Money Mom Podcast

48: Save $600 This Month on Groceries With This ONE Thing

• Rachel Coons • Season 1 • Episode 48

Share episode

Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed every time you walk into the grocery store? In this episode, I share my personal journey towards transforming our grocery budget—slashing it by $500 a month and regaining control over our finances. Discover how I transitioned from seeing grocery shopping as a daunting task to embracing it as an empowering process that actively contributes to our family's financial health. 

Join me today as I introduce you to my SHOP Method, a simple yet effective system focused on saving time and reducing financial stress. From learning to shop your own shelf and cut waste to strategic meal planning and the magic of online grocery ordering, you will find practical strategies to adopt immediately. 

And, check out my special offer HERE

xoxo,
Rachel

Where to find me:
Instagram: @heyrachelcoons
TikTok: @heyrachelcoons

Join my FREE live training
What kind of grocery shopper are you? Take my free quiz
Check out my grocery savings guide

Speaker 1:

Hey there, welcome back to the Money Mom podcast. I'm excited that you're joining me today and this episode is really getting to the root of what I am all about and my journey with my finances and our family, and really what changed the game for me, in every sense of the word, when I figured out this one thing that I'm going to talk about with you today. I was able to feel less stressed as a busy mom of four. I was able to contribute financially to our family without going out and getting a job, financially to our family without going out and getting a job, and I finally felt like managing the budgets and controlling the spending and doing all of that stopped feeling restrictive and started feeling empowering. And it started feeling like I could actually move the needle when it came to being able to pay off debt and engage myself in our financial success. Because for a long time, I'd always viewed my husband, brad, as the breadwinner. I had decided to step away from my career, my income stream, when I had my first child and thought that I was stepping away basically from contributing financially to my family. And it took a long time. It wasn't until I had my fourth baby that something clicked, something changed within me where I realized, hey, I don't actually have to make money in order to help us save for buying a house and being able to pay off debt. And what I'm going to talk about today is really the foundation of where I believe people should start. If you're not budgeting or if you're confused by finances, or if you feel overwhelmed by money in general, I believe that we need to go back to the basics and we need to create some foundational principles of intentional spending and seeing wins, right Before we jump into the whole nitty gritty of everything you spend money on and how do you save money, how do you make money All of those things that can feel real daunting and overwhelming. So I really like to break things down into simplicity and I believe that the thing that we're going to talk about today is the way to do. That is the way to help moms not feel overwhelmed with their finances. And just a little background on my story In 2020, that's exactly how I was feeling.

Speaker 1:

I felt like I wasn't bringing in an income and we were in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and we wanted to save up to buy a house. We live in a really expensive area. We live in California, if you didn't know that and we had all of these dreams as far as like what we wanted to do financially, but it just felt like we weren't able to get ahead. We weren't able to get there and as a stay-at-home mom, I realized that I had more time on my hands than my husband did, and so I started looking at our budgets and where we were spending money on.

Speaker 1:

And when I looked at our spending, we're pretty frugal. We haven't gotten into credit card debt, we don't overspend on very many things and when I looked at our budgets, there weren't a lot of areas that I felt like we could make big changes in or we could actually move the needle with. You know, things were fixed expenses like our rent and our health insurance and basic necessities of life. There's a lot of needs that we had that I couldn't change how much those cost. But when I saw that our grocery spending was one of our highest expenses every single month and it wasn't necessarily a fixed expense yeah, you have to buy food for your family but it didn't feel like it was fixed. We were spending at the time $1,200 for our family of six and that was the one area that I was like I think I can actually do something about, I think I can actually change the amount we spend on that. And it also felt doable to me that I didn't have to focus on every area we were spending. I didn't have to balance a bunch of budgets at the end of the month. It was like just focus on this one budget, just do this one budget for a couple months and see what happens.

Speaker 1:

And on top of that, you know, I'm a busy mom of four and I felt overwhelmed feeding my family. I felt like the hours between five and seven when I had to get dinner on the table were some of the worst hours of the day. I also hated meal planning and I just it created a lot of stress in my life, and so I thought, hey, maybe I should focus on this one thing to decrease my stress, but maybe also to cut my spending. And so I started to research a bunch of different ways to do that, including, you know, couponing, meal prepping, buying in bulk, cooking, everything from scratch. And while a lot of those things do work at saving money, they also give up a really important thing that I wasn't willing to give up, and that was my time and energy. I couldn't save money and save time and energy. So fast forward a couple months. I tried other things and things started to click and I started to feel like planning, shopping and cooking for my family was easier and I wasn't spending as much time on it.

Speaker 1:

And then, when I started looking at our grocery spending, we were starting to cut away at that $1,200 a month and fast forward even more a couple more months and I felt like it had finally clicked. I felt like I had a routine. I had a system that was easy and didn't require a ton of energy and time, and it also had cut my grocery spending by $500 a month. Now this was back in 2020. So the number that we were spending then is not the number we're spending now is about $700 a month. We are probably around 650 to $700 a month. Now. We spend somewhere closer to $800 a month, but cutting my grocery spending by $500 a month made me feel so successful. It gave me such a big win.

Speaker 1:

Like I said before, I don't think there was a lot of budgets that I could cut my spending by $500 a month. I don't even spend $500 on like discretionary money each month on something and it was the one area that I was able to significantly decrease, and that's why I say saving money on groceries is the fastest and easiest way to find extra money every month without going out and getting a job, without feeling restricted, and I decided that this was magical. What I had figured out was magical, so I started sharing it on my social media and if you're an OG follower, you'll remember that you know I think I had like somewhere like two to 5,000 followers at the time and I started sharing the ways that I was cutting our grocery spending and it literally caught on like wildfire and I would get hundreds of DMs of people asking me about what I was doing but also saying, oh my gosh, I incorporated this thing and it cut my spending by $500. Or I did the thing that you told us to do and we were able to feel less stress around dinnertime, like it just was so amazing to see the results of the people that were following me and I decided I need to take this to the world, I need to share this with more people, and that's where the shop method was created. It was like, okay, I know what works for me and I know what works for you know, all these people that I've been helping, even with dietary restrictions, even with health goals, even if you know you live in a rural area, this still is working for all of these different types of people. So how do I package this up and create a system for everyone to incorporate?

Speaker 1:

And so I created the shop method and so I started sharing all about the shop method. And again it was just like DMs, constantly of people like I did this and it worked. I did this and it worked. And I still have to eat gluten-free and it worked. I did this and it worked, and I still have to eat gluten-free, and it worked. And all of these different things. And so I was like I got to teach the shop method more in depth. I got to teach somebody, like start to finish, how to do that.

Speaker 1:

And so I created a course and that course was called Grocery Budget Bootcamp and I launched Grocery Budget Bootcamp in early 2023. And we had, you know, we took students through the course. It was an eight-week program where I teach you start to finish the shop method and the results that I'm telling you that came from that course were insane. We had students that were saving a thousand000 a month, and people that were finally feeling like they had control of their grocery budget. And people that, for the first time, felt like they could get dinner on the table without wanting to pull their hair out and without their children fighting them over what they were eating.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so I'm guessing that you probably want to know what the shop method is. Right. You're like, yeah, I want these same results. How do I do this? Well, it, like I said, it's an eight week program, but I want to go over. Just do a quick overview of what the shop method is, how you can start to incorporate some of these principles into your own grocery spending, because I see so many mistakes when it comes to planning shopping and cooking for your family, like going to the grocery store without a plan or not having a spending plan and just spending whatever you want, wasting food, falling into marketing traps. There's so many mistakes that I see. So let me just overview what the shop method is and then I'm going to tell you how you can get Grocery Budget Boot Camp for free at the end of this video.

Speaker 1:

So the SHOP method is an acronym. It stands for S-H-O-P, and each step in that acronym is basically tackling one point of the system and the first step, the S stands for Shop the shelf. We start with shopping the shelf because I want you to think about your pantry and how it's. Probably I'm willing to bet filled to the brim or very full, and then you still feel like there's literally no food in your house. Still feel like there's literally no food in your house. Have you added up how much money in food is actually sitting on your shelf right now? And I think you would probably shock to realize how much money is actually there. In most cases, it's hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars of food that is sitting on your pantry that will either end up as food waste or won't be used. That's why the first step in the shop method is shopping the shelf.

Speaker 1:

This is the step all about starting with what you have in your pantry, fridge and freezer before you ever even think about making a shopping list or heading to the store. It's about decreasing the amount of food you waste to also decrease the amount you spend, because the average American family wastes 30% of the food that you buy. That means that if we were able to cut or decrease or eliminate your food waste altogether, we could cut your grocery spending by 30% every month just by pulling that one lever. And if we were able to save you that money every month, don't you think it would be easier to pay your bills and to have more wiggle room in your finances and less stressed about money? When I was a young mom with my first son, I remember living in an apartment and we had a massive pantry. But yet every day, around three in the afternoon, I would decide what we would want for dinner and I would package Caleb up in the stroller and we would walk to the grocery store. And every day we were spending $30 to $50 at the grocery store. And when I finally realized I probably should stop grocery shopping every single day. When we have a full pantry in our apartment and I focused on cooking through what was in my pantry, we cut our grocery spending in half.

Speaker 1:

When you shop the shelf, you're going to save hundreds of dollars by avoiding unnecessary purchases, reducing food waste and feeling more confident in your meal planning. Here's one tip to get you started. It's as simple as creating an essentials list of what you need to stay out of the grocery store, using up the items you have on hand before you think about purchasing new food, because the food in your house is free. You don't have to spend any more money on that food and then building your meal plan from the food in your house. All it takes is 15 minutes once a week to tackle shopping the shelf. Do you think it would be worth that 15 minutes in order to save $400 your first month? Are you willing to do that? Because, if you are, you could save a ton of money.

Speaker 1:

Now we go over to the H of the shop method, and that stands for having a plan, and in order to save both time and money when it comes to feeding your family, you need to have a plan. You need to know how much you're supposed to spend on groceries every month. You need to know what you're actually going to be eating so that you can get that food from the grocery store and not go back to the grocery store in between those big trips because you forgot one or two items. You also need a shopping plan with a list to avoid impulse purchases and last minute trips to the store, because when you do this, you're going to save money and save time. But here's what most people do.

Speaker 1:

Most families run on chaos mode. It's 5 pm, you don't have a meal plan, your meat's not defrosted, the kids are hungry, you're done with the day, and so you throw everyone in the car and you just go drive through Chick-fil-A and then you're spending $70, $80 on dinner that wasn't in the budget. Does that sound familiar? And what this is creating is it's creating stress around meals, it's creating wasted money on fast food and takeout runs, and it's also wasting you time. So what we need to do instead is create a plan. When you create that plan, at the beginning of the week, you need to ask yourself what meals do my family love to eat, what food do we already have on hand that needs to be used up so we don't have food waste, and what does our schedule look like for the next week or two weeks so that I can plan dinners that actually fit into our schedule? It's as simple as sitting down and planning your week, and when you do this, you'll save time and you'll feel less stress every single night.

Speaker 1:

Now the O in the shop method is for order. Before we dive into ordering, there's a major thing I need you to understand. I need you to understand that you are wasting hours every single month, and probably hundreds of dollars, just by stepping into the grocery store. I want you to think about it this way Every store is designed to get you to spend more money. You realize that right Like. You're not going to walk into a grocery store and walk out without swiping your credit card. That basically never happens. Grocery stores are like a giant game of chess and you're the opponent. Every shelf, every end cap, every bright BOGO sign is a calculated move on the store's part, designed to checkmate your wallet. And they're not just selling food, they're selling strategy. But once you know their strategy, you can play smarter and you can keep more money in your pocket.

Speaker 1:

How many times throughout the month do you run out of an essential item? You run out of milk or you run out of eggs? So you dash to the grocery store for that one item and every time you do that magically I don't know how this happens, but magically other items end up in your cart. You head up to the checkout stand and before you know it, you're spending 50 to $100 on these one item trips. And by the end of the month you've made three, four, five, six of these trips and you've spent way more than you've planned. And, on top of that, how much time do you think you would save Not just money but time if you significantly decrease the amount of times you went to the grocery store every month?

Speaker 1:

Think about it you have to get in the car, drive to the store, go shop for the groceries, check out, load the car, drive home, unload the car. That's why ordering is so, so important, and there's two things we need to do. We need to figure out how to order online so we don't get trapped at the store, and that's why I have a whole process inside Grocery Budget Bootcamp, so you know what to order to stay out of the store. And that's why I have a whole process inside Grocery Budget Bootcamp, so you know what to order to stay out of the store. But I also want to move on to something else really quick. The other thing that people don't realize is you need to space out your grocery trips. You need to shop less, and I teach our students to shop for two weeks at a time. Two weeks at a time, so you're literally only grocery shopping twice a month. And if that feels like, oh my gosh, there's no way I could ever shop for two weeks at a time you can.

Speaker 1:

I've heard that from so many people, hundreds of members and then they always come back and tell me I don't know how I shopped more, I don't know how I had time to shop more. I shopped more, I don't know how I had time to shop more. And what would happen if you spent those hours you saved working on a side hustle to increase income or spending time with your children or anything else really that feels more enjoyable than grocery shopping? And the last part of the shop method is the P prepare. There's a lot of different things that go under this umbrella of the shop method is the P prepare. There's a lot of different things that go under this umbrella of the P, but the first and probably the biggest one that I see is picky eaters.

Speaker 1:

You probably, at one time or another, if you have a children, will have a picky eater and in order to save time, reduce stress and feed your family healthy, balanced meals, even with picky eaters, you need to prepare your food with intention, and this is where my background of health and wellness comes into play. You need to know how to feed your family nutritious meals while also getting in variety and nutrition and your macro ingredients and your micro ingredients, so that you set yourself up for success and you're ready to go when hunger strikes. Most families operate in reaction mode when it comes to mealtimes, where either your kids hate what you cook, so you have to end up cooking two different meals, which leaves you feeling even more drained every night, or your kids are hungry and impatient and you don't have dinner ready, so you just cave and serve up nuggets and fries, and then you feel guilty because you wanna feed your family healthier meals, but you're exhausted. And then you feel guilty because you wanna feed your family healthier meals, but you're exhausted. And then you feel guilty because you wanna feed your family healthier meals, but you're exhausted and out of ideas.

Speaker 1:

I'm a mom of four kids and I'm a busy mom, and I know how hard it can be to get food on the table and have everyone actually eat it. I know what it's like to want to eat healthy and to have eat it. I know what it's like to want to eat healthy and to have health goals, and the pee in the shop method helped me create meals that fit my husband and I's needs, but also my kids, so that they actually eat their dinner. That's what's possible when you tackle this pee step, and if you want to get started here, here's what you need to do. It's as simple as making sure there are foods on your table your children love to eat. It's about building your meals around ingredients instead of full dishes. That way, you can build rations based off of your dietary needs. It's about taking away the stress from children and helping them come to the dinner table feeling hungry and safe, and I'm guessing that if you incorporated this P part of the shop method into your life, you would be able to decrease the amount of stress that you feel. So that's basically the overarching idea of the shop method S shop the shelf, h have a plan O ordering and P prepare.

Speaker 1:

And, like I said, I teach the shop method in depth with all the tools, resources and things that you need to be successful in Grocery Budget Bootcamp. And, like I said earlier, this week I am giving away Grocery Budget Bootcamp for free inside the Money Mom Club. Inside the Money Mom Club. Money Mom Club is normally $54 a month and this week, when you join Money Mom Club, I'm gonna give you half off your monthly membership. So it's only $27 a month and I'm gonna throw in Grocery Budget Bootcamp for free, so that way you can start saving $600 a month next month on your groceries, and that's before you even jump in to the other resources that we have in the program.

Speaker 1:

Grocery budget bootcamp is only one part of what we offer when it comes to building your finances and financial success. So that means that you could literally join Money Mom Club, get access to Grocery Budget Bootcamp for $27. You could cancel the next month. There's no contracts, no cancellation fees and you could have Grocery Budget Bootcamp for free. Like I said, it's a $497 course for free, this week only inside Money Mom Club. I'll put the link below so you can check out what we're offering and go check out if this would be something that would fit you and would help you save thousands of dollars this year on groceries alone. I cannot wait to see the results. I cannot wait to see what happens when you save money on groceries using the shop method. That's all I've got for this episode today. I hope you learned something new. I hope you can incorporate something that you've learned so that you can take this and run with it and see actual results in your life. And I will see you next week.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Rachel Coons

Host