Money Saving Snack Ideas

Money Saving Snack Ideas

When you do your grocery shopping, you can very easily spend $20–30 a week or more on pre-packaged snacks.  (That adds up to over $1,000 a year!)  As a family, this is one area of the food budget that can be tightened quite easily.  The money you save can be used to pay down debt, increase emergency savings, or purchase additional food storage items.  Talk through some of these suggestions as a family and decide which ideas you’d like to try.  I've collected many recipes over the years for making snacks.  I will share them a little at a time here on the blog.  In the meantime, I'm sure you have a few recipes in your collection that would work.  

It takes some thinking ahead to have snacks prepared for when kids need them.  I love my freezer to help with this.  I grew up in a family of nine children so we tripled a batch of cookies on a regular basis just to have a couple around it seemed like.  Growing up this way, makes it seem easy to bake in large batches.  I double or triple recipes all the time and then I've experimented to figure out what freezes well.  Most every cookie freezes well.  Muffins also do great in the freezer.  So when I am baking these items, I bag up some of them in ziplock bags and pull them out another day to thaw before the kids are home from school.

Popcorn is a very inexpensive snack to keep on hand.  If you buy just the popcorn seed instead of the microwave version, you will save even more money.  We have an air popper and one of the fun Whirly pop pans that you can use to pop the popcorn seed.  We also love to make granola bars and try out different flavors.  These homemade bars can store in a snack size ziplock for two months or more if you can keep them hidden from the kids.  It costs me well under $2.00 to make a batch and I get about 24 bars.

These are just a few suggestions - commit to doing more homemade items and you will see your savings grow.

Muffins

Dried fruit

Homemade Graham Crackers

Homemade trail or snack mix

Chex mix – using store brand cereal

Popcorn/caramel corn

Homemade granola bars

Cookies or brownies

Homemade Lunchables

Rice Krispie treats/no-bake treats

Cinnamon toast or toast and jam

Boiled eggs/deviled eggs

Yogurt smoothies

Cheese ball with crackers

Garden vegetables and ranch dip