14 Almost Effortless Ways to Save Money

How to Save More Money:

• Use ground chicken if you make chili – Out of all the main food groups, beef and veal prices are now the most expensive, as they rose by 16 percent this year. Fresh poultry didn’t suffer the same increase, and it was anyway much cheaper from the start.
• Plan this Friday for the next Tuesday – There’s a proven way through which you can contain grocery costs, and that is to plan out the week’s meals and to buy the food you need from a shopping list, depending on the plan. Friday is one of the best days to do that because many stores are usually posting their week’s discounts and deals that day or even the day before.
• Search before you start shopping – Have you ever tried using Flipp? It’s a free phone app that’s dealing with consolidating retail circulars. This basically means that with only one snap, you can compare your shopping list to circulars from any local supermarket, to have a better understanding of which store’s coupons will benefit you the best. Of course, you can also use the app to generate your shopping list.
• Make Thursday a “pantry cooking” night – Americans usually throw away 30 to 40 percent of their food supply, and oftentimes because it usually goes uneaten until it’s time to throw it out. The antidote is to cook a minimum of one meal a week that’s made entirely on foods that linger in your refrigerator and pantry.
• Create an “eat me first” spot in your fridge – Consider designating a special shelf in your fridge for all the leftover food bits, such as nubs of cheese, half servings of pasta, and even a lemon wedge), and even for overly ripe foodstuffs that could be eaten before much fresher items.
• You can still order online – Let’s just put it like this: what you could lose in delivery costs is oftentimes more than made up by avoiding certain impulse purchases when you browse a store. The trick is to lower your delivery costs. You can also look for coupons at various sites such as CouponFollow.com to find new deals, like $20 off your first order at Vons, 15% off at some Kroger grocery shipments, and $10 off your first delivery of $20 at Instacart.
• Pay with the right card – There are so many credit cards that can offer cash back today, but the amounts of money might vary depending on the category. Search the Internet for cards that will offer the most cash back for groceries, and you might find a card that will offer you 5 percent back on food purchases. There are websites such as CardRates and NerdWallet that will let you compare your card with others.
• Did you know you can double up by simply using cash-back apps? – With different services such as FetchRewards, and Coupons.com, or even Ibotta, your grocery purchases will earn points toward gift cards, depending on the shopping options such as Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Fetch Rewards has a great section where you can see which brands will offer you the most points.