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| 9 Ways to Save at the Grocery Store |
Submitted by:
Tip Hero 07/29/2009 5:28 PM
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Looking to save money on your grocery bill? How about $170 per month? Sound too good to be true? Well, we came across an article on the Mint.com blog by Kimberly Bither -- a nutritionist, fitness trainer, and writer -- who claims to save that much by following 9 simple tips.
While we're guessing that a number of you might already be doing one or more of these and won't be able to find the full $170 in savings per month (not to mention that you might have different food habits and/or family sizes), we think the tips are worth reviewing and hope that you can find at least a couple of them helpful.
We've outlined the 9 tips below, but click through the link at the bottom of this post to read more about each one.
1. Lettuce - Buy a head, not a bag, of lettuce. "...on average you will save about $3.50-$4.50 for the exact same amount of lettuce." Kimberly also notes that you use less plastic -- though even when we buy a head of lettuce, we put it in a produce bag, so we're not completely plastic-free here.
2. Milk & Orange Juice - Buy at a convenience store instead of a grocery store. Kimberly notes that she saves around $1 per gallon of milk and the same amount for a half gallon of orange juice. We suggest you research this before buying at your local convenience store, as we've seen the opposite of this tip to be true in a number of locations. And an article in the Washington Post points out how milk can be more expensive at a corner store in a poor neighborhood than at the grocery store ($4.99 at a corner store in the Washington, D.C. area vs. $3.49 at a local Safeway).
3. Perishables - Don't buy in bulk unless you'll really use everything you buy. Pretty obvious, but a good reminder nonetheless. On Kimberly's potato purchases: "I could have saved around $2.00-3.00 had I just bought the four potatoes I ate rather than the big bag that got tossed."
4. Celery, Carrots, and Other Veggies - If you only need one or two celery sticks or carrots, don't buy a whole bag. "Most grocery stores have a separate section where you can buy carrots, celery and other vegetables in any quantity," writes Kimberly.
5. Vegetables - Cut your own -- don't pay for someone else to do this for you. "You will save anywhere from $2.00-5.00 cutting your own vegetables." This reminds us of a similar tip we posted here on TipHero.com awhile ago: The High Cost of Cut-Fruit
6. Juice - Health-conscious parents trying to keep their kids' juice intake low may end up buying watered-down juice and wasting money: "Buy 100% juice (in its entirety) and mix it with water at home. You will save around $2.75 to $4.99."
7. Water - Don't buy the bottled stuff. On drinking filtered water: "If you only drank one 20 oz. bottle of water a day, this would save you $45 per month." And staying away from bottled water also reduces the amount of plastic that gets thrown away and ends up in a place like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which sits out in the middle of the Pacific and is "roughly the size of Texas, containing approximately 3.5 million tons of trash".
8. Deli Meat - Always check to see what's on sale: "I know I have made the mistake of going to the deli counter, asking for the same meat I always get, just to find out a competing brand is on sale that week for $2.00-3.00 less per pound."
9. All Groceries - If you know a store's layout, you're less likely to browse and more likely to get what you came for -- or at least that's Kimberly's theory (and perhaps there's scientific research that backs this up, though she doesn't cite any). Writes Kimberly: "On average, whenever I venture out to a 'new' store, I spend $30 more than normal."
9 Ways to Reduce Your Monthly Grocery Bill (Mint.com blog "mint life")
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