Shopping

Many stores resort to tricks to get you to purchase more. One of them is making it more difficult to calculate whether you are really saving money by purchasing an alternate product, or buying in bulk.

Often, due to weird packaging sizes I have purchased items that I thought were saving me money, but were really costing me. The supermarkets pressure you to purchase the larger item because it appears to be better value, when you are really paying more.

Unit pricing helps to solve this problem. Unit pricing shows exactly what you are paying per quantity: per item, or per weight measurement. This makes it really easy to draw comparisons with alternate products.

Aldi offers unit pricing, making it so easy to analyze whether your getting the best value.

This simple tip has saved me thousands over the years.

When your hungry, you are often craving a particular taste. For me, its often expensive deli meats. When your shopping it is harder to resist the temptation to splurge on food you had been craving. This could add $10+ to your grocery bill.

This handy tip allows you to avoid take out and convenience food as well.

This little tip may seem like a no brainer but it took some time to make sense to me.

It has oft been documented that when you visit a shop, you purchase more than you intend to buy. This could be for a multitude of reasons although its especially worse if you don’t menu plan.

Many agree that shopping less frequently helps you save money because you are not exposed to the items that you didn’t intend to get.

You can either plan to shop less frequently, or plan your actual shopping trips so as to only purchase what you need.

I hit the catalogues first before purchasing a big ticket item. Sometimes I prefer the security of purchasing from a brick and mortar store. The first place I go to is Catalogue Central.

You type in your postcode and the site brings up all the applicable catalogues. I love this as many catalogues aren’t delivered to my address. I can also find catalogues from stores that are further away should I wish to travel.

Its great for price comparison, especially if you want to compare online and offline options. You can also get the details on applicable promotions without physically having to hit the stores.

Visit Catalogue Central.

There is some talk around the frugal blogosphere, and in savings forums, that Deli Staff will constantly ask if you want more to get you to purchase additional meat. While it wouldn’t allow for massive profits on an individual basis, it could nationally.

I was under the assumption that the items are difficult to measure up. Friends who work at the supermarket agree - rather than waste time fiddling around on the scales, they check if rounding up or down is ok.

It is worth being aware of the potential upsell as this can affect your budget over the long run. My belief is that it all gets eaten and if you want precise measurements, pay extra for the prepackaged meat.