There is so much I could share on this topic, but here is just a small little excerpt from one of my ebooks (If you have any specific questions on this, please feel free to ask and I will do my best to try and answer!):

Through Jesse’s tenure in law school, we have learned very well what it means to “pinch pennies.” It has been an excellent faith-building experience for us to truly have to rely upon the Lord to provide our daily bread. We have learned you can live on next to nothing with a cheerful, creative spirit! The following are some basic things which have helped us:

Make a Budget

We would probably have starved a long time ago had it not been for our budget! Before we were married, we sat down and created a budget together. We highly recommend all engaged couples do this, if possible. There is freedom in having a budget because it provides strict spending boundaries. Our budget does not currently allow room for new clothes (I shop at used clothing stores. If you know how to dig and only buy things which are a good brand and in excellent condition, no one would ever know!), eating out, more than one vehicle, dentist appointments (we are looking forward to when that changes, but for now, we can live without), convenience foods (I only buy these if I can get them next to nothing with coupons), vacations, hair appointments, and other such luxuries. Because we made this budget together, we both agreed to the sacrifices we were going to be making in order to survive through law school. Every expenditure must be made with thoughtfulness.

If you do not already have a good budget in place, I would recommend you sit down with your husband as soon as possible and discuss your budget in general and your grocery budget specifically. Ask your husband what kind of meals he would like for you to cook. It is important that we, as wives, do our best to cook meals our husband likes for that is one way we can show our respect and love for our husbands.

Plan a Menu

When you have a menu planned for the week and you have written your grocery list off of this menu, it will cut down on a lot of “impulse buying” when you are at the grocery store. I take my calculator and my grocery list when I shop and stick to the budget and list. When planning your menu, plan simple meals. Fewer ingredients in a dish usually mean it will be less costly. We also do not have a lot of side dishes with our meals as this cuts down on costs as well. I will make a larger portion of the main dish and then just add a salad a bread to round it out.

I plan our menu weekly around the store sales. I either use the store sale flyers or check out our store’s sales online (larger chain grocery stores usually list their weekly sales on their website). As I see what is on sale, I check my coupons to see if I also have coupons for items which are on sale. Oftentimes, if an item is on sale and I also have a coupon, I can get it for literally pennies. I have a large plastic container which houses all of my coupons which are subdivided in envelopes into various categories. I do not have the space here to share about my couponing system (which has saved us thousands of dollars on groceries as well) but perhaps I will in a later book.

Since I have been planning our menu and grocery list this way for so long, it only takes me around 15 minutes or so to accomplish each week. It is worth every minute of that time for the money it saves us!


Shop at More Than One Store

Maybe this seems like a lot of work to you, but it has saved us another large chunk of money over the past two years. I usually only buy the sale items and reduced items at our nicer grocery store and then I buy the rest of the items on my list at a discount grocery store. I do not always shop at two stores. Sometimes there are not any good sales at the nicer grocery store and so I will only go to the discount grocery store. On the other hand, sometimes there are a lot of sales at the nicer grocery store and so I skip going to the discount grocery store altogether.