Grocery allaboutshoppingtrends is a key part of all our daily lives, especially if you have responsibility for selecting, purchasing and bringing home the provisions for your family. The main stress factors arising from shopping for groceries are related to: the budget you have available; from overcrowding; ensuring that what you buy meets your family’s requirements.
Here are 10 top tips to make your grocery shopping a lot less stressful and help save you money.
Tip 1 How Often Will You Shop?
Decide on what frequency you will buy your groceries. If you shop every day or every other day, you may be spending more than you need in terms of cash and your time. Travelling to the store will cost you time and if you have some distance to travel also cost you money for fuel and running your car.
By shopping too often, you may be spending more money than you should, because retailers are experts at encouraging the ‘impulse’ buy, which we are all guilty of falling for when we spot those ‘special offers’.
If you shop for groceries more than weekly, you may find that much of what you buy ends up in the bin as it has spoiled.
Tip 2 Set Your Budget
For many people on limited income the weekly grocery bill is likely to be in the ‘top four’ in terms their monthly outgoings, so budget is an extremely important factor to consider when shopping for groceries.
Set your budget for the frequency you decide on for buying your groceries and try to stick to it. If you manage to buy what you need under budget, either put the saving aside, maybe toward holiday, or treat yourself to a ‘reward’!
Tip 3 Categorise Your Shopping List
Set up a ‘List Template’ on your PC for your shopping list. Once you have finished your template, you can quickly print a copy each time you need it to save you re-writing it each week.
The list should be set out in categories to enable you to check to see if you have overlooked any specific items.
For example your categories may be:
- Fruit
- Vegetables
- Drinks
- Meat
- Dairy
- Fish
- Ready meals
- Cleaning products
- Personal hygiene products
Tip 4 Make Your Shopping List
Make your list fit the frequency you have decided to shop. If you are planning to shop for groceries for one-week, work out what foodstuffs you need based upon what you are planning to prepare and serve to your family, on each each day for the shopping period.
If you are shopping for a family or perhaps responsible for buying the groceries for a group of people such as your housemates, you will need to ensure that you take into consideration the needs of everyone for whom you are buying. Once you have prepared the list you can ask your family if they need to add anything else you may have missed off.
