Want to eat organic but scared of the cost? These simple tips will help you learn how to eat organic on a budget yet still eat well.
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Even though we attempt to eat very healthy and make the majority of our food from scratch, we do not actually eat an “organic only” diet. But because of my detailed $200 grocery budget posts, I frequently get questions related to how to eat organic on a budget. In fact, just recently Amanda left this question on one of my blog posts:
I am so glad I came across your blog. I only read a few articles so far and I needed to leave you a message. I am so motivated and want to ask your advice. We are a one income household, with barely enough to manage and we want (mostly husband) to eat organic and all natural. This includes organic milk which is $6 a gal. Our two boys (4 year old and 17 months) drink a lot of it and we spent about $80+ a month for just milk. Also organic meats, fruit and veggies rack a bill up to a lot a month when we are just barely trying to pay our rent. Any advice, tips, and strategies? I’m going to start a price list and maybe try coupons but we don’t have Internet or a print working.
Here was my response. And if you’ve wondered how to save money on organic food and eat well on a tight budget, hopefully, my tips will help you too!
How to Eat Organic on a Budget
Ah, yes, going organic and all-natural on a tight budget is always tough. And being a milk lover, I can appreciate your son’s enjoyment of milk. 🙂 Here are a couple of ideas for you. Hopefully, they’ll at least help you brainstorm about ways that you can lower your grocery spending.
1. Stretch Your Milk
I don’t know if this is something that you’d want to do or not, but I know a lot of people that add water to their milk to stretch it farther. If you are going to use the milk in baking I wouldn’t add much water to it, but it should work for your kids no problem.
2. Use Money Saving Apps
If you have a smartphone, I’d highly recommend checking out Ibotta and Fetch Rewards.
Ibotta regularly has savings on any brand of product and Fetch rewards you points for every receipt you scan and submit, so even if they don’t have any offers that are specifically for organic brands that week, you can still often save a little.
3. Eat Less Meat
If you don’t already, try having at least one meatless meal a week. We love meat, but I’ve found several delicious recipes that we enjoy enough that we barely miss the meat in them! This Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup is one of them. We love this Crustless Zucchini Quiche, too!
4. Stretch Meat with Beans or Rice
Stretch Mexican style dishes with beans and/or rice. I always add some black beans to our taco meat and sub part beans for the ground beef in chili too. We actually prefer both of those things that way!
5. Shop at Aldi
If you have an Aldi grocery store nearby, check them out. They have a decent selection of organic products at great prices! If you’ve never shopped there, be sure to take along a quarter for the grocery cart (you’ll get it back!) as well as your own grocery bags (although you can also buy them there if you prefer).
Related: What to Buy at Aldi: My 30 Frugal Favorites
6. Cook from Scratch
As much as you can, make your food from scratch. You may have seen my homemade Bisquick mix and homemade cream soup recipes. I also make salad dressing, bread, homemade yogurt, chocolate cake, frosting and lots of other things too. In fact, I even enjoy a simple homemade frappe every morning! I don’t know how much you feel comfortable doing this sort of thing, but often you can make stuff much cheaper than you can buy it- and you get the regulate the ingredients too!
7. Try Shopping Online
It may be cheaper to buy some of your groceries online. I’ve used Vitacost occasionally and especially when they have sales, have found their prices to be pretty decent. They carry a lot of organic and natural products.
Direct Eats is another option that I’ve used with good results. Their prices often tend to be a bit higher, but again, if you watch for sales, you can do pretty well.
And don’t forget to shop through Rakuten to earn cash back on your online purchases! It’s super simple and if you are a new customer, sign up here to get $20 added to your account now!
8. Request Coupons
Call your favorite organic companies and ask if they can send you any coupons. Actually, often if you just simply tell them which of their products is your favorite and why you love it, they’ll offer to send coupons without you even asking. Sometimes you’ll get a no, but often they are more than happy to help you out. I’ve gotten some great coupons by doing this!
9. Print coupons
I love using printable coupons to save money on things that I’m already planning to purchase. I see quite a few coupons for organic products on Coupons.com, and SmartSource.
10. Grow your own
If you at all can, try growing your own produce. We live in the city and don’t have much outdoor space, but by being strategic, I’ve been able to grow a nice amount of produce for fresh eating.
It only takes a small space to grow things like tomatoes and pepper. And you can even try growing them in pots if you want! Raised beds are another great way to pack a lot of veggies into a small space. Not sure how to get started? Google can be your best friend! 😉
And hey, if you have room and want more of a challenge, get some chickens for fresh eggs and meat!
Other money saving posts you might enjoy:
Bonnie holt
I love aldis . They do have a great selection in organic products. If you buy fruits and vegis from there please check them good I have bought fruit and vegis and sometimes they were bad. Also u could do container gardening or plant a garden in your yard if possible. I have started switching my family to clean eating . As for coupons alot of the organic companies will send them out.
ThriftyFrugalMom
Thanks for the tips, Bonnie! And yes, growing your own produce is always a super way to save.
Kasia
Hi 😉 we are in exactly same situation and I live in NYC where grocery prices are pretty high… My kids drink gallons of milk and milk alone makes up about 20% of my grocery budget, I’m stretching it a little by adding a little water but that is just a fraction of savings… The other thing that was eating half of my budget was meat. My husband works hard and long hours and he wants to eat meat. The problem that I have with him is that if I’m trying to give him less or make meat just a garnish because it’s not in our budget, he tells me to buy conventional, he doesn’t care for organic… It’s just me who insist that we need to eat organic and if we can’t afford 100% organic, at least we have to buy organic animal products. He also doesn’t like beans, he eats them once in a while but dishes like rice and beans wouldn’t pass with him. So one of the biggest changes that I’ve done is to just have a piece of meat for him on most of the nights and me (I’m stay at home mom) and the kids just use meat as garnish or go without since I usually eat lunch and dinner with kids alone, as he gets home late. Aldi and Trader’s Joe are my go to for dairy and meat. If it comes to produce, I always sign up for local CSA which is great value. I also buy lots of frozen organic fruits and veggies for smoothies or baking, especially berries that are on the dirty dozen and very expensive when bought organic fresh, plus there are always several in the package that are not the freshest as berries are going bad quickly… if I buy them frozen, they are all good, and I can use small amounts whenever I need, and the frozen fruits & veggies are going on sale sometimes so you can stock up…
And the last thing, since several months I often shop local stores online and have fresh products delivered because I found that there are more and more of grocery delivery services popping out and they usually offer free or reduced delivery on few orders or if you order certain amount and with those services I’m able to shop many more stores than I would be able to get to with two toddlers in tow and this way I almost always find a store that offers a deal on what I need, which is usually 3 gallons of milk for the week 🙂 and some other stuff… it’s really funny and I would never believe that someone would save money while having groceries delivered and that’s probably only true for the big cities, but it actually really saves me money in the past few months
ThriftyFrugalMom
Kasia, the CSA idea is great and I absolutely love the suggestion to buy frozen produce. You are so right that it is often cheaper and like you said, you know that what you get is going to be good. So smart. I’m intrigued with the whole grocery delivery thing. I’ve thought of checking into it different times, but figured it wouldn’t be worth it. Now you have me wondering! 🙂 You are probably right, a big city like NYC has more perks in this way than smaller cities, but I’m guessing that any average size city would still have some good deals with their delivery service.
Kasia
You say that you are intrigued by grocery delivery, here is how it works for me 😉 Over 2 years ago I started using grocery delivery out of necessity and it wasn’t necessarily saving me money at first. I had a newborn and a one year old, had 2 c-sections within less than a year and husband that was never home… so I just didn’t have a choice as I wasn’t allowed to carry heavy stuff and I had to do all my shopping with 2 babies. At that time I only knew about FreshDirect, which delivered anywhere in NYC but didn’t have the greatest prices, so I was only ordering the heavy stuff that I really needed because they were bringing everything upstairs so I didn’t have to carry it.Within 2-3 months I learnt that they were sending a coupon for free delivery every few weeks (delivery fee is 5.99 for them), so I also opened acct for my husband and between 2 of us we always had free delivery, so that was a little something… By the way they also offer very often signed up bonus of $50 or $75 toward groceries for new customers if you order certain dollar amount, so we both used it. They have their own warehouse with all the groceries so if they basically do the same thing as supermarkets, if something is nearing exp date for example, they put it on sale. They also run other sales, so I always look for those. The second interesting service that works differently than FreshDirect is Instacart, they basically have personal shoppers, you order what you need online, they shop the stores that the website lists as available in your area and they deliver within 2 hours (FreshDirect delivers next day or any date after that you select) Instacart saved me few times when I had sick kids or it was raining so I didn’t want to drag them grocery shopping and I started cooking and realized that I’m missing something, like salt for example 🙂 The only thing is that you need to order certain amount to have lowest delivery fee, which could be between 3.99 and 7.99. What’s funny with them is that they list prices on their website that are different than the ones in the stores, some prices are higher, but some are lower. In my zip code they deliver from Costco (you don’t need membership), Whole Foods, Fairway and Key Food. The first 3 are too far or in case of Whole Foods too expensive for me to go for shopping by myself, but while checking all of them for prices for let’s say organic milk, I can almost always score a deal, like for example I bought organic milk from Whole Foods for $4.50 a gallon through Instacart few times… And than there are regular supermarkets that are not in my neighborhood but are delivering so by checking their websites, I can get some deals. Shopping this way even if sometimes I pay for delivery or a little more per item, saves me tons of time, sanity (shopping with 2 toddlers is not the most pleasurable thing), I avoid impulse buys, my kids don’t force me to buy candy by unwrapping chocolate bar and biting into it in 2 seconds that I was reaching for something on the shelf and turned back, and I can comparison shop in many more stores that I would be able to get to…. This is not my usual way of grocery shopping, I really like to pick up my meat, veggies and some other stuff by myself, but it’s definitely helping me and I always check the prices before I go to the real store.
Monica
I’ve seen the ultra-pasteurized stuff in the grocery store, but our local farmer’s market sells a very lightly pasteurized organic milk in glass jugs with the cream on top. It is definitely more expensive than the cartons in the store, and it would be unsustainable for us to live off of that. The suggestion to cut back on meat is really smart. People might think it’s tough to do, but we only eat meat 2-3 times a week, and one of those 3 meals might be tuna. There are so many creative meatless options out there such as pasta, pizza, Mexican food, soups and stir fry. We never miss it.
But at the end of the day, if I had to come up with my best way to save on organic food, it would be to plan ahead and either buy some in bulk and then preserve them myself. Aldi sometimes has a good selection of organic produce that could go in the freezer. Interesting post!
Linsey
We buy organic milk that is not ultra-pasteurized. One way to cut down the cost of that specific expense is to cut back the amount the children drink in one day. We abide by the Dirty Dozen as well. And, the biggest money-saver – we rarely eat meat!
ThriftyFrugalMom
Linsey, good to know about the milk. I was pretty sure that our local grocery store carried regular pasteurized organic milk. And we are meat lovers but do try to eat it sparingly, because like you said, it is a big money-saver! I know though, that many people love their meat and have a hard time thinking of going without it. Obviously, grocery budget and eating habits are like so many other things and are very personal!
ron
Great tips there. As a fellow tight-budget-but-prefers-organic guy, I follow these additional tips:
1. After Aldi, Trader Joe’s is also a great, great source of fair price organic products (both these chains have the same owner)
2. I Keep an eye on sale of at least 4 or 5 grocery stores, I can score milk sales once every 2 or 3 weeks. Around here, all stores start their weekly sale on Wednesday, so its a Wednesday ritual for me to check prices at all these store.
3. Our budget doesnt allow us to go 100% organic—-so we follow EWGs “dirty dozen” list and make sure that, for at least these stuff, we buy them organic. Thats a good way to reduce exposure to pesticides when on a budget.
ThriftyFrugalMom
Thanks, Ron, for those great tips! We don’t have a Trader Joe’s but I’ve heard really good things about that store. I hear we are to be getting one in our area soon and I can’t wait to check it out. And yes, I agree that following the dirty dozen is probably the smartest way to do organic. From what I understand, some produce isn’t even that affected by pesticides etc. anyway, so you might as well make your money count and use it for the things that are most affected, right?
Missy
Organic Milk is ultra-pasteurized making it shelf stable for up to 9 months which kills a lot of the good stuff in it and means it doesn’t even need to be refrigerated, so I would question whether it is actually the healthiest option. It’s definitely not worth the price tag in my book.
ThriftyFrugalMom
Missy, is all organic milk ultra-pasteurized? For some reason, I thought that there were some that weren’t. But I’m no expert in organic milk, that is for sure! We personally prefer raw milk that we get from a local farm. I’m so grateful to be able to get it for a really good price as I know many aren’t able to do that.
Missy
I think most of it is, but I’m not 100% sure on it.