Slash your supermarket spend
Rachel Robson rounds up five ways to cut your food bills.
Rachel Robson rounds up five ways to cut your food bills.
If you’re always surprised at how much you spend at the supermarket, here are five top tips to help you slash your food bills.
Ditch the big brands
Cheaper brands don’t necessarily mean poor quality. It can be very tempting to simply buy the big brands we all know and love – such as Kellogg’s and Heinz. But supermarket own brands can taste just as good and they will cost a lot less.
You can take this one step further by buying value items for basics such as flour and rice.
Shop online
Shopping online can work out far cheaper than spending hours walking around the supermarket. By using a clever website called mySupermarket, you can track how much your shopping will cost at each of the UK’s four major supermarkets – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, ASDA, and Ocado.
You can then select your basket of goods from whichever one works out to be the cheapest. And don’t forget to keep an eye out for online voucher codes which can lower your bill even further!
Bargains and discounts
If you do your supermarket shop towards the end of the day, you’re bound to pick up some discounts. Most supermarkets have a reduced to clear shelf and this is always worth a browse. Just be warned that these items often have a short use by date, so either eat them quickly or freeze them if you can.
Ditch your supermarket
Instead of simply heading off to your usual supermarket, why not try out your nearest deep discounter? Aldi, Netto and Lidl keep their shop overheads low, so they can offer lower food prices than the major supermarkets.
It’s also worth checking out your local greengrocers or market for cheaper fruit and veg.
Bin the packaging
Try to avoid buying food wrapped in lots of packaging as it will work out to be cheaper. Buy your fruit and veg loose and purchase more from the deli counter. Cheeses and meats are likely to be cheaper at the deli compared to those wrapped up in plastic on the shelves.
Happy shopping!
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Comments
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Being one of the few blokes that loves shopping & spending, what we do is look for the offers, BOGOF items that we would normally use such as; soap powder/tabs, dishwash tabs & toilet rolls. Also tins of soup, tea & coffee and buy about 6 months supply of items that will keep, as prices do go up after the offers end. We do our main shop in Waitrose and go to Asda, Tesco & Sainsburys just for their special offers to stock up on. And yes, I do take fuel costs into account, if I can't save double or more than the fuel cost, we go on the bus.
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I buy most of my fruit, vegetables, meat and sometimes cheese and eggs at the open market. Generally I find that the quality is slightly higher (although it pays to look carefully at what you are buying) and the prices are cheaper as the market traders have lower overheads. Occasionally we get together with a group of friends and buy food at the wholesale market. Prices are much cheaper there but you have to get there very early in the morning and the food is sold in quantities too large for domestic use, which is why we shop there as a larger group or agree beforehand to supply friends in exchange for a cheap price. I only shop at the supermarket for the things I cannot get at the market, such as pasta, milk, tea, flour and breakfast cereal.
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Shop every week, shop on foot and only buy supermaket food if not available elsewhere e.g. recycled loo rolls and kitchen towels, small tins etc., LEARN TO COOK. Thats it!
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03 March 2010