Confessions of Grocery Bargain Hunters - 5 Essential Tips

In the past, I remember telling my partner that food is food and bargain hunting at the grocery store wouldn't impact our spending enough to make it worthwhile. Now that we've been shopping at the stores with the best sales and keeping track of our grocery bills, I know I was wrong. We've listed out the following tips that will help you save money without compromising on the foods you love.

1. Make a date with your flyers
Grab an international coffee moment and dig through those flyers before the sales start (Friday or Sat early AM). It's worth planning out some early morning shopping to a couple of stores in order to catch the best sales.

Grocery Bargain Hunter Confession - we fight to the death Sat AM to see who can take advantage of those door crasher specials before inventory runs out. 

2. Make room for the good stuff
Make sure to have room in your fridge or freezer for the sale items so that you can purchase in bulk.  In fact, consider buying a freezer to store and save any extra products you may not be able to use all at once. You might think this isn't worth the investment, but buying a freezer will save you money in the long run.

Grocery Bargain Hunter Confession - we once bought 15 chickens because they were 1/2 price. Sure, the cashier asked us how many kids we had because we filled the entire cart with chickens ;)

3. Check the unit price
Don't just compare price tags when you're shopping, since products are often sold in varying sizes. Always check the unit price (such as the price per 100 grams) - this information is usually listed on the shelf tag. It's the only way to know which product is actually the best deal - this applies to single products and mega sizes.

Grocery Bargain Hunter Confession - we bought a restaurant size jar of pickles in the past because of the fabulous savings - we obviously love pickles! 

4. Reconsider what brands you buy
We've recently started buying the store brand products and found that we often like these products more than national brands.

Grocery Bargain Hunter Confession - we love the local grocery store brand of frozen raspberries so much that we filled our freezer with them the last time they went on sale.

5. Make a list
It sounds like an old cliché, but it's true - make a list of the things you need and stick to it. There are far too many tempting items in the store to just meander down the aisles, picking up anything that looks good. When making your list, think about major meals and try to plan around sales. 

Grocery Bargain Hunter Confession - Everytime we've gone shopping without a list, not only do we forget the basics, we come home with nothing but junk food. 

Groceries are things we buy regularly and often.  Changing your buying habits can have a huge impact on your household budget.  Just remember, don't buy sale items for the sake of saving - make sure you still purchase the foods you like and will use.  A wasted food item is money down the drain.

Dumb Stuff We Bought

Image by litherland

I thought it might be worthwhile to publish an entry on all the crap we've purchased in the last few years. Recently, the both of us decided to work as contractors - this gives us a HUGE amount of freedom but means we have to stick to our household budget until we both generate steady income.

Rooting through some past purchases, I noticed that we used to buy A LOT of junk. Honestly, we have bought clothing, make up, shoes and food that we never even used, just for the sake of shopping. It was like we were afraid to leave the store without anything! It's really sad to think about all the wasted money.

In the past couple of weeks we've stopped doubling up on items that are not on sale, like groceries, and have challenged ourselves on all purchases. This has resulted in less spoiled food and smarter purchases - as an aside, I shopped around for a sale on dress shoes and ended up buying a pair of Rudsak boots (originally $275) for $115!

Our secret, ask yourself 1 question each time you shop Do I want to spend my hard-earned money on this? You'll find it interesting how many times you'll answer no.

Here's a reader challenge - Tell us about some of the bad purchases you've made. For each comment we receive, we'll post a write up and picture of something dumb we bought :)

Last Minute Vacation Savings

We're just wrapping up some loose ends before we hop on a plane for FLA. Some of the last minute details we needed to secure were:

- Renting a place to stay in our second location
- Securing a car rental
- Purchasing health insurance

In all three cases we were able to score some pretty nice deals and wanted to share our tips.

Renting a Place
As mentioned in our last entry, homeaway.com is a great resource, but make sure you look into cleaning fees and transaction charges that are passed through to the traveller. It was our experience that asking for a price reduction (especially if you aren't staying for a full week) was indeed possible.

Car Rental
If possible, try to book the car on a credit card that offers complimentary rental car insurance.  This could save you hundreds of dollars in insurance. It's also important to note, credit card companies do not offer third-party insurance - this means you won't be covered for any damage to someone else's vehicle.

Health Insurance
Shop around for sure... but we found CAA offered a great policy for a reasonable price.

We feel good about finding a lot of deals to put together this trip.  Now we will have a bit of extra money for some fun stuff on our journey.

Unexpected Expense

Unfortunately, one week after replacing our clothing dryer (which died very unexpectedly) our washer broke down as well!  We just bought the house, and 'inherited' the appliances, so I suppose there was no guarantee that either would last for any period of time.

After a ton of research, we decided to go with a lower costing top-loading washer.  I know this isn't the sexy style most everyone else is after, but everything we read showed the top loader was a better choice financially - in the short and long term.  Here's why:

• It was several hundred dollars less than a comparable front loader.
• It is energy efficient.
• A trusted repair person told us it should last longer, and will cost less to fix if it does break down. 

The washer was just delivered and we are really happy with our choice.  Saving money always feels great, and the older we get, the more practical we seem to become.

We're going to have to consider these types of unexpected expenses as we put together our annual spend budget.  This will definitely go into the Incidentals/ Emergency category.

Creating a Household Spending Budget

One of the most important components of managing your money is planning how you spend it.  Spending has to be proportionate to your income, or you'll never find yourself ahead.  Understanding what you spend will reveal areas you can cut back on, to maximize savings and overall financial health.

This year is the first year my partner and I will create a household budget.  We want to be methodical and thoughtful about it, because the more accurate our budget is, the more value we will get out of it.  We thought we would start by identifying some spending categories.  Once we're satisfied we've captured everything, we will begin putting some estimated numbers in each category, aiming to stay within our estimates for the year wherever possible.

• Home expenses - this can have sub-categories for heat, electricity, hot water heater rental and gas.  This category should include things like home maintenance, improvements, and repairs.
• Food - will include weekly groceries and the occasional morning coffees.
• Automobile - this can be sub-categorized into gasoline, maintenance and repairs.
• Clothing.
• Grooming - this will include haircuts and beauty products, such as shampoos, cleansers, creams, and the like.
• Health - we need to account for any expenses not covered by any healthcare insurance we have.  This may include partial costs for any medications, massages and other similar items.
• Travel and entertainment - the will be a combined category to capture leisure travel and other fun things, such as the odd movie.
• Pet - we have a dog who needs food, toys, grooming and vet visits.
  
• Incidentals - this should really only include small items that may not fall into any other category.
  

Once we have assigned a dollar value to each category, there will be money left over, which we will have to put towards savings and investments, and the mortgage.  While we like to make as many additional payments towards the mortgage as possible, we also feel better when we're able to have money stashed away in savings accounts, just in case we have an unexpected expense arise.

It will be interesting to see how accurate our budget turns out to be by the end of this year.  We will use actual receipts from this past year to estimate our future spending.

A great resource for learning more about all aspects of everyday finance is GetSmarterAboutMoney.ca.  This site has a section dedicated to budgeting, which is very helpful.

If you've created a household budget before, what were your most underestimated categories? We want to know, so leave your comments here.