Food is a basic necessity. Unfortunately, because of this, it’s usually being used as an excuse to spend more on it or let’s just way, go way over budget. We got the money, then why do we need to go hungry and die?! Sounds familiar?

Don’t let your budgeting efforts go to waste just because you can’t control yourself from eating. There’s a reason why I’ve always been highlighting the need to have a good mindset first if you want to change your lifestyle. It doesn’t matter if you’re focusing on finances any kind lifestyle change. If all comes together anyways at the end.

When eating habit changes, it comes with your finances, which affects all over wellness. Get it?! Everything comes hand-in-hand.

As a mom, we usually are the ones in-charge of buying groceries. If you’re blessed with a hubby like me, you’ll have another watchful eye on those food meals you cook, food you buy, and expenses you pay.

Here are 5 Grocery Shopping Tips you’d need to make sure you spend your money wisely:

Never go to the Grocery Store without checking your refrigerator and pantry

The last thing we want to find out when we arrive back from the grocery store is to find out that you still have a lot of chicken in your freezer that you forgot to cook the other day because your friend invited you to have dinner at their place for her son’s birthday party.

Checking these two places can help you with your meal planning, making sure that first stocks gets cooked first before the new ones. This way, you avoid spoilage and make sure you get fresh food to eat always.

Never go to the Grocery Store without Meal Planning

Meal planning is the the foundation to make your meals stress-free, easy, budget friendly, and intentionally made. Planning your meals lessens food waste, saves you from cramming what meal to cook for dinner, and keeps your budget intact as you can allocate properly your money per meal.

You can spend more on your other days of the week and prepare a meal with cheaper ingredients on others. This way, you don’t feel like being deprived from eating your favourite meals nor sticking only budget friendly meals.

Never go to the Grocery Store without checking seasonal fruits and vegetables

Being an avid blog reader, I’m so much aware on how much information there is about seasonal fruits and vegetables around the net. Unfortunately, there isn’t much information that is relatable to the 2 seasons (sunny and rainy) we have here in Singapore. This is the best that I can find which hopes help you decide which fruits and vegetables could be on a lower price range (or on sale)when you visit the grocery store.

Let’s not fool ourselves though, we all know that Singapore imports 90% of its food from 170 countries all over the world. So my frustration on not having much data online available may seem useless after all. haha

This only means, despite not having 4 seasons, it’s still important for us to consider the seasonal fruits of countries where we import our food for us to gauge the price of food we will buy.

Never go to the Grocery Store without a List

We’re half-way till the end and you’ll notice that it’s really a step by step process. By now, you’ll for sure be able to create a “correct” list of food you need for your meals. This is where you get to play around with your budget and see if you can add some of those “wants” you might see in the grocery store. The struggle is real and I know it! Add to that those stores with free tasting which it seems impossible not to resist.

Never go to the Grocery Store without a Budget

All of those written above is useless if you don’t have a budget on hand. Sure, having the money at hand is great when you go shopping but note that you’re going through some financial habit changes right now.

And with this, having a budget means you get to use the other part of your money for more important matters that matters most to you, like an investment or your future or creating an emergency fund.

Never buy Online Groceries if your budget doesn’t reach their minimum FREE DELIVERY

This additional tip is for families like ours who got the hang of online deliveries. We first started using online grocery when our 2nd daughter was born. Going for a trip to the grocery to buy diaper, water, and formula milk can be tedious and be a work-out! haha.. To solve this problem, my wise hubby suggested we just do all of it online.

We’re paying for the items anyways, so why not use our time on other stuff to do and simply wait at home for our goods to come. This habit of ours carried on as we noticed that we’re able to utilise our budget more by doing this as we can see already the price we need to pay already.

With this, we can assess more if we need to remove some items and trace back to our meal plan to change it all together for our budget to be right. And of course, when the Pandemic struck and we can’t go out. This has been the safest way for us to buy our food.