Draw your Grocery money in Cash: Work out what you usually spend on groceries – look at your bank statements for a true total.
Draw that amount of money in cash – yes, I know it’s a lot! – but you aren’t going to spend it all.
Only shop once a week: Decide that you will only go to the supermarket once a week.
There are literally dozens of subtle strategies operating at any one time to get you to part with the “maximum spend” in the grocery store. It’s not wrong, its good business. Everything from the layout to the lighting has been considered in terms of its impact on you spending your money in there.
You will save money by only going to the shop once a week.
If you run out of something, go without, or make do till the following week.
Avoiding the emergency dash to the supermarket and takeaway will save you hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Over a few weeks you will get to know how many litres of Milk you go through a week, how many loaves of bread, how much loo paper and how long the laundry powder lasts. So you will not be over or under stocked.
Use your essentials list to note how many of certain things you need to buy or how frequently you purchased bleach or oil.
Avoid semi prepared products and ready meals- It’s expensive to eat ready prepared meals and nutritionally they have severe limitations. Homemade food tastes better and is better for you. Decide now not to buy anything you can realistically make yourself.
Many people are surprised when they realise how much they depend on convenience foods, and have assumed ready made foods are available, because they are difficult or time consuming to make at home.
While that is the case with some specialised items, much convenience food is simple everyday stuff.
Pasta sauces, gravies and seasoning mixes, salsas, dips and pastes, pizzas and soups, vegetables gratins, baked goods and breads.
So why bother making a recipe from scratch?
Homemade food is more flexible than readymade, leftovers can be frozen, ingredients substituted and improvisations made to accommodate specific dietary needs.
Seasonings can be adjusted to cater for individual likes and dislikes. Recipes can be adapted to maximise plentiful ingredients, with the added bonus that the homemade version will often be cheaper, with superior flavour and nutritional value and contain no additives, preservatives or ingredients you can’t pronounce.
There are some brilliant convenience foods-tinned tomatoes, Baked beans, tinned sweet corn, stock, tomato paste and basic frozen veg and I wouldn’t be without them as they are inexpensive and versatile, just be selective.
Just doing some baking is a good place to start – two or three, easy, “makes a lot”, recipes for muffins and biscuits can save you heaps.
Cooking is not a “gift or talent” you have to be born with. It’s just a practical skill like, driving or reading or tying your shoelaces. The more you do it, the better you get at it and the more it makes sense.
Keep a price book- Alphabetise a notebook and write in all the products that you usually buy and their prices. The price book enables you to accurately determine when something is on special (supermarkets often put little labels up which imply that the price has been adjusted even if hasn’t).
When competing supermarket mailers come through the letter box you can choose where to shop. You can price your grocery shop before you do it, even cost out your favourite recipes using your price book.
You can even draw up a table in the back, note down your weeks recipes from the menu plan and tally what you spent on groceries that week. So you can establish which were your least expensive weeks and why.
Your shopping list: If you are only going to shop once a week you need to take a good list with you. Write your shopping list with your menu plan, essentials list and luxuries list in front of you.
Choose one or two luxuries – only if you can afford them, and check your cleaning products.
Armed with cash and your list you are ready to do the supermarket shopping. If something is not on the list then you don’t need it – even if its on special, you don’t need it.
Don’t browse; you will inevitably see things you want if you go looking.
Shop around –
In the supermarket: Buy the supermarkets own brands- House brands can save you lots of money. With several quality levels on offer I use the basic range for staples like flour, milk etc and the Supermarkets “named” range for most other items. You may need to experiment a bit – we are still not converted to house brand baked beans but I haven’t bought a bag of branded flour in years!
Ethnic ingredients – check out the Indian and Asian grocery suppliers in your area, many items will be substantially cheaper than in the mainstream supermarkets.
Each week any money you save becomes grocery surplus. Use this fund for bulk buying on specials or paying unexpected expenses.
How the savings work: If you have followed the 3 dg principals, drawn your usual grocery money in cash and shopped following the how to shop guidelines you will come home from doing your grocery shopping with cash left over.
Hooray!
We call that “the grocery surplus”. Find an envelope, write Grocery Surplus on it and put it in a safe place. Under no circumstances tell teenagers where you keep it.
Each week you want to try and add to it. The money in this envelope should initially be directed at debt elimination. When you have no outstanding bills or unpaid accounts then money that accumulates in grocery surplus can be channelled into other areas – bulk buying on supermarket specials for example. This doesn’t mean you revert to spending it all like you used to though because as that money mounts up it can pay for holidays or outings, it can be directed into savings or the shoes and handbags fund – its up to you!
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