Economy is bad, and you would be looking to save as much as possible, especially if you have credit card debts or a mortgage. But there is one expense where people often tend to be extravagant – food.
It is estimated that an average American family spends as much as 10% of its income on food. Here are some tips that will help you save money on your food bills, so that you can make higher payments on your debts and get rid of them quickly.
First of all, be focused when you are shopping in the supermarket. Make a list and stick to it. If you don’t know exactly what all you need, then you would tend to buy lots of useless stuff. Food companies spend huge amounts on making their displays and packaging attractive so that people make impulse purchases of their products. Control this impulse and shop depending on what you need and not what’s there in the supermarket.
You should also avoid buying precooked or processed food as much as possible. Raw food items are significantly cheaper and you also get the advantage of eating fresh. When you buy processed foods, the price you pay includes a lot of costs that the company would have incurred, such as processing, attractive packaging, marketing, and preservatives. Why pay for all this when you don’t have to?
Always look for cheaper brands in the same product category. You would often miss out on them, because stores keep the most expensive products in your line of sight, as they earn more money out of them. But if you look on lower shelves, you will find much cheaper products, and usually you wouldn’t have to make a compromise on product quality.
Store owners and product companies like loyal customers. Take advantage of this fact by using loyalty cards and rebate coupons. You would be able to save a significant percentage of your annual food costs by using this strategy. Although this means you should concentrate all your shopping in one store and don’t buy a few products from one store and the rest from another.
Avoid expensive brands when you are purchasing a commodity. For example, if you are buying sugar or salt, unbranded generic products will be much cheaper than the branded ones. Again, the main reason is that a company that brands its products has to recover its marketing costs. And that you means you have to pay more for their products.
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