Top 16 Ways to Save Money on Food

Spending less money on groceries is a great way to stick to a budget and save money each month. You probably have several of your own ideas for saving money, but you may not be aware of all the different ways to cut back on your grocery bills. Some of the ways to save money (like gardening) are even fun for the family.

These suggestions range from the practical to the unusual, with suggestions like reducing meat intake, learning to can food, and investing in a giant chest freezer. You can pick out the suggestions that work for you.16.

Start A Neighborly Food Exchange
Do you have an orange tree that produces way more fruit than you need? Or maybe you’ve got a blackberry bramble on your property that produces a glut of blackberries at the peak of the season?
Do your neighbors have raspberry bushes or a grapefruit tree that you’ve got your eye on? Many people produce food on their own properties, and their neighbors do as well. Speak with your neighbors about setting up a food exchange: a cooperative agreement to exchange food when harvest time comes.

Trading foods with your neighbors at the peak production time means that everyone benefits, because many people find that they have more food than they know what to do with when harvest time comes.
You may not even need to organize an exchange in order to get an exchange going between you and your neighbors. Try offering your neighbors food for free, and see what happens. Many neighbors with gardens and fruit producing trees will offer fruits of their own labor at harvest time.

You can take this one a step further by participating in a community garden, or starting a community garden of your own. Community gardens can be situated in spaces like empty lots and at community recreation centers.

If you’re interested in starting a community garden, you’ll need to find the space, find interested parties and then decide how each plot will be divided amongst the participants. As the organizer of a community garden, you may end up with free produce, but you’ll need to put a lot of personal time and effort into the job.
Once the garden is up and running, you may be able to collaborate with different members of the garden to produce a variety of different vegetables, and share the available produce with all who participate. You might even decide to take this a step farther and have a harvest feast at the end of the growing season.