ring Road drive, check out Netto for some great options!

There are truly some great deals with these two lines. In fact, when purchasing our groceries, majority of our items come from these two brands. You can really score some great prices compared to other stores.

Aldi wears its German roots proudly. Look no further than the strudel in the freezer case for proof. You'll find chocolates from Germany and other European countries on store shelves, too. Shopping experts say specialty chocolates, in general, are among the best things to buy at Aldi because they are "smooth and creamy at a much lower cost than most other stores."

Costa Rica has a range of supermarkets which you can find nearly everything you need. However, there are a few things to know before you grab a shopping cart which you can read in this post to help you navigate getting groceries in Costa Rica.

For example, Auto Mercado, a Costa Rican owned store is well known for being a high end supermarket with higher quality items, a bigger range of foreign products and a wide selection of high quality produce. They also have conveyor belts, air conditioning and misting machines, a few things that are not super common in other grocery stores in Costa Rica. Their prices are normally a little bit more expensive in touristic areas such as Herradura, Tamarindo and Playas del Coco. They have a sister market called Vindi which is a smaller version.

The prices below (listed in USD and CRC) are just to give you an idea of how much basic items cost. For 2 people living in a touristic area of Costa Rica, groceries are usually the biggest chunk of our monthly budget. Our average monthly budget for groceries in Costa Rica is around $600 USD for 2 people and 4 large dogs. Dog food and dog supplies are expensive in Costa Rica unless you get the very cheap, not good quality stuff.

When it comes to budget-minded grocery shopping, there are a bunch of questions to consider. Are store brand products less expensive than name brand? What about buying groceries online versus shopping in-store? And, where is the most cost-effective place to shop? Is it Costco? We take on stockpiling (responsibly) to see how much you can save by buying in bulk from this popular national wholesaler.

Costco, Sam's Club, BJ's and other wholesale retailers mainly in bulk products, and department stores such as Target and Walmart typically offer a number of bulk options, but even conventional grocery stores often carry bulk or larger sizes of staple items. However, Storage may be an issue when buying in bulk, and not all groceries are suitable for bulk purchasing if they have short shelf lives.

But it does raise the question: How much money can you save by buying bulk groceries from Costco? By my calculations, you'd save over $1,000 in a single year by shopping from a wholesale retailer. Below is a breakdown of how I reached that figure. (And if you get a Costco Executive membership, you could save even more.)

Using grocery list templates available online, I assembled a list of 25 typical, staple grocery items that are suitable for longer storage, either in the pantry, refrigerator or freezer. This ruled out most fresh produce, with some exceptions, though if you're hosting a large gathering buying produce in bulk may be worthwhile also. Bulk shopping doesn't mean buying a year's worth of groceries all at one time, but I didn't include anything that wouldn't hold up well for at least a month, with the notion that bulk grocery shopping can be done less often. Bulk buying also requires a greater upfront spend, which is why Costco's per-item total is considerably higher than Stop & Shop's.

Given this particular grocery list, buying in bulk would allow you to save over $1,000 during the course of a year, representing a 33% savings overall over conventional groceries. (In today's economy, it is worth mentioning that you also save gas money with fewer trips to the store.) In a few cases, the Stop & Shop item ended up being the cheaper option: organic milk, carrots, potatoes and frozen salmon filets, for example. In all of these cases, there wasn't a huge size difference between the conventional and bulk items. Milk is an especially good example, as it's still offered in a larger quantity at Costco, but there's only so much of it you can buy at one time without risking it spoiling, and so the bulk offering is comparatively modest. Costco also doesn't have a Kirkland brand offering of organic milk, whereas Stop & Shop does.

If you're a Costco shopper, make sure you check out how to maximize your Costco savings, and how much you can save with a Costco Executive membership. And for more We Do the Math, check out how much you can save by shopping at Trader Joe's compared to other grocery stores, and if it's cheaper to buy meal kits than groceries.

As you can see, most things on my list aren't necessarily for specific meals. Rather, they are staples that we try to keep on-hand at all times if I shop in bulk once a month. By keeping up with the coupons and stocking up on the items that are on sale that month at Costco, we tend to always have the things we need on-hand so we don't have to pay full price for them in a time of need.

However, on the flip side, don't be afraid to store things. Some people might not want a Costco-sized pallet of toilet paper because, well, that's a lot of toilet paper to hold onto! But guess what? It's cheaper. Deal with it ? Haha. Hide it under a bed, in a Rubbermaid bin in your garage, under your stairs. Don't be afraid to hold onto things that you will use. The savings are worth it many times!

Heads up! You might not need 800 toothbrushes. If it's just you and your spouse, it would probably take you a few years to go through a Costco-sized container of toothbrushes. Don't get too excited about the convenience of Costco. If you only need 2 toothbrushes, maybe buy a $1 toothbrush and put the money you would've spent on Costco toothbrushes toward other things.

Now, keep in mind, it depends on why you are buying. Costco may be more expensive than Walmart (that's where I am comparing my prices because those are the two places I shop), but their quality might not even compare in some people's minds. The quality of the things I buy isn't different enough for me NOT to save money. Does that make sense? 041b061a72