Frugality Magazine - Frugal Living Tips for Financial Freedom

The 2 Most Important Money-Saving Question To Ask At The Supermarket

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Save money on groceries with these two essential tips.One expense that very few of us can avoid is grocery shopping. Indeed if the figures are to be believed the average American now spends 13% of their income on food alone.

Figuring out ways of saving money on food is therefore imperitave if you want to live a more frugal lifestyle.

Why We Spend So Much On Groceries

Let’s be brutally honest for a moment here: selling food is big business. And with big business comes big profits. The big supermarket chains – the Walmarts and Tescos of the world – are absolute experts at sucking money out of your wallet.

They have whole teams of people whose job it is to design promotions, flyers and displays that virtually force you to buy more than you want.

As their profits would suggest, they’re doing a darned good job.

Our job, as frugal money-conscious consumers, is to filter out all the white noise and find the real bargains while leaving the rest behind.

How do we do that? Well you might not realize this but I spent some five year as a supermarket manager so I know a thing or two about how these deals work. I’ve also spoken to enough customers and compared enough prices to formulate two simple questions to make sure you’re getting the best deal possible.

Question #1: What is The Per-Unit or Per-Weight Price?

Last Saturday morning I got up as usual at 7am and drove down to my local supermarket. I like to get there early as soon as they open in order to avoid the crowds, and to be able to study the deals. All too often, you see, a deal isn’t actually a deal.

On the front endcap – front and center as soon as you walk in – was an incredible deal on fresh chicken breast. As I’m currently on a diet (down 2 stone in the last 6 months, thank you very much) I’ve been eating a lot of chicken – so this deal immediately stood out.

But I’m no fool. Before loading up my trolley I decided to peruse the “normal” meat section to see what else was about and to compare prices.

The reality shocked me.

The chicken we normally buy was actually still cheaper than the promotional chicken! How come? Well they’d packaged up the special offer chicken in smaller containers so it looked cheap. Based purely on comparing one pack with the other you’d have assumed the promotional chicken was cheaper. But it wasn’t.

The key here is to look at the “price per kilo” or whatever weight your supermarket uses. Compare the various options to find the one that really is cheapest.

Remember that supermarkets are smart. One of the ways they dupe you into spending more is by controlling pack sizes to make things seem cheaper than they are. They might take a bread roll out of a pack, or a bag of chips out of a multipack, or offer a lighter box of cereal. In many cases the larger “non promotional” option will still actually be cheaper than the “special offer”.

If you do only one thing when shopping try to remember this golden rule: always compare prices and always look at the price per kilo. Only that way can you be certain you’re getting the best value possible.

Question #2: Is It Really A Deal?

Maybe by now you’ve confirmed that the promotional price on offer actually is quite special. Nice job. But how do you know that another grocery store doesn’t have an even better deal right now?

If your local grocery store has knocked a dollar off a product, how can you be certain that the other store you pass on your way home doesn’t have them for $1.50 off?

The answer is with a quick price comparison.

Now checking out all the prices in your neighborhood really isn’t a practical option, but thankfully we can rely on technology instead.

Simply surf on over to MySupermarket – or even better download their free app to your phone.

Then, whenever you’re checking whether a promotion really is the best deal possible you’ll be able to quickly compare the prices of all your local supermarkets and land yourself the best price possible.

Conclusion

Saving money on groceries doesn’t have to be hard.

It can be, for sure, if you want to go the whole hog. However in my experience asking yourself these two simple questions when shopping have the ability to save you a boatload of money for minimum effort.

What is your top tip for saving money on food? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below…

Save money on groceries with these two essential tips.

Richard

Sun-worshipper and obsessive frugality blogger. For loads more money-saving advice come and join us on Facebook.

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