Food prices rose 8.8 percent between March 2021 and March 2022 – and the latest wrinkle is a mix of labor issues and “idle trains,” according to Reuters.
One way to fight food inflation is to stock your pantry and freezer with the most affordable food you can find today, before prices go up tomorrow.
Not everyone can afford to buy a side of beef or 50 pounds of pinto beans all at once. But a tactic I call “stealth stock-up” just might save your food budget.
It’s pretty simple: Watch the sales flyers, and when your favorite brand** of pasta or cereal or tuna goes on sale, buy two instead of one. Buy three, if you can swing it.
That’s not to say you can’t also stock up on non-sale items, especially if they’ve been hard to get due to supply-chain issues. But the idea is to stretch available dollars and stash as much food as you can. Sale prices let you do both.
Already shopping this way? That doesn’t surprise me, since frugal people tend to read this site. It just makes sense to pay less.
Almost everyone can spare an extra buck or two* beyond their current grocery list. Use the tips below to slowly, stealthily build yourself a decently deep pantry.
Here’s what you need to know about stealth stock-up.
It saves on several fronts
Having even a few basic foods on hand means you can make a meal instead of a takeout run, and a brown-bag lunch instead of a noontime Postmates call. It also means fewer trips to the store – and since gas prices are insane right now, that can save you some serious dough.
Fewer trips to the store also means fewer chances for impulse buys. Sure, you meant to pick up only eggs and milk. But that freshly baked French bread smelled soooo wonderful, or those out-of-season cherries looked soooo good…
Oscar Wilde once wrote that he could resist anything except temptation. Yep. Stay out of the store and you’ll hold onto more of your money – and the dollars you don’t spend on impulse buys are dollars that can go toward more stealth stock-up.
Supermarkets aren’t the only option
Dollar stores have more than junk food for sale. You’ll also likely find shelf-stable things like rice, beans, lentils, oatmeal, spices, and canned fruits, vegetables and beans.
If you’re lucky, you’ll have a 99-Cent-Only store in your area. There you can buy fresh produce and dairy along with the shelf-stable stuff.
A few more non-supermarket possibilities:
Restaurant supply stores (many are open to the public)
Bakery outlets (bread and tortillas freeze well, and you might also find stuff like coffee, canned foods and spices)
Freecycle, the “free” section of Craigslist and Buy Nothing Facebook groups (all three sources vary, but DF and I have gotten some great stuff from our Buy Nothing group – and since all are free, this leaves dollars to go elsewhere)
Yard sales (I’ve bought things like soap, canning jar lids, waxed paper and aluminum foil this way)
Estate sales (ditto)
Stealth stock-up reduces anxiety
Heaven forbid there’s a layoff or lockdown in your future. If something were to happen, though, wouldn’t you feel a little bit safer having all that food put away?
Shop for non-food items, too
Toilet paper (remember those pandemic woes?), napkins, tissues, paper towels. Plastic bags, if you use them. Detergent and bleach. Toiletries. Cleaning supplies. Windshield washer fluid.
Whatever you can’t eat but still need a bunch of, in other words.
And don’t forget your pets
See a great deal on kibble, cat litter, mealworms or whatever else your critters need? Stash, stash, stash.
You need a plan to use this stuff
Sure, those “best by” dates aren’t always absolutes. But you should be eating and replacing this stuff on the regular. Write those dates on the fronts (not the tops) of canned and packaged goods. Use a black marker so it’s easy to see which cans/boxes/bags need attention the soonest.
Keep a freezer inventory, and check it before you make your grocery list. Otherwise you might wind up with a bunch of UFOs (unidentified frozen objects) under a thick layer of frost at the back/bottom of the appliance.
Paranoid or prudent?
Sure, sometimes I joke about hoarding, concerned that our kids will have to help us shovel out the house. Or that we’ll one day become the subject of tabloid headlines: Elderly couple dies in a house full of Spam and bundled newspapers, but no heat or running water!
But our relatives are part of the reason we do this. First and foremost, if we’re good stewards of our cash we’ll be able to pay our own way. Both of us refuse to burden our kids or other extended family members.
(Besides, if the Zombie Apocalypse does hit, we figure we’ll be feeding all our shiftless relatives. The more flour and beans we have on hand, the better.)
In addition, the further we can stretch our dollars, the more we can help others. Both of us are still making charitable donations, despite higher costs for food and fuel.
Your mileage may vary. Whatever your reasons, I urge you to give stealth stock-up a try. Paying for food at today’s prices is just smart. Once those prices go up, they’re not likely to go back down.
Readers: Do you practice stealth stock-up? Got any tips to share?
*If your budget is really stretched right now? Check out “Challenge Yourself to Save,” a chapter from my first book that’s available as a free Google doc. It outlines nearly three dozen ways to “find” money, even when times are tough. Use that buckage to help fund your pantry.
**Yep, that can be the store brand. We eat a fair amount of generics/supermarket label products around here, especially the monthly “Senior Tuesday” event gives us an extra 10 percent off on Kroger brands.
Related reading:
We just got back from a vacation at a pretty swank beach resort hotel. (Used points and just paid $15 a night.) I carried in a copy paper box full of groceries purchased cheap at home: pasta, cookies, tea bags, bread, chips, etc. I had a cooler full of frozen cooked ground beef, yogurt, fruit, cheese. We had a reservation for a studio room, but actually got a one bedroom unit with full kitchen. When we arrived we bought luncheon meat and a head of lettuce (oh, and ice cream.)
The hotel had a good breakfast. We ate out once (with family and friends). We went out for dessert once. I figured we easily saved $100 a day by eating in. Using my stash of cheap groceries helped us boost the savings.
I think my cheap ways used to embarrass my husband. Not this time! He marveled that the resort sold “gourmet” ice cream bars for $6 a piece. We got enough ice cream for the stay for less than that.
I have been shopping like this for years. We live in a rural community and I try to only go to the grocery every 2 weeks, especially with the rising gas prices. Before I go I look at the freezer and pantry to see what’s low. Fur kids food too. When I get home, I put all new items in the back. I also stock up on toiletries and cleaning supplies when they are on sale. It takes a bit of time, but we’ll worth it. During the worst of the pandemic limits, we were still able to eat well.. and we had TP.
Some of my friends liked to (gently) tease me about my shopping habits, but we have managed to comfortably get by even with the store shelves still sparse most times. And the teasing stopped.
Yes! I always shop like this! I actually never do “regular” grocery shopping because I cherry pick the sales, and shop at Dollar stores/Aldi. I normally only have to go back bi-weekly for milk/perishables.
I stock up when my favorites are on BOGO, I have shopped my local Publix long enough to know when they are going to cycle my faves back into the sale! Also, If I am at Aldi and see meat with he red HALF OFF stickers, I always take a look and usually get it – throw in freezer for future meals.
Because I have a well stocked freezer/pantry — I can eat out of it for a good while without buying anything. And I always have something to donate to the food pantry!
Speaking of that – Stamp Out Hunger is coming up May 14 – reminder to put non perishables at your mail box – you mail carrier will be collecting it for your local food pantry!!
I am fortunate to have a good supply spot. What I do is put the canned food grouped according to expiration days. Using a sharpie, put the expiration date boldly on top and on the front of each can/package. Then it gets moved to cupboards as needed. We know we need to use them up that year. We do the same with the freezer.
We have an old fashioned grocery store where items are marked with price tags. I found a bunch of chicken breasts marked 1.19 at the bottom of the bin, so I bought it, baked it, and refroze it. Yummy in casseroles.
If I buy cereal, it’s always a loss leader. Oatmeal is much less expensive and is better for you.
Change your eating habits. If you can, how about 2 meals a day? Or, if you grew up on meat and potatoes like I did, you might find good casserole recipes. chili. or pasta quite nice and fulfilling. Make as much as you can from scratch.
About those freeze dried foods that are in the pop up ads (nauseatingly so) they do not taste very good. Some are OK, but you can make better food from pantry storage.
Another fact: we eat too much. Find your “enough” point.
My friends no longer guffaw at my shopping habits or my pantry rotation. A lot of them are scrambling to restock right now. I don’t because I have all my staples (flour, sugar, butter,. eggs, meat etc.) bought as loss leaders. I only buy milk and fresh fruits/veggies when I shop now. My grocery budget has not suffered.
I’m preaching to the choir, I know. But we need to teach our frugality to as many as we can. Thank you, Donna, for your pulpit.
Thank you, for your tips.
And I’m all about the oatmeal. Sometimes I eat it for supper if there aren’t leftovers and I don’t feel like cooking. On at least one occasion I’ve eaten oatmeal three times a day: cooked for breakfast and dinner and a couple of dry handfuls whirled into a smoothie for lunch.
https://donnafreedman.com/breakfast-in-a-straw/
The only addition I’d make to non-supermarket options = ethnic grocery stores. I’m modestly into Indian cooking, so I buy all the necessary spices in bulk there (and share them with neighbors), plus things like frozen okra that are hard to find in mainstream groceries.
And one gardening option I’m going to try this year is planting bits of supermarket veg to get more veg. There was an article about this in the April/May 2020 Mother Earth News. I’m on my way out to the garden to plant the bottom of a celery bunch as soon as I finish this.
Phoenix has a bunch of “ranch markets,” with incredibly low prices. I envy my daughter’s proximity to these places, and bring DF to tears with dramatic recitations of the food ads over the phone when I’m visiting.
I shop once a month at the least expensive grocery store in the area. It’s Market Basket and I believe it’s a New England chain. It’s about six miles away, mostly by highway, so going once a month saves me gas money too. I keep a growing list on my refrigerator as I run out of things. I also scan the sales flyer for that week and add those items I want that are on sale so I can stock up. I take this list when I go shopping and I do add other things I see to the shopping cart that we may need or want that escaped my attention. We run out of milk, bread and fresh fruit about two weeks in so I shop for these in any store I go by because, well…I’m going by it. It is sometimes Market Basket. This is not as hard as one might think. I never exceed one shopping cart and it usually runs me about $250 to $300 per month for two adults, two cats and detergent, cleaning products, etc. The overall price per month is up due to the rising cost of groceries. We seldom eat in a restaurant. By stocking up I almost always have something to throw a meal together with. It works for us. I have to add that during our working years I shopped every two weeks because DH and I got paid every two weeks, on the same day. So I have been sort of “practicing” for monthly grocery shopping for years, although now that we are retired I have honed it down to once a month.
I have a large garden and can a fair amount. I usually end up with extra raspberry jam, honeyberry jam, rhubarb jam, and sweet relish. I put a notice on Craigs List that I am interested in trading for non-canned items (I hesitate to eat food canned by people I don’t know, for safety reasons) and I always end up with good trades. I don’t grow lettuce but last summer I had a deal with a neighbor who has a lot of kids to trade jam for romaine lettuce every week. It was a nice change for us and her kids eat a lot of P and J sandwiches so was a good deal for her, too. Another time I traded a dozen jars of sweet relish for 12 bags of popcorn kernels that someone had sent as a gift to this lady who hates popcorn. The best trade, though, was jam for dried salmon strips!
Those all sound like good deals to me.
I was unfamiliar with honeyberries until I looked them up just now. Do you need a lot of bushes to get enough fruits for jam?
Nope. You have to have two bushes for cross-pollination but they are quite prolific. We have had ours for 10 years and except for the occasional pruning of dead branches, they get no special care.
I’ve always been a stealth stocker but haven’t any new tips to offer. As for eating only two meals a day? As a type-II diabetic, I have to eat 4/5 times a day.
While recovering at home from a broken wrist earlier this year, I wondered why I was going through groceries so quickly. Then it hit me. When you work at a restaurant, you eat at least one meal a day there. I’m glad to be back at work.
Not only do I put the date on the front, I put it on the top, too. Many times, I am looking at a lower shelf where everything in a row is one type of food. Having it dated from the top helps me to not have to pick up every can to find the date. The cans are usually longest date at back and shortest date at the front, but I need both places marked.
I’ve been doing this for years. My Old Year’s resolution is to clean out my freezer… and then Shaw’s had sirloin steak on sale for $6.97 a pound. Still expensive but we’ve been eating so much chicken we’re growing pin feathrrs!
Don’t forget, this time of year is graduation and moving season. If you live in a rental community, keep an eye out for items put by the garbage dumpsters. I’ve gotten boxes of canned goods this way; people aren’t allowed to put perishables, including canned goods and boxed foods, in the moving van, so they may toss them. At our complex, someone just put all their canned food in a box and set it by the dumpster — lucky me! I found it first. Also, college kids toss all kinds of items instead of giving or hauling it away; in addition to food, you may find detergent, house plants, school supplies, decorations, occasional furniture and more. My coworker lucked out and got a bicycle (a really good one!) for her kid this way.
I have always been a stock up shopper. Just today I’m pickup up a re-stock of my every six months pantry items. I purchase these items online at the local Walmart and use grocery pick up so I don’t go into the store and get tempted.
I usually purchase paper products at an office supply store on Black Friday and it gets us through most of the year.
I recently found a local farmer selling meat at competitive prices so that is helping. Marked down meet was a favorite of mine until I got a bad batch recently, so I’m not as confident about that resource any longer.
Overall, it’s the best way to handle higher prices.
I work at a university and was gifted 29 rolls of still wrapped toilet paper during move-out week this month. It was awesome!
With inflation I think my freezer is earning more than my savings account!
Yes, I do “stealth stock up.” I had done so to a small extent before COVID hit. But once COVID hit and the ensuing shortages in everything started, I took it upon myself to stockpile items I use a lot. For everything we commonly use, we have a least one package, can, or whatever of that item just in case there is a shortage of it at the stores. I use coupons and watch sales in order to get the best deals. During the shutdown, I did have to make substitutions of brands because of a lack of the usual I used. Even though things have opened up again, there are still shortages sometimes, so I have continued to stock up. I also occasionally buy clearance items, sale items, and other stuff with coupons in order to help out a food pantry.
One other thing I started doing in the last two months was to not buy canned beans unless absolutely necessary. I buy packages of dry beans, cook them, and freeze them in 9 ounce packages, the same amount of beans that is in a 15 ounce can of beans once it is drained. At first, it seemed daunting to actually do this, but once I did the math on it, I was hooked. A two pound package of pinto beans at Aldi is $1.79, but a can of pinto beans is around 69 cents to $1.00 depending on the brand and canned beans also have a lot of salt in them. When I cook them to freeze, I generally get about 5 9 ounce bags and it costs about 17 cents per bag. No contest.
If you have a Dollar Tree near you, check there. Sometimes they have the dried beans in 2 lb bags for $1 or $1.25 per bag. I have also picked some up at the reduced rack at Food Lion.
Your math problem may have converted some of those who were on the fence about this. Apparently you can cook beans in an Instant Pot, but as we’re going for fewer things rather than more, we stick with a slow cooker. We add olive oil, cumin, garlic and salt, and we freeze the cooking liquid separately to add to soups or stews.
Doesn’t hurt to have a can of your favorite beans around for emergency suppers, of course. I favor black beans and currently have a can that I found in the “manager’s special” bin.
Incidentally, a can of beans usually runs $1.29 to $2.09 up here, depending on the brand.
I don’t use an instant pot because I don’t have one. I just cook the beans on the stove. I am totally on board with emergency cans of beans and beans in the clearance aisle, though, as I may forget to cook some ahead of time. As for the liquid, I have been allowing it cool completely and then pouring it into my compost.
If you have a slow cooker, I’d recommend getting one. It uses practically no energy and I never have to remember to stir them. (Although I do stir them, so I can get a vicarious hit of the fragrance of those spices.)
Do you make soup? If so, save that bean liquid. It’s a good addition, or the base for a pot of…you guessed it…bean soup.
Okay. I may have to try that bean liquid trick. I do have a crock pot and have made everything from beef stew, chicken soup, chili, and crockpot flat iron steak in it.
Really, really love the slow cooker. It’s great for baking potatoes, too; we bake more than we need, then slice and fry them for breakfast (or supper). Sometimes I peel them once they’re cold and use them to make potato salad.
We also did a steamed bread in the slow cooker that turned out quite well, and used a lot less energy than doing it on the stove:
https://donnafreedman.com/adventures-steamed-bread/
Can you give me some measurements? Like cover the beans with olive oil and spices? Or do you add some water to that?
I cover the beans with water to a couple of inches more than their height, then splash in some olive oil, garlic, cumin, salt and sometimes a dash of cayenne. Sorry I can’t provide exact measurements. It would just be “to taste.” And taste them I do, as they get closer to being tender, then adjust the seasonings if needed.
Again, we freeze the broth separately from the beans, and combine it with a boiling bag broth when making soup/stew.
https://donnafreedman.com/boiling-bag/
Thank you! I am going to try this today. I had someone give me a bag of beans so I am going to stop staring at it and throw it in the crock pot.
Update us, please and thank you.
Hi, I’ve practiced stealth stocking since early March 2020 when there were hints of panic buying of everything under the sun. When I didn’t have room in my cupboards, I cleared off a 5 foot folding table in the basement and used it for all sorts of canned goods and boxed foods, keeping like products together with newer dates behind older purchases. It’s easy to see evertything at a glance and restock my kitchen cupboards from the basement stock. I also purchased a small chest freezer that I also keep in the basement next to the table. FYI: Donna, you made me laugh so hard with your explanation of ufo”s.
I expanded my storage space, too. I have a rolling shelf that I was not using for anything worth keeping, so I cleared much of the stuff off and putting my stealth stock up on it.
Happy to encourage laughter!
We have shelves in the basement (made by DH from scrap lumber, of course) that hold all sorts of food extras. At some point as we age, we’re either going to have to replace the stairs (which are ladder-like) with real stairs and a handrail. That, or have a visiting relative bring a bunch of stuff upstairs at a time to keep in our laundry room area.
Sometimes I go into the basement for something and stand there a minute, looking at all the goods we have stored. It makes me feel safe.
Not sure if this qualifies, but my mechanic told me if I bought the oil, he’d change it for $15. I went to the local Walmart, bought a case of oil, and I thought I would buy 4 tires also. Not needed, but with prices going up, I thought I’d be prepared. I worked it out with the oil deal and found I saved enough money to keep doing it. I also bought a filter and cleaning solutions for the tar my car seems to love finding.
Don’t forget about yard stuff in your stealth shopping. I have stored fertilizer, seed, and extra tools found at yard sales.
My house mate and I went through our sewing/mending kits and have replaced old thread, bought more needles and iron-on patches for jeans.
Get some pots and pans you can use to cook on an open fire. You really just need a big pot and a skillet. I found a set on Craig’s List for $20.
We also replaced potholders, kitchen towels, and some utensils.
Of course, if you have diabetes or low blood sugar, you have to eat more frequently. I find that if I eat around ten and later at four in the afternoon, I’m set for the day. My MIL lost lots of weight this way and I’m finding it really does help.
OK. Here is my stealth secret. I use our work fridge for storing frozen food. Sometimes people store ice cream or a frozen dinner. I have a turkey waiting for me. I got it on super sale for Easter, but I am not quite ready for it. Take that inflation!