Wednesday 1 September 2010

Money Saving Tips – Grocery Shopping


When I first started New Mummy’s Tips last year the idea was to share some of my money sharing wisdom *ahem* with you, well I’m finally getting around to doing it.

I can’t remember a time that I haven’t been on a food budget; I like good food but have paying through the nose for it. I believe you can buy good food but not go overboard on the spending, so here are my tops tips.

  • Always do a stock check before you do your grocery shopping, this will stop you buying duplicates og items you’ve already got
  • Do a meal plan for the week, fortnight or month depending on how often you do your grocery shopping. Then make a list of all you need to buy, do forget check what you already have in. That way you only buy what you need and don’t end up with an excess of food.
  • Shop online, I find spend less if I do my shopping online. If you have a list of what you want it can be easy to do and you can do it in comfort of your own home without screaming kids and queues.
  • Shop around, look for the best deals. I’m fortunate to have a Aldi, Lidl, Sainsbury, Co-op and M&S all in walking distance from me. I have a quick look over their offers to see where I can save money on my shopping.  I do the bulk on my shopping online and then pick up bits from the other shops
  • Special offers like Buy One Get One Free can be great but be careful not to fall into the offers trap. Only buy an item on offer if you need it or you can freeze or store it, no point buying something just for the sake of it, all those offer items soon add up.
  • Buy supermarket own brands instead of branded products you’ll be surprised how much you can save. Supermarket own branded food is just as good as branded and a can be a lot cheaper, for example Branston Bake Beans 410g 61p, Heinz Bake Beans 415g 64p, Sainsbury’s Baked Beans 420g 49p, not only do you get more in the own brand but it’s much cheaper.  If you swapped your Heinz beans for Sainsbury’s own brand you would save 15p per tin, if you buy 2 a week, 52 weeks of the year that is a saving of £15.60 per year, if you swapped a few items think how much you would save in a year
  • Don’t be ashamed to use coupons, cut them out from magazines and newspapers.


I hope this is useful to you, if you have any other money saving tips please share.

NM x 

3 comments:

  1. This is great advice. I am so bad for buying up the buy 3 or 2 for such and such. My oh says why you buying two and I say because they are such and such and he says but 1 is only.... You know the story :)

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  2. Know what time your locals reduce their fresh produce and shop then - you can often get great bargains on things like meat and fish and if you can't use it that day, it can always go in the freezer.

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  3. We have a place locally that sells things which are past there "best before " date. You can't do a full shop there but, you can save a fortune on many items and, for the most part you can't tell any difference in quality. If you get something that is poor they will give you your money back.

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