NPR listeners share their best money-saving grocery store tips

This story was originally published on Sept. 6, 2024, and has been updated.

How do you save money on groceries?

We posed this question to our audience after we published an episode on the topic with Beth Moncel, founder of the cooking blog Budget Bytes. She advised shoppers to look up weekly deals, be wary of bulk buying and stick to the grocery list.

We received over 50 more money-saving tips from our listeners, ranging from the practical (check your receipt for errors) to the creative (use artificial intelligence to create recipes with ingredients you already have at home).

Here's a selection of their responses. They have been edited for length and clarity. For more tips, listen to the podcast episode in the player above.

Stay close to home

If you must visit multiple stores, make sure they are close to your home or else the gas expense will eat away at the money saved at the store. — Manuel Ramos

Check your receipt

Check the receipt before you leave the parking lot. If you find an error, which mostly happens on sale items, you can get a refund right away. If you don't check until you get home, you're more likely to let it go. —Lisa Gluskin

Ask about senior discounts

I'm a senior, so I try to shop on senior discount days and save 5%. The stores don't advertise this, but if you Google it or ask about it at the customer service desk, you can find out what day of the week they do this. It varies by store. —Elyce O'Malley

Cook with whole turkey and chicken

When I buy meat, I buy whole turkey and chicken. Both are cheaper by the pound, and the latter is so easy to make in a slow or pressure cooker. I'll also buy special meats after the holidays. You can buy spiral hams and whole turkeys for cheap after Easter and Thanksgiving. —Vanessa Reed

Buy inexpensive cuts of meat

If your dish is going to cook for a long time, the exact cut of beef may be unimportant. So I use the least expensive roast in the store. At the usual one-hour cooking time, it may be a little tough, but add an extra 40 minutes and it will turn out great. —Joseph Bean

Process your own food

Pop your own corn. Roast chickpeas by buying them dry, soaking them overnight and putting them into a low-temperature oven. Buy large containers of plain yogurt, divide them up and add spices, a little jam or other flavors. —Eve Elzenga

Get a little help from AI

I recently started using ChatGPT to help use up food in the kitchen. For example, this weekend, I had a tomato, some bell peppers, half an onion, a half dozen sweet potatoes, broccoli and leftover roasted chicken in the fridge.

I told ChatGPT I wanted to make something for breakfast and dinner using these ingredients. The tomato, peppers and onion went into egg cups — breakfast for the week — and the potatoes, broccoli and chicken became twice-baked stuffed sweet potatoes for dinner. Both were delicious, and I'll enjoy them this coming week too! —Chris Brainard

Make your own bread

Learn how to make bread. This saves a ton of money, and you can occasionally supplement with store-bought bread if needed. About $8 worth of ingredients makes about eight to ten loaves of basic sandwich-style bread. It doesn't have preservatives, so freeze what you can't use in a week. —Tracey Rocco

Flip the script (and cook creatively)

Instead of planning a meal and then buying overpriced ingredients, try flipping the script. Buy what's on sale and plan your meal around that.

In addition, have a few meal options for each type of protein that include a variety of flavors and different cooking methods. For example, you probably wouldn't want to eat deep-fried food three days in a row.

If spareribs are on sale, I'll buy them and make either deep-fried salt and pepper spareribs, braised Filipino adobo, grilled hoisin spareribs or Japanese curry. If ground beef is on sale, I'll make fried smash burgers or Japanese hamburger steak. —Mark Hagiwara

Grow your own herbs and veggies

Grow higher-priced items that you buy frequently, like rosemary and basil. Fresh herbs are often $2 to $3 for a small bunch — about the same price as a packet of seeds. Or save a few sprigs from that bunch of herbs and root them in water then plant them. I have a basil plant in a pot that I started two years ago.

Cherry tomatoes are also more expensive to buy but they're one of the easiest types of tomatoes to grow at home. —Katherine MacKinnon
This story was written by Malaka Gharib. It was edited by Beck Harlan. The visual editor is Beck Harlan.

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