It’s so easy to overspend when you have to get the shopping done in a hurry. Here are a few tips that should help you organise your way to saving at least £10 or £20 each week.
It’s pretty obvious that when you dash in and out of a store, grabbing the first thing you see, you might be missing out on a bargain. But the art of keeping tabs on your shopping spending can reap real savings week in week out if you get organised. Beyond just opting for cheaper cuts of meat and inferior products, here are a few ways to get into smarter shopping habits that will save you money without compromising on what food you enjoy.
Top tips for cheaper food bills
• Assess your spend
Keep all your food receipts for a month – the big supermarket shop, the ones for top-up supplies from local stores midweek etc. Then sit down and take a look at what you’ve spent. Is there a pattern to how much you are spending? Run down the list – what are the stand-out items over £2 that you can live without? It sounds silly, but it’s incredibly easy to miss that your family’s favourite yoghurt or a fairly ordinary loaf of bread has snuck up in price. If so, spend five minutes looking for good, cheaper alternatives or think about something in your shop you can go without to accommodate this expense.
• Mouldy leftovers
Are there items you just don’t seem to use up by the end of the week? If, for example, your family likes to enjoy the odd fizzy drink but you end up pouring half an unused bottle away because it goes flat, it might be better value for you to buy cans and use a little at a time, even though usually a bottle would seem more cost-effective. Or, say, are you buying different sandwich fillings for packed lunches only to find that the kids change their mind all the time? If so, have a chat with them, ask them why they like certain things – maybe they prefer some lunch options when it’s cold, or only like cheese sandwiches when there’s pickle in cupboard to go with it – and this will help you build a more efficient shopping list.
• The toilet roll mountain
All of us have a habit of buying one or two things we’re convinced we need more regularly than we actually do – toilet or kitchen roll, a spare jar of pesto, yet more fish fingers! Make yourself four starter lists for each weekly shop through the month – on each you can include the essentials that will always get used in seven days, then on every other list or one in every three lists, you can add those useful things you’d hate to run out of, but which you really don’t need to be spending money on all the time.
• Midweek extras
Rather than buying two loaves of bread on Saturday only to have to thrown one out by Tuesday because the slices have gone a dodgy shade of green, picking up midweek extras is a great way to keep your kitchen supplied with fresh food. However, when you nip into your nearest grocers, especially if it’s a smaller branch of your usual supermarket, it’s very easy to go in for two items and come out with £15 of impulse ideas. You’ll know yourself roughly how much the midweek extras should cost – £5 or so for another loaf and a couple of pints of milk, maybe more if you also need to top up the fruit bowl or buy fresh fish or meat – so leave the ‘extras’ money in a jar after the weekend shop then only use this money for this purpose. It’ll help you focus on what you went shopping for in the first place!
• Shop online
And finally, if you haven’t yet tried doing your big weekly shop online, it’s really worth a go! The first couple of times can feel a bit time-consuming because it takes you about half an hour to go through the lists and see what you want and how the website works, but compare that time with a trip to your local branch and even the longest online shop will be a fraction of the time you usually spend pushing a trolley. The upside of shopping online is that the total is added up with each new item, so you can set yourself a limit and then review what you’ve got in your basket, removing one or two less important things if you go over your ideal budget. All the major supermarket websites have great ‘inspiration’ sections – if you’re worried about missing out on bargains and new ideas – and their systems are programmed to remember your regular purchases, making it much less likely you’ll forget something you really need. Compare a couple of different sites to see if you can shop without paying a fee as this will really help, too.