We all have to make a trip to the grocery store every now and then to get some food for the house. Well, until Amazon figures out a way to have robots delivery your food that is. But until then we will have to do it ourselves.
If you want to spend correctly at the grocery store you need to avoid a few bad habits that you may be doing. You might not even realize you’re doing anything wrong. You get home after running some errands and somehow you just spent $100 at the grocery store. Here’s the top 3 mistakes you’re making that are causing your pain.
1- You’re buying food that’s ready to eat
I’m sure you’ve done it before. You head to the grocery store so you can get a bunch of things so you can make lunch and dinner for the week. Then you smell something good and all of a sudden you’re walking towards the smell. You see the fried chicken packed and ready to go and you think this would be great for dinner tonight. Then you notice the sushi sitting nearby and decide you want to get that too.
I get it. It’s a lot more convenient to just get something that is ready to eat. However, these are some of the most expensive things at the grocery store. That’s one of the ways that they get you.
I’m not saying that you should never get anything from there. Every now and then it’s nice to get something ready to go when you don’t feel like cooking, but you can’t make it a habit. If you find yourself doing this frequently then you need to fix the problem. Figure out a way to buy something else that costs less and is still each to make. You have tons of options at the grocery store so there’s no excuses.
2- Not considering the store brand
I get that some of you just have to have Coca Cola, or you have to have Kelloggs, but if you’ve never tried the store brand equivalent of whatever you were going to buy then you could be missing out on huge savings.
Sometimes you’ll try something and it won’t work, but I’ve found that other times I prefer the store brand over the national brand.
The trick is finding the store brand that works best for you. Almost every place that sells food these days will have some sort of store brand for you to try, and almost always they are cheaper than the national brand. This even holds true when some things are on sale. Sometimes the sales price of the national will be less, but it’s not going to be on sale every time you go.
If you haven’t tried the store brands you should definitely give them a go. I’d even suggest that you try shopping at different grocery stores and trying different store brands to see if you find something that you really like.
3- Check for expiration
This one might seem silly, but it happens to people all the time. You might be in a hurry and you’re just picking up the first gallon of milk that you see. Then a few days later you find out your milk is expired and you haven’t even had half of it. If you would have only checked the expiration date.
Some stores will allow you to bring your item back and get refunded if you bought something that was expired when it was on the shelf, but that can be a hassle and some people just don’t care to deal with it. Instead, why not just take a peek at the expiration date and make sure that you have enough time to finish whatever you’re buying. It’s an easy way to keep from throwing money in the trash.