Sunday savings

This blog is about buying your groceries as cheap as possible and buying as healthy as possible.  It is not about hoarding,

It is not about minimalists either.  

There are three types of shopping habits.  

1) go to the neighbourhood store, the most expensive store in town, and buy just what you need to last you one or two days....about 3-4 trips a week.  Your food is really fresh, or not, and you spend 110 to 120 percent of retail.  

2 go to the big box warehouse club once a week and fill your cart with ready made and anything that floats your boat that day.  Less trips, some of the items are cheaper, some not and you are bombarded with zillions of impulse buys.  You average retail, maybe a little less.  

3) plan your trips.  Go to several stores and buy the sales.  Buy as many as fits your plan.  You don't have a weeks groceries, because last weeks plan fills in this weeks plan.  You average 50 percent of retail.  It takes some prep time.  You are going to an average of two stores and you are planning your trip to maximize your gas.  You are also saving about FOUR  THOUSAND dollars a year if you are the average family. It uses less gas than the person that runs every day to the grocery store, it saves a lot more money than either of the alternatives, and it builds a stock.  

Let's talk about stock.  

A) you are never out of food, no running to the store because you are on the middle of cooking and don't have an ingredient.  

B) you are prepared if any disaster strikes.  Something  as simple as not feeling like taking  yourself to the store, that dreaded S word making it dangerous to go to the store, or the grocers going on strike and you not wanting to cross a picket line. 

C) there is some sense of security knowing that you have food in the house.  I would never want to turn a family member away because I didn't have enough food to feed them dinner.  

D) there is a smug satisfaction knowing that you paid half price for your food, and don't have to waste your resources on paying top dollar for your food.  

I thank God that I grew up with a belief system that paying top dollar for anything is stupid.  Buying the best quality of things that will last you a long time is smart, spending more than you have to on the rest of your necessities is not.  It has got me threw some really tuff times.  I was left with a child to take care of and 5.12 cents in the bank.  I couldn't have survived without some grocery smarts,  we can go without a lot of things, food is not one of them.

Enough on the naysayers.  To each his own.  I really shouldn't have to justify my belief system.

I'll get back to groceries on the cheap . I know that there are people that want and need to stretch their grocery dollars.

Thanks for stopping by

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Jane