10+ Easy Ways To Stretch Your Grocery Budget

These Easy Ways To Stretch Your Grocery Budget — from using bones to make broth, freezing foods, planting a scrap garden, and more — will help you be more frugal with your food budget.

The world is very expensive right now, so everyone is trying to figure out ways to save money and boost your their own wallets. Grocery budgets are staying the same, but groceries are getting more expensive. So people are trying to figure out how to easily stretch your grocery budget.

If you’re a bit more conscious about your groceries and your choices, you can make them last longer. That will limit what you have to buy and how much you have to spend.

And, if you can save on your grocery budget, you won’t feel bad splurging from time to time.

10+ Easy Ways To Stretch Your Grocery Budget

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Reuse grocery bags as garbage bags.

There are some stores, like ALDI that require you to bring your own shopping bags with you. And some states have banned them in grocery stores too.

But if you go to a store that packs your groceries in plastic bags, save them. Then, use those as garbage bags in the garbages in your bathrooms and bedrooms. It won’t work for a large garbage pail, but it’s the perfect size for smaller garbage pails. That way, you don’t have to spend any of your grocery budget on small garbage bags.

Use artichoke water as salad dressing.

This one I got from my uncle. When him and my aunt use jarred artichoke hearts, they save the liquid in the jars to use as salad dressing. That’s a great way to get more out of something you’re already buying. Plus, that’s means you don’t have to spend any of your grocery budget on salad dressing.

Some people even use the artichoke water as a tea. I don’t know how that tastes because I’ve never tried it, but hey, I love stuffed artichokes so artichoke tea might be delicious.

Use chicken bones to make stock.

If you can stomach taking apart a whole chicken, you can save the bones and turn them into chicken stock.

It’s actually really easy to make homemade chicken stock. You add the bones, water, vegetables, herb, and vinegar, and cook it all down together. Discard the bones, and you have your own chicken stock. This is a great way to use up vegetables that are getting close to their expiration date too.

Freeze foods.

You can freeze so many things. We freeze fresh bread, milk, fresh spinach, soup, leftovers, bagged nuts. You name it, I’ll figure out how to freeze it.

Take milk for example. Here, it’s about $1.50 for a half gallon and $2.25 for a whole gallon. So for 50% more in price, you get 100% more of milk. But, if you can’t drink a whole gallon before it expires, take it home, open it, pour some of the milk into smaller containers and freeze them. Then, when you need more milk, you can shop in your own freezer instead of at the grocery store.

Regrow Lettuce.

We eat salad every night with dinner. And while it is convenient to buy boxed salad mix, it’s more cost effective to buy heads of lettuce and to cut them. Then regrow them.

I have a full post on how to regrow lettuce, so I’m not going to go into all the details here. But you basically cut the bottom off the lettuce, plant it, and it regrows. If you can get even one additional salad out of your store-bought lettuce, that’s less you have to spend on packaged salad.

You can also regrow green onions. And I know, green onions aren’t that expensive. But every penny helps.

Bake your own bread.

For the last few years now, I’ve been baking bread every Sunday. I found a kneed-free bread recipe that takes quite a while — two hours for the dough to rise, then 35 minutes for a loaf to bake. And I make four at once. But it’s so worth it.

It costs me about $1 in ingredients (if that) to make four, delicious artisanal loaves of dough. Pete said they would go for $6.99 in a regular store. So $1 for about $28 worth of store bought bread is so worth it.

And, don’t worry. We haven’t been eating four loaves of bread between two people every week (although we probably could). I have been giving my parents a loaf every week, which means I’m helping stretch their budget too.

Our favorite bread recipes are prosciutto bread and oat bread, in case you’re looking for a bread to bake this weekend.

Harvest your own seeds.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I love to garden. I usually buy seedlings at the store to start my plants at the beginning of the season, then halfway through the season I end up harvesting my own seeds to plant later.

If you don’t have seeds from previous plants, you can just harvest seeds from fruit or vegetables you buy at the grocery store. You can sprout those too, then just plant them in your own garden.

Buy packs of drinks.

Don’t look at that soda at the checkout line. That 20 oz. soda is usually more expensive than a two liter. And three 20 oz. sodas are about the price of a 12-pack of store brand sodas. So, if you really need soda in your house, skip the single bottle and grab a case instead. You’ll get more that way and you’re able to save money.

If you like seltzer, that can add up too. So, you can buy a sparkling water maker. We have one and it’s so convenient. The initial cost is more than just buying seltzer at the store, but it pays for itself and saves you money in the long run.

Shred your own cheese.

If I’m making baked ziti, I like the buy a block of mozzarella cheese and chop it into chunks. It melts so much better. Quick side note: Shredded cheese has preservatives that a block of cheese doesn’t. So, when you try to melt it, those preservatives keep the cheese in individually pieces and hinder its melting.

Some people will just buy shredded cheese and use that because it’s easier. Which is fine, but keep in mind that you’re paying a premium for that shredded cheese.

When my mom and I were at the grocery store recently, she told me that an 16 oz. block of mozzarella cheese was only $1.50. The same amount of shredded cheese was $2.75. Shredded was almost double the price of the block. That’s an easy decision when you’re trying to stretch your budget.

Peel your own carrots.

That same cost of convenience applies to fruit and vegetables too.

If you buy pre-peeled or pre-cut vegetables, you’re going to pay more for them than if you cut your own. Sure, you’re going to have to put in a little time and elbow grease to cut your own carrots, but it’s worth it when you compare the cost of a 1-pound bag of whole carrots verses a 1-pound bag of peeled and chopped carrots.

Make your own snacks.

I got a bag of roasted chickpeas for free once, and we loved them. But the small bag was over $3 regular price and I couldn’t justify that, especially when chickpeas are about $.50 a can. So I learned how to make roasted chickpeas in the air fryer. It takes less than 20 minutes to do and saves me about $3 every time I make them.

If you like hummus, you can make a boatload of it from that same $.50 can of chickpeas. And that’s a lot less than store bought costs you.

I make homemade guacamole and salsa for way less than I would pay at the store. Plus, I know exactly what’s going into my guac. I have no idea what preservatives and chemicals go into the ones that the stores sell.

Reuse the pickle juice.

I really like pickling cucumbers and making homemade pickles. But honestly, it’s so much easier to make quick refrigerator pickles from pickle juice.

When you’re done with your pickles, buy a cucumber and slice it into spears. Stick those spears into the pickle container (with the juice). Leave it for a couple days and you’ll have a second set of pickles for the price of a quarter. This works really well once. If you try to reuse the brine a second time, your pickles end up pretty weak.

Do you have any other tips to stretch your grocery budget? Be sure to let us know in the comments so we can add them.