Make sure you’re not giving up good diet and health to save a few bucks. Diet is the number 1 way to fight off disease and costly medical expenses down the line.

Canned goods are loaded with sodium. Cheaper cuts of meat are thick with fat. Sodas, boxes of macaroni and cheese, and bags of potato chips cost a lot less than fresh fruits and vegetables, but what’s the trade off?

Save money, but stay healthy.

Another tip is to see if there are any ethnic supermarkets near you. They often have cheaper prices on food (especially veggies).

In fact, sometimes if you just check the ethnic aisle of your local supermarket you might find better prices for essentially the same product!

The closer to the farm you buy your food the less expensive, and usually better quality, it is. The more of something you buy the more of a discount you can command.

Let’s assume you have a $5200 budget (your rolling weekly limit) for food for the year.

What if you bought all the flour for bread for the entire year? Let’s take it a step further. What if you bought a year’s worth of grain for flour and milled it yourself? Or the 50lbs sacks of beans and rice.

If you bought all, or most, of your groceries in one fell swoop how much money would you save on transportation to and from the store?

If any of us walked into a major grocery store with a grocery list worth $3k, we’d probably have the store manager’s attention.

One friend I know does all their cooking for the entire year during a two week period, then freezes and reheats it throughout the rest of the year.

I have many friends who don’t go that far, but they buy on sale, in bulk and store it in their own storeroom. 5 gallon buckets of flour, rice, cornmeal and other things I’m not entirely sure of are all stacked neatly in what was probably a workshop along with enough canned goods to rival a small grocery store.