As part of a little life-re-organizing, I have recently changed my grocery shopping strategy.
I used to read the grocery store ads every week, and often times would go shopping every week. Generally a little trip, no more than $50 generally. This would allow me to only purchase the things that were for sale at the BEST price. Therefore, my grocery budget was very low, but the time it took me to shop was rather high.
Time = money. So...
I have decided that I don't need to grocery shop every week. When something is a good price, I need to buy a ton of it ("ton" varies depending on the shelf life of the product) and some times I may need to suck it up and buy something that is a little higher price then the rock bottom price I like to look for.
As an example: I always buy Marge's dog food at Aldi. I used to only buy one when we were getting low. However, the price never changes and I always need more and I don't think it goes bad for a long long time. So why not buy 2, or 3 bags at a time?
Or, detergent. I can get the detergent I like at my local grocery store and use a $1 off coupon which they double, making for a great price even when its not on sale. So, when I have a coupon, I just use it. Very rarely, it is on sale, but generally not when I have a coupon and the coupon saves me more money. So I now put the detergent coupons in a "use immediately" pile and don't bother waiting for a sale and running out of detergent in the mean time.
This shift in shopping strategies prompted a very large shopping trip the other week:
I used to read the grocery store ads every week, and often times would go shopping every week. Generally a little trip, no more than $50 generally. This would allow me to only purchase the things that were for sale at the BEST price. Therefore, my grocery budget was very low, but the time it took me to shop was rather high.
Time = money. So...
I have decided that I don't need to grocery shop every week. When something is a good price, I need to buy a ton of it ("ton" varies depending on the shelf life of the product) and some times I may need to suck it up and buy something that is a little higher price then the rock bottom price I like to look for.
As an example: I always buy Marge's dog food at Aldi. I used to only buy one when we were getting low. However, the price never changes and I always need more and I don't think it goes bad for a long long time. So why not buy 2, or 3 bags at a time?
Or, detergent. I can get the detergent I like at my local grocery store and use a $1 off coupon which they double, making for a great price even when its not on sale. So, when I have a coupon, I just use it. Very rarely, it is on sale, but generally not when I have a coupon and the coupon saves me more money. So I now put the detergent coupons in a "use immediately" pile and don't bother waiting for a sale and running out of detergent in the mean time.
This shift in shopping strategies prompted a very large shopping trip the other week:
While usually I don't spend more than $50 on any given trip, this trip involved two stores, a sweet meat sale and ended up costing 3x what I normally spend.
But, guess what? I have enough meat in my freezer to last me a solid month. Enough dog food for about 2 months. Enough pantry things that we won't be lacking any staples for a long time. And a fair amount of yummy produce that we can work our way through. So I won't be shopping for a good long while.
I think in the end I will spend a tiny bit more per month on groceries because I won't be running out every time some small random thing is on sale for a rock bottom price. But my time is quite valuable too, and I must spend that wisely as well.
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