#GroceryShopping #SavingMoney #BudgetFriendlyGroceries #EffectiveCouponing
🛒 Is it worth it to go crazy with trying to get savings, or should you just buy groceries without worrying too much? 🛍️
When it comes to grocery shopping, the age-old question of whether to go all out in pursuit of savings or to simply stick to a budget and buy what you need is a common dilemma. In today’s fast-paced world, time is of the essence, and many people are left wondering if all the effort put into extreme couponing and store-hopping is truly worth it. Let’s dissect this issue and explore the pros and cons of both approaches to help you make an informed decision.
## The Savings Game: Is It Worth It?
### The Pros of Extreme Couponing:
– **Significant Cost Savings**: With the right coupons and strategies, you can slash your grocery bill by a considerable amount.
– **Stocking Up on Essentials**: By taking advantage of sales and coupons, you can build a stockpile of essential items, saving you money in the long run.
### The Cons of Extreme Couponing:
– **Time-Consuming**: Scouring through newspapers, online platforms, and organizing coupons takes a significant amount of time.
– **Limited Options**: You may find yourself restricted to purchasing only items that you have coupons for, limiting your flexibility in choosing brands and products.
## The Budget-Friendly Approach: Simplifying Grocery Shopping
### The Benefits of Sticking to a Budget:
– **Time Efficiency**: By sticking to a budget and buying what you need from a local grocery store, you save time that would otherwise be spent hunting for deals.
– **Less Stress**: Simplifying your grocery shopping routine can reduce stress and mental clutter, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your life.
### The Drawbacks of Not Prioritizing Savings:
– **Missed Opportunities for Savings**: You may miss out on potential savings and deals by not actively seeking out coupons and discounts.
– **Potential for Overspending**: Without a focused approach, there is a risk of overspending and exceeding your budget.
## Finding a Middle Ground: Practical Tips for Smart Grocery Shopping
### 1. Set Realistic Savings Goals
– Determine how much time and effort you are willing to dedicate to saving money on groceries. Set achievable savings goals that align with your lifestyle.
### 2. Embrace Digital Coupons and Loyalty Programs
– Take advantage of digital coupons offered by your local grocery stores and sign up for loyalty programs to enjoy discounts without the need for extensive coupon clipping.
### 3. Plan your Shopping Trips Strategically
– Consolidate your shopping trips to minimize time spent on running errands, and consider incorporating grocery pickups or deliveries to save time.
### 4. Prioritize High-Impact Saving Strategies
– Focus on high-impact savings opportunities, such as bulk buying non-perishable items or purchasing items in-season to capitalize on lower prices.
### 5. Monitor and Evaluate Your Efforts
– Regularly assess the effectiveness of your savings strategies and adjust them based on the time and money you are willing to invest in grocery shopping.
In conclusion, the decision of whether to go all out in pursuit of savings or to simplify your grocery shopping approach ultimately boils down to your personal preferences, lifestyle, and priorities. While extreme couponing and meticulous deal-hunting can lead to significant savings, it requires a considerable investment of time and energy. On the other hand, opting for a budget-friendly approach may offer simplicity and time efficiency, but it carries the risk of missing out on potential savings. Finding a middle ground that aligns with your goals and lifestyle is key to striking a balance between saving money and time.
So, should you bend over backwards attempting to coupon and maximize savings, or should you just choose a local grocery store and stick to a budget? The answer lies in finding a balance that works for you. Happy shopping!
I do the bulk of my shopping at Aldi.
So for the most part, I’m hitting both of your desired birds with one rock.
>Of course it’s savings money but it’s about if I spend x hours trying to save y, how do I quantify if that’s worth it?
Well, that’s kinda impossible to say without knowing what *x* and *y* actually are.
If you’re spending an hour a week to save $75 and the ‘local’ grocery store is a Whole Foods then, no, dumping the couponing to shop at WF instead is not worth it.
If you’re spending 5 hours a week to save $20 and the ‘local’ grocery store is a WinCo or Aldi then, yeah, your marginal returns are not worth it.
We just shop at one store for the most part and stick with a budget. Not worth the 3 bucks in gas and the time driving to multiple stores to save 47 cents on 100 bucks worth of groceries.
That’s a personal decision, not a financial decision. To me it’s not worth it and never has been. All I do is check whatever is on special at my regular store. The biggest aspect of saving on my food budget is making sure I don’t overbuy, to reduce food waste. Like, I have a Costco card but don’t buy fresh produce there because our household is only 2 people and the stuff will go bad before it’s gone.
Treat it like a wage. If you spend 2 hours per week couponing, price-checking, driving to different grocery stores, for example, and you calculate that you saved $50, then you basically worked a $25/hr job. Is that worth it to you and your current budget/financial situation? What if it takes 5 hours, and only saves you 40?
There’s a middle ground between those extremes that you’re pretty much ignoring.
Shopping at your usual store? Sure that’s fine. But there’s a lot you can do to keep your grocery budget reasonable without dedicating your life to cupon clipping.
Plan your meals so you don’t have food waste at the end of the week, check the store coupons and sales to see if there’s a different brand of something you were going to get anyway that you can save a little on, don’t serve yourself ridiculous portions, and limit your purchases of the pricier luxuries (shellfish, red meat, canned/bottled drinks, etc)
I just shop at Costco, Trader Joe’s, and Aldi and don’t worry about deals or coupons too often. It’s the best mix of time commitment (finding deals) and products I want.
It ultimately depends on how tight your budget is and how much you value your time. Keep in mind the cost of gas if you’re traveling to multiple or distant stores and the time cost of searching for deals and traveling to multiple stores
Really this is just a rule of reason as you balance time against money.
There are relatively easy and fast ways to save money – take five minutes to look up the local ad in the store you generally shop in and make a list of what is a real bargain.
Don’t buy produce out of season – it is generally very expensive and not that great anyway. I am lucky to live in California which has pretty good produce but I still don’t buy peaches in the winter that are flown in from Chile.
If you want to save overall on food costs, limit restaurant and take out food. Again rule of reason in terms of how much realistically you can cook from “scratch”. Some stuff is easy to cook fast – grill some fish or chicken – bagged salad – baked potato – complete good meal. Not the cheapest but still a fraction of the cost of a restaurant meal.
You write you shop in Aldi’s. I do TJ and I really don’t worry about the price of anything I buy there as it isn’t worth it for me to spend time or mental energy worrying if the crackers or chips I bought are rock bottom price if I chase all over to find a sale.
Really depends on what you make. 50k? Yes 100k? No shot.
There seems to be a correlation with coupons and shit from boxes/shit you didn’t really want. I tend to stay away from the middle of a grocery store and try to cook as much fresh as I can. I find that doing that usually doesn’t require coupons as most of that stuff has the discounts built in if there are any.
You have to be smart on time. Costco X times per month. Walmart Y times, Aldi Z times. Never more than one place on the same day. No extra time, big extra savings.
When we were poor, and sans vehicle, we would certainly go as crazy as possible to save money that we didn’t have to pay for groceries.
Now though? I just make a mental note that Meijer has this item for a buck cheaper than the store down the street and that I should buy it there when I make my way to Meijer again.
But if I really want to minimize effort and get reasonable savings at the same time, I’d just go to Walmart (and ignore the non-grocery items). Great Value brand for dayssss (although, imo the Meijer branded stuff tastes better)
I think the biggest thing is to buy only what you need and eat out of the fridge before ordering out.
Making a specific meal plan and sticking to it saved us hundreds a month. We would throw out so much produce and meat that we forgot about… it was crazy.
I would personally rather have a root canal every week than go to four different grocery stores trying to find the best deal.
I make $0/hrs watching TV. If that’s what you’re doing instead, don’t pretend it’s a hourly wage thing.
Really only you can say
You know the time and the estimated or actual savings.
You also know your food budget and how easily you can accomplish it
You know your personal style and if you are thrifty and frugal bargain hunter or just want to save time.
Maybe find a Happy medium by shopping at an economy grocery store and you may save some time while getting overall savings.
i look at it like this: if you get paid $15/hour at your job, are you saving more than $15 on what you choose to buy if you take an hour or more out of your day (wether that’s doing the research beforehand, or just getting around to more than one store) to find the best place to shop every time you have to shop?
hannibal burress said in a standup once, “People camp out for the [Black Friday] deals. yeah, you got the deal…but you camped out. that negates the deal.”
In my experience foods with the most coupons are the junk you shouldn’t be eating much of anyway.
Bit different for household stuff but for me I mostly buy store brands and I’m single so it’s not like I need to buy multiple packs of garbage bags very often.
I’m not really willing to go to different stores other than making a larger trip to say Target to stock up on more household stuff. Then getting most groceries at a closer store during the week.
It depends:
if you have tens of thousands of credit card debt: yes, you should do this.
If you are doing OK and have no revolving consumer debt and have an emergency fund: it is up to you to decide if the money is worth the time and what else you could do with it.
If you are in the top 10% of income and have a several hundred thousands net worth: just shopping in the grocery store instead of delivery is probably good enough.
On top of the coupons, the items are probably more important: steak vs. ground beef, premade meals vs. ingredients from scratch, Whole Foods vs. Aldi, etc.
maybe its worth if if you are spending $200/week to feed your family of 4. but for one person? no. the cost savings are marginal unless you are stock piling stuff in the freezer for the long haul for 1 person.
>Of course it’s savings money but it’s about if I spend x hours trying to save y, how do I quantify if that’s worth it?
Divide money saved by number of hours to find how much per hour it is “paying” you and decide if your free time is worth more or less than that to you.
I do the same thing when deciding wether to do a project myself or pay someone with the additional factor of is it something I like doing
I carefully price shopped all 9! of my local grocery stores for Christmas dinner. In the end, I added up my total savings and it turned out to be $12. Most stores have the same things on sale at the same time because it is driven by the suppliers. Aldi is a little different because it is not name brand items.
I think you should set a budget instead. I buy in bulk at Costco and freeze everything and it’ll last me the month or longer. I go to the grocery stores that often have weekly sales on fruits and vegetables. For a single person, groceries aren’t really expensive. I also agree that you should skip “recreational liquids.”. Or maybe you can buy a tub of Kool aid or tang, that would last you forever.
Have a goal of how much you want to save, and a rough idea of how much you can comfortably spend on groceries.
Meeting those goals?
Do whatever you want.
Not meeting those goals?
Yeah, grocery bill is a thing worth looking at, but figure out how much cheaper it could be.
Coupon clipping has gotten so easy in the age of smartphones. Instead of hunting and clipping from the paper, I open my Albertsons app and click “clip” next to the items that say “frequently bought” because I put my phone # in at the register. Am I being heavily data mined? Probably. But at my raw grocery cost numbers I feel I haven’t been over spending, and it takes me 5 minutes a week.
Ive got 30+ years in the grocery industry. A big part of the answer depends on what stores you shop at. If you have one of the following, you can just shop: Walmart, Aldi, Costco, Winco, HEB. If you shop at a large traditional grocery store (particularly if they have an app), then you can save around 30% if you use it.
It’s easier to save money on groceries by changing up where you go and what you buy than by couponing.
For example going to a discount grocer or an ethnic grocery store and substituting expensive foods like beef with chicken or even a vegetarian option will save you much much more and take way less time then couponing might.
Just pay less instead of trying to save more.
My philosophy is that even the most expensive groceries are a fraction of the cost of eating out. Pick a grocery store that’s inexpensive and plan for meals so you don’t end up going out because of lack of interesting or easy choices in the fridge. As long as the eating out budget is staying in line, I don’t care about grocery spending. Speaking from a place where there’s plenty of buffer in the monthly budget. If margins are slim, deals and coupons are more important to watch.
Even without coupons, restricting myself to what is on sale and going in with a list is a fundamental finance skill, IMHO.
I used to spend an absurd amount of money on food, $500/month, and the fact that I had no rules for shopping had me wasting a lot of money.
My general guides are to stick to sales, but otherwise get what I want since it’ll be cheaper than eating out.
If buying ground lamb for an extra $4/lb keeps me from spending 15 on a gyro platter, it’s well worth it. So I’ll buy an $8 frozen pizza, etc.
Now I get the best value from going to Publix for their bogo sales and produce. Then I get most of my staple foods (meat, bread, eggs, grains) from Costco.
Shop sales at your store, be flexible with what fruits and veggies you eat for the week, and load digital coupons that you think you may use before heading to the store.
Don’t worry about it too much. Find the store where you can buy most of your list at a good price. It’s more important to not eat out much and to not waste the food you do buy. Buy what’s on sale. And you can check out the grocery store app if they have one. I save a good chunk of change with just a couple minutes on the Safeway app. Other good way to save money is to buy less processed food and more ingredients from scratch.
In my opinion it just depends on your income. When I made $45k / year I clipped coupons and watched for deals. I make a lot more now and just buy groceries without thinking about it. It’s no longer worth my time.
I shop my weekly ads, sometimes digital coupons if it happens to be something I’d want to buy, just not at a price I want. I just stick to good habits and jump on good opportunities. I buy whole chickens and use every part accordingly. I’ll save a couple spines for broth, grind up/ marinade and broil drumsticks, use breasts for whatever, and save wings until I have enough to have a “wing night” (I fucking love wings). If pork drops to under $2 a pound I’ll stock up on some for the freezer (smoked some pork ribs I got at like $1.72 a pound). I shop the markdowns a lot, at times I’ll go into a rougher area of town, because they’ll stock cheaper items I like (the Kroger near me doesn’t carry chicken gizzards, but one in an area I used to live in does). Have your bases be frugal, but don’t buy something shitty that you otherwise wouldn’t eat just because you have a coupon.
Sometimes (depending on state and store) it is as easy as scrolling thru mobile app to clip coupons or scanning barcode at the register. It is almost 2 bucks per 100 spent with sometimes surprise 35 bucks savings here and there.
Of course it will not make you rich but it is a good feeling.
The best savings I’ve found for groceries is meal planning. Get the local sales flyer, plan your meals for what’s on sale. Shop to your plan and stick to it. Every once in a while I’ll get a coupon for something I was already going to buy and I might use it, bit otherwise it’s more than I care to do.
That and grocery pickup. It’s easy to shop from home, I can check in what I have, order based on my plan and pickup without any impulse shopping.