Going grocery shopping can be a big deal, take a long time and ne dreaded because of the amount of money that you are spending. If you feel this way, most likely you are going to the store and throwing stuff in your cart that you think you and your family will eat over the next week or two. You don’t know if you are getting the best deal, but you don’t care because you have so many other things that you need to get done. These kinds of trips are often referred to as “buying” instead of “shopping”.
When you go shopping, you are buying whatever looks good instead of making an active effort to “shop” for the items that you need. If you don’t know what you need, then now is a great time to start tracking your food usage to see what your family is really eating. This not only tells you what you need to get more of, but makes you aware of your families eating habits.
When you go “shopping”, you will have taken a few minutes to look at a few of the grocery stores ads or look at some weekly ads and coupon matchups online, and get an idea of what is on sale and make a list of things so you are not just buying random things.
When shopping with a list and having an idea of what a good sale price is on items will cut your bill down by about 25%. If you spend an average of $300 on your grocery trip, then this could be about a $75 savings! Think of that as extra money for Christmas and put it into a free savings account!
