Shopping for your family, especially when it comes to groceries, is never easy. It’s time consuming, costly, and just one more thing on your plate. But it’s a necessary thing to do in order to have food in your fridge for the week, so you might as well try to figure out some ways to make it a little easier. If you live a busy lifestyle and it seems like you never have time to do all the things you want or need to do, here are 4 shopping tips for you whether shopping online or in a brick and mortar store. 

Buy Off-Brands

Read the labels to make sure that the ingredients are the same or very similar and then choose to buy off-brands instead of name brands! Most grocery stores have their own lines of basic products and the ingredients lists perfectly match those of the name brands. Sure, the packaging may not be as pretty, but what’s inside tastes exactly the same and this can end up saving you hundreds of dollars on your grocery bill. Save that money for when you retire instead!

Use Coupons

Cutting coupons out of newspapers or magazines may seem like an outdated and time consuming way to save money, but couponing has changed over the years and is a lot more accessible now. Saving huge amounts of money on your grocery bill can be as simple as downloading an app to your phone and scanning your grocery receipts to get money back for certain coupons. There are so many free couponing apps out there, you’ll have to find which is best for you, but most of them are guaranteed to save you money on your grocery bill without you having to do any work.

Make Lists

Making a shopping list before you go to the store each week is the best way to get in and out of the grocery store as quickly as possible. You can even go a step further by making sections on your list for each area of the store such as produce, dairy, meat, etc. so that you don’t end up backtracking and having to go to a section more than once.

Use Self Checkout 

Instead of waiting in long lines at the grocery store behind people with huge shopping carts stuffed to the brim, opt for self checkout. The lines are often shorter and move quicker, so this will end up saving you a lot of time, as long as you don’t mind scanning your stuff yourself. 

Leading a busy lifestyle can be stressful sometimes, but you don’t have to let your weekly trip to the grocery store add to that stress. Shop smarter not harder!