Saving money at the grocery store?

[Anonymous]

My question on this is how to track what is cheaper where? So for example....you need bananas....do you get them at Aldi, Costco, Trader Joe's, or Giant with a coupon? Replace bananas with anything you need to buy....eggs, TP, paper towels, apples, milk, etc etc. The unit pricing changes regularly I would assume, so how do you know where to buy certain things? Any helpful hints on this? Is something ALWAYS cheaper at Aldi? Is something ALWAYS cheaper at Costco?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My question on this is how to track what is cheaper where? So for example....you need bananas....do you get them at Aldi, Costco, Trader Joe's, or Giant with a coupon? Replace bananas with anything you need to buy....eggs, TP, paper towels, apples, milk, etc etc. The unit pricing changes regularly I would assume, so how do you know where to buy certain things? Any helpful hints on this? Is something ALWAYS cheaper at Aldi? Is something ALWAYS cheaper at Costco?

I'm curious too. Any thoughts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My question on this is how to track what is cheaper where? So for example....you need bananas....do you get them at Aldi, Costco, Trader Joe's, or Giant with a coupon? Replace bananas with anything you need to buy....eggs, TP, paper towels, apples, milk, etc etc. The unit pricing changes regularly I would assume, so how do you know where to buy certain things? Any helpful hints on this? Is something ALWAYS cheaper at Aldi? Is something ALWAYS cheaper at Costco?

I think trying to figure out how to save $.20 on bananas is not really the key. The key is to buy healthy food that you will actually eat at a reasonable price, consistently. This depends more on meal planning, not buying duplicates, not letting things spoil. Just driving to an extra store to save some money on whatever product might negate your savings in gas costs alone, not to mention your time.

There are a couple of things I prefer to buy from Costco because I've observed the savings are real, and that would be spices and produce, sometimes bread.

[Anonymous]

I generally just make a note when I’m at the stores. For example, on average, bananas as .44 a pound at aldi. That’s about as cheap as you’ll get them especially when you can find other cheap fruit. It’s also very, very easy to get in and out of aldi as opposed to parking and getting in and out of a Safeway. So if I’m near an aldi, booming in for produce, makes it worth it for me. Is it worth it for bananas? No. Is it worth it for bananas and various produce? Yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I generally just make a note when I’m at the stores. For example, on average, bananas as .44 a pound at aldi. That’s about as cheap as you’ll get them especially when you can find other cheap fruit. It’s also very, very easy to get in and out of aldi as opposed to parking and getting in and out of a Safeway. So if I’m near an aldi, booming in for produce, makes it worth it for me. Is it worth it for bananas? No. Is it worth it for bananas and various produce? Yes.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I would go to Aldi just for bananas. I was just using that as an example of one item of many.....So say I'm Aldi...what should I buy and what shouldn't I buy? I can't remember all the prices from all the stores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My question on this is how to track what is cheaper where? So for example....you need bananas....do you get them at Aldi, Costco, Trader Joe's, or Giant with a coupon? Replace bananas with anything you need to buy....eggs, TP, paper towels, apples, milk, etc etc. The unit pricing changes regularly I would assume, so how do you know where to buy certain things? Any helpful hints on this? Is something ALWAYS cheaper at Aldi? Is something ALWAYS cheaper at Costco?

Some of the frugal homemaking sites suggest a price book - write down the price, with coupon, etc. After a while you will know the best prices.
Personally, I agree with the PPs, the first thing is to reduce what how much you are buying (eliminate waste) and what you are buying (reduce more expensive foods). Then if you have a lot more time than money, do the price book and stock up on items that are a good price when you are near that store. Just a caution that if you stock up on bananas and end up only using half, you have paid double for what you did use.

[Anonymous]

I almost always buy the following at Aldi: sour cream, cream cheese, sliced fresh mozzarella, tomato paste, and their weekly produce picks (aka loss leaders). Random items, I know, but they are consistently way cheaper than other stores. If I’m going to aldi for something specific (like the produce picks), I will grab any of the others if I know I am low.

[Anonymous]

NP here - I've been working on eliminating waste, shopping my pantry and keeping an eye out for deals. It seems to help, but I'm not a pro at this yet.

Re the apps - can folks elaborate on them? What's in it for the company that made the app and is it worth the loss of privacy? Always wary of apps, but also like the idea of saving $.

[Anonymous]

Under stand the ebbs and flows of sales on packaged items as some things are regularly on sale. For certain things like cereal or coffee etc you can easily pay half if you just wait until a sale.


Build up an understanding of what meats and produce should cost so that you can identify real impactful deals and take maximum advantage. Random meats will go on deep discount from time to time and you can save huge $$$ if you can stock up when on sale.

Also learn to cook with cheaper meats/cuts. A whole chicken or turkey on sale costs next to nothing compared to breasts or tenderloins and can be cooked with basically zero effort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our approach is to eat mainly vegetarian and cook from scratch. The food is so cheap--though that's not why we do it. We spend about 350/mo for 4 people (including a voracious teen boy), but we have taught and enlisted our kids to cook so we have time to make a lot more than many families. But I think it's more habit than time as we have conveniences like an instant pot that make cooking easy.

We shop at a combo of costco, amazon delivery and super hmart.

We buy bulk grain (quinoa, brown rice, steel cut oats etc.) and dried beans in bulk.
We buy bulk flours, yeast, baking powder and bake our own breads and treats.
We buy frozen fruits and veggies of basics from Costco.
We always have fresh: spinach, onions, shallots, garlic, ginger, mushrooms, red cabbage, sweet potatoes and then whatever is on sale and looks good of other veggies and fruits so we can make a great salad, stir fry, casserole or egg dish on a moment's notice.
We buy bulk popcorn and vary the toppings as our most common snack.

We have dried fruit, seeds, nuts on hand to add a nice varied touch to salads, oatmeal and stir fries. We buy the surprisingly good Costco Kirkland EV organic olive oil as our main fat. We always have some good quality olives and sundried tomatoes on hand too.

For non-vegetarian parts of diet we buy one kind of nice cheese and fresh fish--usual salmon for the week that we use as a touch to several meals. We also always have eggs, tofu and greek yogurt on hand.
We drink water mainly (well and coffee and wine...).

I really thoroughly enjoy all our food!

If you go to Costco and buy all listed above in bulk you have already spent the majority if not all of you monthly budget. This math doesn't make sense to me at all. This is like the other poster in another thread that uses one rotisserie chicken for 4 meals for a family of 3 or 4. Yeah, ok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See if you can reduce or stop buying certain kinds of processed food as these items are relatively expensive. Oatmeal instead of cold cereal, bulk flour and yeast for the bread machine instead of buying loaves of bread, etc.
Also, shop your fridge and pantry when planning meals - incorporate whatever you need to use up.

This is OP and this is one of my biggest struggles. It’s empty and I think it’s psychological. I NEED to have stuff in there for a rainy day.

Maybe try to change your mindset so that when you see space in your fridge or pantry you're proud of using your money and space efficiently? I'm happy when my fridge is relatively clean and only has ingredients that I'm actually going to use in the near future. It bugs me when there are things left over -- half a cabbage, etc -- that I don't have a plan for. I think its fine to have some non-perishables in the pantry for a "rainy (or snowy) day," but I think the trick is to be mindful about what those things are. Maybe having a specific list of "emergency" food on hand would help? (It's actually not a bad idea in this day and age.)

I definitely "shop my pantry", but try to avoid having lots of leftovers by being careful about my meal planning. Sometimes I find that a lot of the savings from cooking at home are eliminated by the fact that you usually have to buy more of something than you really need. For example, I have a recipe for sheet pan chicken that uses a quarter of a jar of pepperoncini, so I try to make another recipe (Mississippi pot roast) that uses up the rest of the jar in the next week.

As for stores, I find that Aldi is consistently cheaper on staples, but the biggest savings from Costco and Aldi are things that are really expensive at regular stores. For example, I love Dubliner cheese, and the price at Trader Joe's is generally half what it is at a regular grocery store, and the price at Costco is half of the price at Trader Joes (per pound). If I buy it at the grocery store, its a splurge, but it's really not at Costco. Aldi has good prices on trail mix and good chocolate (things that are outrageously expensive at Giant or Safeway).

[Anonymous]

Costco is not necessarily less expensive for all items. It is for people who prefer to buy in bulk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I generally just make a note when I’m at the stores. For example, on average, bananas as .44 a pound at aldi. That’s about as cheap as you’ll get them especially when you can find other cheap fruit. It’s also very, very easy to get in and out of aldi as opposed to parking and getting in and out of a Safeway. So if I’m near an aldi, booming in for produce, makes it worth it for me. Is it worth it for bananas? No. Is it worth it for bananas and various produce? Yes.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that I would go to Aldi just for bananas. I was just using that as an example of one item of many.....So say I'm Aldi...what should I buy and what shouldn't I buy? I can't remember all the prices from all the stores.

Once every year or so I do a price comparison for the items we buy most often (milk, peanut butter, types of bread, types of cheese, tortillas, etc.) I figure out which are the cheapest (or which are equal) for the things we buy regularly and then plan shopping trips accordingly. I've found that once I have the general scales of cost in my head, I can quickly figure out if something is likely to be cheaper with a coupon at Safeway or if I should still just wait to get it at Trader Joe's, etc.

One of the more eye-opening things I found was that for many items we buy, the stores I thought were cheapest were not. In particular, Costco was not universally the cheapest, which I had generally assumed before starting to do this. And Whole Foods is the cheapest, or equal, for some of their generic store brand organic items (e.g., milk), which was also really interesting to find. And Safeway is way more expensive than all the other stores in our rotation on some items that I now know not to buy there at all unless they're on sale.

Broadly, the best way I've found to save money grocery shopping is to meal plan, make a list, and then stick to it unless I'm very intentionally departing from it for a special.

[Anonymous]

there are some coupon groups on facebook where you pay a monthly fee or around $50 or so where they supply you with coupons for every product imaginable. They also tell you what stacks and what promos there are. Here is a sample of what I purchased from yesterday from Harris Teeter:

1. Wonderful Pistachios, 16 oz $5.99
2. Coffee-mate Refrigerated Creamer, 32 oz $2.50
3. Arm & Hammer Liquid Laundry Detergent, 61.25-75 oz $2.99
4. Arm & Hammer Power Paks, 24-32 ct $2.99
5. Arm & Hammer Scent Boosters, 18 oz $2.99
6. 10 Yoplait Yogurt, 4-6 oz $0.50
7. Totino's Pizza Rolls, 50 ct $3.33
8. DiGiorno Pizza, 14-32.5 oz $5.00
9. California Pizza Kitchen Pizzas, 13.4-17 oz $5.00
10. Horizon Organic Milk, half gal, $5.50
11. Lean Pockets, 2 ct $2.00
12. Eggo Waffles, 10 ct $1.99
13. Tyson Frozen Bagged Chicken, 20.5-32 oz $3.79
14. 4 x Pringles, 4.9-5.5 oz $1.25
15. Neutrogena Hydro Boost City Shield Water Gel with SPF, 1.7 oz $20.99
16. Maybelline Great Lash Mascara $4.79
17. Suave Professionals Shampoo or Conditioner, 28 oz $2.99
18. L'Oreal Revitalift Bright Reveal Cleanser, 5 oz $5.59
19. Nature Made Adult Vitamin C Gummies, 80 ct $9.99
20. Tylenol Children's Cold+Cough, 4 oz $6.29
21. Colgate Floss-Tip Manual Toothbrush $5.99
22. Softsoap Body Wash, 18 oz $3.00
23. 4 x Febreze AIR Freshener, 8.8 oz $2.99
24. Tide Liquid Laundry Detergent, 75 oz $8.99
25. Pampers Boxed Diapers $24.99
26. Eucerin Baby Wash and Shampoo, 13.5 oz $7.89
27. Blue Buffalo Dry Cat Food, 5 lb $16.79

Grand total after all coupons: $3.89
I also used a competitor coupon to save $15 from the total bill, but you get the idea.