Grocery shopping is something that we all do. Such a basic task, it wouldn’t seem that much explanation is necessary, or even possible. However, there are two types of grocery shoppers: the Impluse Buyer and the Money Savvy Shopper.
The Impulse Buyer has no list, they buy whatever they see that looks good, has no coupons, has not looked at any weekly advertisements for sales, and has done no menu planning ahead of time. This type of shopper will walk out of the grocery store, with possibly hundreds of dollars of groceries, and get home and feel like they have nothing with which to make a meal. Don’t be this kind of shopper… and if this describes you, take heart, there are grocery shopping strategies that you can implement to save you lots of $$$ at the checkout.
Become a Money Savvy Shopper. This type of grocery shopper has a detailed list, buying ingredients to create planned meals. They have looked through weekly ads to know which stores to shop in that week and which items are on sale.
Some money savvy shopping strategies include:
Make a list— and stick to this list. Don’t buy a bunch of items that are not on your list. You will over-spend each visit you make to the grocery store when you stray from your list. I found a great shopping list on pinterest which plans out meals for a week and the corresponding grocery list. You might want to try something similar to this to kick-start organized grocery shopping.
Look at weekly store advertisements— Some things really don’t matter when you buy them, but some grocery items, such as meat, can be very expensive if they are not an advertised special. So when steak or roast are on sale, stock up. Buy a few extra to put in the freezer so that next time you want to cook a roast, you don’t overspend because they aren’t on sale that week.
Use coupons— clip only the coupons of products that you use (sounds obvious, right? But “saving” money on an item that you don’t normally use is actually costing you money!)… and then make sure you use them. File them in a wallet size expandable file by expiration date so that it is easy to see when they need to be used by.
I guess if you are good at saving you will learn to make and stick to the list. When it comes to shopping if its not on the list its not getting purchased. just saves a lot of time, headache and money. The one thing I have to get better with though is using coupons. I rarely take the time to get them. I could probably save another couple of dollars doing that alone.
I have an impulse buyer syndrome LOL of late I just stopped using credit cards and now i shop cash only. That helps. You can’t spend what you don’t have!
Great tip! Will be back to that very soon. Have a nice day ahead.