5 Secrets to reduce your grocery bill by 10%

Are you ready to take the challenge and reduce your grocery bill by as much as 10%?

Learn about the five secrets you need to know to beat retailers at their own game. That is like living for free more than one month a year!

Secret 1 - Smells so good

Retailers go out of their way to give you good smells in their shop. This is why merchandisers cook yummy things for you to sample and bread is often baked on the premises. Other than shopping online there is little that we can do to avoid the smells but there is something that we can do to resist them.

Stuff yourself!

Yes we know that every bit of good upbringing teaches us that gluttony is a sin, but honestly if you go into the supermarket with a full stomach you will leave it with a fuller wallet. Why? Simple – when you are not full you are continuously tempted to buy things that you did not intend to. You walk in and see a delicious treat, so you put it in the trolley – I mean why not after all. Within the next five minutes you will repeat the exercise because the treat has given you no satisfaction.

Try it next time you go shopping and see the difference!

Secret 2 - The list of course!

Shopping list

Shopping without a list is a guaranteed recipe to blow the budget.

No matter how small the purchases are to be, always make a list before you go into the shop and then make yourself never buy something that is not on the list.

Having a standard list for your big shop also helps a lot to avoid forgetting to buy something that you do need. I always take my standard list before I go shopping and cross off all of the things that I still have in the cupboard before I leave.

You can download our free shopping planner in Excel here. The planner contains a list that you can amend a well as a meal and occasion planner.

Shopping Planner

.xlsx

Download XLSX • 97KB

Secret 3

Not all packages have the same amount in them.

Most retailers now show the price per gram on the price label on the shelf. While this transparency is fantastic we don’t always check it. Secret 3 is to always check the price per gram, not only when comparing brands but also when comparing what size to buy. Common knowledge is that the bigger the pack the cheaper each item is, but this is not always true. Two small packs are often much more economical to buy than one large pack – and did you need the large pack anyway?

Manufacturers will also often vary the size of the packaging. The toothpaste that you bought last month may have been 35g but this month it is 30g and still the same price.

Secret 4 - Till teasers: The road to temptation

Have you ever bought a small volume cold drink from a fridge at or near the checkout in a supermarket? Chances are 50/50 that by the time you got into your car you had either forgotten it or buried it beneath all the other stuff you bought.

Retailers know that by the time we get to the till we are likely to be thirsty, so they put these extra sells in front of us. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with getting something cool to drink while out, but just so long as you DO drink it. What a waste to buy a small cold drink to drink immediately, only for it to join the 2l bottles that cost almost the same. Whenever I buy a drink like this I hold it back to one of the very last items and then open and start to drink it even as the last things are going through.

Secret 5 - Big shops are better shops

I’m often asked whether it is better to shop weekly or monthly. In short the bigger you can practically do your shop the better, but you also have to consider things like how you will be transporting the items home and if you have enough storage space.

Why bigger? Also simple. Remember the temptations laid out at us when we talked about going in with a full stomach? The more often you go to the shops the more opportunities you are presenting retailers with to sell you something that you did not need.

Whether you do your shopping on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis one thing is for sure, make sure that you have your list and stick to it.