How to save too much on groceries
Groceries can be one of your most extreme expenses. Most people who are trying to save a little dough for retirement, their kid’s college fund, or just to help pay off some debt.
I know that my wife and I have tried to save as much as possible, whenever possible on our groceries. We clip coupons (which isn’t that time consuming), compare prices, and go to two different supermarkets to buy our groceries. Each Saturday, in the local paper, are the ads for the two local groceries stores. Our grocery list comes out and things are added as we find the deals in the fliers.
Saving money on groceries has nearly become an obsession for us. But when is too much too much? Is it possible to save too much on groceries? Sure, some of the name brands taste better than the generics, but is the better flavor worth an extra $0.78? Perhaps.
But what really causes us to save too much on groceries is when we get carried away with sales items. One of the best examples from our shopping endeavors is chicken breasts. We eat a lot of chicken so we usually buy the frozen boneless chicken breasts in a bag. My wife is a little picky so it has to be a certain brand. Normally, these bags of chicken are $6.99 for 2lbs. This week they were on sale for $4.99. That’s a pretty good savings and it is also the only time they’ve been on sale in well over two months.
So, we saved some money on chicken. But we also saved too much. We fell victim to a savers malady. We bought more than we needed. Because of the great deal, we bought 5 bags of chicken. It’ll take a little over a month to eat that much chicken and it will most likely blow our grocery budget for the month.
We saved too much. We’ve done it before (we’ve got about 20 boxes of pasta-roni in our pantry) and we’ll likely do it again, but being aware of it is half the battle right? Well, maybe. The biggest problem with it is that rather than having a somewhat even budget for groceries, the spending fluctuates by a bit from month to month. Makes it awfully hard to budget for groceries if you are off by $50 every other month.
Do you save too much?
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MFK said,
Wrote on March 29, 2007 @ 11:13 am
I see two ways where it’s bad. First, if you are really on a to-the-penny budget and you will now not be able to afford next week’s groceries. That’s bad. Second, is if any of the food gets tossed out. Erases the savings right there. But, if you’ve got a little flexibility in your budget, it’s probably not that bad. Think about it, now you won’t be buying chicken (or Pasta-roni) for the next several trips, so your bills should be under-budget until you make up the difference.
I think it is easy to get carried away but as long as you find that you manage to ‘catch up’ or ‘even things out’, I wouldn’t be too concerned.
thatedeguy said,
Wrote on March 29, 2007 @ 11:24 am
MFK: I agree that it might not be the worst thing to have happened and we certainly won’t have to buy either of those things for some time. The part it hurts is that we generally budget a set amount each month for groceries. Say $200. It’s that way each month. This month, because of our over saving, we’re over budget by about $100. When you’re trying to escape living paycheck to paycheck, being over budget by $100 is a pretty big deal. For us at least.