Leave These Pre-Prepped Ingredients On The Shelf To Save Money At The Grocery Store

The significantly overpriced pre-prepped items to avoid that will send your wallet into a frenzy — precut fruits and veggies. Sure, the perfectly aligned plastic containers filled with already peeled and diced colorful fruits and vegetables look pretty darn alluring. Still, you'll be paying a pretty penny to achieve a few extra minutes of convenience. While there are definitely exceptions when this prepped type is necessary, for the most part, avoid this grab-and-go item to keep some money. Each item in a pre-prepped package needs to be thoroughly washed, peeled, cut, and packaged, which requires the store to charge extra for these additional factors.

Even at affordable grocers like Walmart, you can expect to pay $7.97 per 32-ounce pack of cut watermelon (at the time of publishing). In contrast, a full-size seedless (which almost always yields more than 32 ounces of edible fruit) only costs $4.97. The same goes for cantaloupe chunks, which are $4.12, but the actual melon is only $2.78. Berries follow a similar pattern, where a mixed strawberry and blueberry pack is $5.97 for only 10 ounces of fruit. On the other hand, you can get an entire pound of strawberries for $2.82 and a pint of blueberries for $2.67, totaling $5.49 when combined to create your own fruit tray that'll last longer than one sitting.

Fruits are not the only culprits, as many vegetables also follow suit in this pricing pattern. Celery bites from Kroger cost $3.99 for 20 ounces, but an entire bundle's worth is only $2.19. Other veggie items that skyrocket in price are prepared meals. Any sort of "ready to grill" vegetable mixture usually costs a lot more than buying the individual ingredients. Premade skewers from The Fresh Market feature zucchini rounds, whole mushrooms, chopped onion, and bell pepper squares. The caveat — they cost $12.99 and each package only comes with four kabobs. 

Buying each item separately (an organic zucchini for about $1.91, a whole pack of mushrooms for $2.50, an entire pound of onion for $1.99, and a yellow bell pepper for $2) would round out to less than $8.50, meaning you even have enough change to snag the bamboo skewers, too! Better yet, you will definitely be able to make more than four small skewers with all of this fresh produce. Maybe you don't want to make more grilling skewers. If so, use the leftover raw zucchini in Giada de Laurentis' masterful recipe or the extra mushrooms in a yummy pasta recipe for an easy weeknight dinner. This way, you use all of your produce and save some cash without skimping out on the deliciousness.