I’m on a mission to lower my grocery bills. Like I said, I’m a senior living on Social Security and a small part time job in a retail store. Let’s face it, retail doesn’t pay very well. But I like it. I’ve made very good friends there and its close to my home. I used to work full time in a sales position that paid pretty decent. Nothing that made me rich or anything but I could afford “stuff” I wanted and still pay my bills comfortably. But now, not so much. So like I said, I’m on a mission to cut my expenses and groceries are going to be the first thing.
I shop at a nice regional chain grocery store. It has everything I like to have in the house. Now its just me and two cats and I’ve been spending an average of $140 per week! That’s crazy! So I started saving my receipts and I made a spreadsheet of all my items with their prices and started to analyze them. Then I took my sheet to a very large discount chain, you know the one that starts with “W”, and walked around the store writing down their prices next to my store’s prices. (FYI, I’m just doing regular price to price comparisons at this point. I’ll get into coupons and sales later.) Everyone was telling me how expensive my store is but I thought they meant maybe 30 – 50 cents per item. I wasn’t going to drive all over town for that because wouldn’t I waste that much money in gas? (Another rule, all store comparisons are within 5-7 miles from my home.) Wow, I had some big awakening! Most of my items were $1 or more lower!! I only bought about a dozen items that day, but I saved $7.96. So I will be going there again when I need more, only I can’t get everything there. Their savings is mostly on paper and boxed shelf items. Also their vendor variety is very narrow as I was comparing exact brands and sizes. They clearly are not interested in pet food or supplies. That section was way over on the opposite end of the store and it was extremely small. So I still have that problem because two cats eat and poop a lot!
I’ll be doing more shopping there and expand my comparisons as I go. I haven’t started on meat or produce either. But next I will be going to a big national grocery chain. Let’s see what happens there!