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CUT GROCERY STORE EXPENSES - BUY FOOD AT A DISCOUNT EVERYDAY

1.0 OVERVIEW OF GROCERY STORE COSTS - SUPERMARKET DISCOUNTS

Little everyday expenses for food, soap, drugs, pet supplies and greeting cards are sneaky. It's only fifty cents here, a dollar there, but before you know it you're talking about thousands of dollars, in fact, well over $5000 a year for the average family.

To really grasp what you pay for a product, you must calculate how much it costs you per year (annualize). For example, if you buy a national brand cereal for $4.15 and switch to a store brand for $2.19, you would not just be saving $1.96. Assuming you bought one box each week, you would save 52 X $1.96 which comes to a yearly total of $101.92. Now we are talking real money! (This is an actual example.)

How much can you save on your entire budget? To keep the math easy consider this simple example. Let's assume a family buys 150 products on a regular basis and they manage to save 25 cents a week per item on just 50 (a third) of what they buy. How much would they save? The answer is 50 products X 25 cents x 52 weeks = $650. And remember that's each and every year.

1.0.1 WHAT IS THE BEST STRATEGY?

All the shopping experts I've read agree on these two points: to save the most money you must know the lowest price a product sells for, and you must then combine several strategies.

Point #1. How do you know the lowest price that a product sells for? You keep a price comparison book. If you only have a vague idea of the cost of a box of corn flakes, how do you know a good price when there's a sale?

We think keeping a price book is a smart way for virtually everyone to save money anywhere in the country no matter where they shop. See our detailed report on just how to do this at:

Point #2. To get the greatest savings, you should use a mixture of money saving methods. For example, in this issue we cover: buying store brands, clipping coupons, taking advantage of sales, shopping at warehouse stores, and stockpiling. No one strategy works best all the time. A savvy combination could save you as much as 30%-50%.

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