Saving money at the grocery store is possible even when choosing healthy foods for your family. Eating a well-balanced and varied diet can improve energy levels, boost immunity, and prevent many health issues.
Healthy eating will also save you money on your life insurance rates by managing weight to prevent overweight and obesity. We will discuss tips for saving money at the grocery store and the importance of healthy eating to life insurance.
Healthy Eating and Life Insurance
Healthy eating is a crucial component of living a healthy lifestyle, preventing diseases, and improving overall physical health. Choosing a healthy and varied diet is also important in weight management. Being overweight or obese puts you at higher risk for health complications and chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease.
Life insurance is important to help protect your family’s future in case something happens to you. This can help with any costs associated with final expenses like burials or funerals. It can also provide income for your family’s future.
The rates for life insurance are based on many factors, including age, gender, occupation, health status, and medical history. You can still get life insurance when overweight, but it can be more costly. Make sure you compare insurance rates online or meet with an agent to find the best deal for life insurance.
Healthy Grocery Shopping Tips
Food is one expense that we have to include in our budget. You might be new to saving or an old pro, but there are always things we can do to help save money on food. It’s also possible to eat healthily and keep our grocery bills inexpensive.
The first thing you can do before you head to the supermarket is to make a list. First, plan your meals for the week using paper or online store flyers. You can plan your lunches and dinners around the items that are on sale that week.
Next, review the foods you already have on hand and make a list of anything you need to replenish your freezer, refrigerator, or pantry. The store flyer can also help you determine the sales on anything you need to restock.
Finally, make sure you eat a meal or snack before you head to the grocery store. Shopping while hungry may lead to impulse purchases or buying items you are only buying because you are hungry.
While shopping for fruits and vegetables, your cheapest fresh options will be seasonal produce. Bananas, apples, oranges, carrots, celery, potatoes, and lettuce are usually inexpensive year-round so those are good items to select.
If seasonal isn’t available, the prices are too expensive, or the quality isn’t that good, you can also choose frozen fruits and vegetables. Frozen produce retains most of the nutrients because it is flash-frozen after harvest. It is reasonably priced and lasts longer than fresh produce.
Canned fruits and vegetables can also be an option. Use the nutrition label to help you choose low-sodium vegetables or low-sugar fruit.
Meat can be an expensive part of our food budget. So another way to cut back on your food budget is to purchase less meat. You can also substitute other lean protein options like eggs, beans, nuts, seeds, tuna, edamame, tofu, or tempeh as meat alternatives.
While shopping, make sure you stick to your list. Impulse purchases can drive up your grocery bill. This will also help you get in and out of the supermarket faster.
For packaged items, it’s helpful to use the unit price to compare different sizes and different brands of the same foods. The unit price will be listed on the shelf and will give you a price per quantity. There is a unit price for food and non-food items, so it’s a useful piece of information.
For example, one smaller box of cereal might be 30 cents per ounce but a larger box might be 26 cents per ounce. Sometimes we think a larger container might be cheaper, but sometimes a small container on sale might be cheaper. The unit price can help you determine this.
If there is no unit price, you can calculate this by taking the price and dividing it by the quantity or size of the item. This information allows you to easily compare items and find the best deals that fit into your budget.
Smart Grocery Shopping
These are budgeting tips that any family can use to save money at the grocery store. Use these tips to help you feed your family healthy meals and snacks while keeping your food budget reasonable. Another major way you can save money while shopping is to plan your errands in advance so you don’t have to pay as much for gas and fuel.
Melissa Morris writes and researches for the life insurance comparison site, LifeInsurancePost.com. She is a university professor of nutrition and an ISSN certified sports nutritionist.
