Is it More Cost-Effective to Grocery Shop Every Week or Month?

Modern families don't have as much spare time as they would like. Numerous responsibilities are extremely time consuming, making it impossible to fit everything in. While every parent would love to provide healthy food alternatives for their children, this is often difficult to achieve. One of the ways to maximize the food options in a household is by carefully planning the grocery shopping trips to fit the family budget, schedules, and food requirements. That leaves the all-important question: is it better to shop weekly or monthly? 

Benefits to Shopping Monthly 

To successfully restrict grocery shopping to once a month, you have to carefully plan your meals and take inventory of your pantry to ensure you have adequate stock on hand. You also have to resign yourself to frozen or canned fruits and vegetables for a chunk of the month. Fresh produce will be gone within the first week. Here are some of the financial benefits to monthly grocery shopping. 

• Dealing with a large sum of money in one trip may make you cautious, especially when you know your selections must last a whole month.  

• When you shop for a month at a time, you can buy in bulk, which is  usually less expensive per serving. 

• Depending on your proximity to the grocery store, a once-monthly shopping trip can save money on gas. 

• Shopping one time a month is a time-saver, which can also equate to money saved if you look at money you could be earning doing something else. 

Benefits to Shopping Weekly 

Weekly shopping can result in more unused pantry items, as weekly re-stocking tends to bury older items that end up expiring, increasing food waste. Some experts suggest using the weekend to plan for the week's grocery needs and shopping once on the weekend to stockpile what's needed. Weekly shopping results in higher expenditures than monthly shopping, but also has several important benefits: 

• When you shop weekly, you can read the weekly sales circular and plan your meals around the items on sale. 

• Loss leaders are the products advertised on the cover page of the supermarket sales circular, usually consisting of beef, poultry and produce. Weekly shopping allows to you take advantage of these sales. 

• Weekly meal planning and related shopping is much easier to handle than monthly meal planning and shopping. As a result, when you shop weekly you tend to streamline your purchases. 

Studies show that grocery shopping once or twice a month saves both time and money. However, shopping that infrequently is not a good fit for everyone. If fresh produce is an important part of your life, you will need to shop more often. If you struggle to spend time on your meal planning and grocery lists, then weekly or even daily trips to the store may be for you. Ultimately, it's about matching your needs with the benefits of each method and choosing what works for you.