If you’re like most Americans your grocery bill is one your top monthly expenses. But unlike your mortgage, car payment, and other monthly expenses, you can easily and dramatically cut your grocery expenses.
Here we list 7 simple ways to reduce your food costs.
Don’t go to the store hungry. Grocery stores have made a science out of playing on your senses. The first thing you’ll notice when entering a grocery store is the smell of freshly baked bread.
Since many stores don’t actually bake on the premises, these smells are actually piped into the store’s ventilation system.
The bright colors of fresh fruits and vegetables serve as tempting beacons, as do the rest of the delicious food items in the grocery store. If you enter a supermarket hungry, you’re guaranteed to spend more money.
Leave the Kids at Home. Supermarkets have nifty tricks for turning your kids against you. Popular kids cereals are placed at their eye level so they can pester you into buying the most expensive, sugar-laden boxes.
Some grocery stores even provide miniature shopping carts so that your kids can place products in that you’ll have to argue to get back onto the shelf. The final insult is a check-out area overflowing with candy, gum and other snacks.
Be Cautious of End of the Aisle Displays. This is an especially dangerous area because supermarkets know consumers pay more attention to items at the end of the isles. More often then not shoppers assume items here are on sale, when they’re actually not.
Even genuine sales items placed at the end of aisles are often more expensive than similar items found in the middle of the aisle.
Don’t Fall into the Bulk Purchase Trap. It used to be that the more of a product you purchased, the less it would cost per unit of that product. A larger can of baked beans, for example, generally would cost less per ounce than a smaller can.
Sadly, manufacturers have realized this and now often use it to their advantage. Buy that larger bottle of salad dressing and you could end up paying more per ounce than if you had bought the smaller bottle.
To avoid this trap always compare unit prices – the price per unit of whatever you are buying. This could be price per ounce, price per pound, price per square foot, etc. This unit price is generally found on the shelf price label.
Beware of Handwritten Signs. Grocery stores know that consumers have a tendency to assume that any item with a handwritten sign must be on sale. Not surprisingly, many products with handwritten signs, in fact, are not on sale.
Items with handwritten signs are often slow moving items that the supermarket wants to draw attention to. To steer clear of this trap, always double check the price.
For the Best Deals Search High and Low. Grocery stores often place the highest margin items – those items that make the store the most money – where they are easiest to reach.
This area is from the eye level to upper chest level of the average size shopper. In order to find better deals, take a look at items near the bottom or near the top of the shelf.
Check Your Receipt. Scanner mistakes occur more often than you think. Usually its not a problem with the scanner itself, but the simple fact that each week hundreds of new sales prices must be manually updated into the computer system that controls the scanner.
This is usually where the mistakes occur. Always check your receipt to make sure you’re charged the right price.
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