Shopping and saving on groceries.

AstroTurf

AstroTurf

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In the last month I decided to see how much I can save on groceries if I put in a little effort.
If anyone has anything to add to this, please do so, I am hoping that as a community it may make a fun little project.
How do you squeeze a bit more cash out of stores and how do you minimize your grocery bills?
Are you aware how much you have spent on groceries in the last month?

My wife and myself use buymeapie as our "master" shopping list. It's nice to always have the same list with us that we can both mark off or add to as needed.
I have 22seven set up and I split transactions whenever needed so I have a very good idea of my exact grocery spending in the past month, my wife has done the same. We are spending around 35 to 40% more (excluding baby stuff) than we were a year ago on groceries. Likely drought and exchange rate play a part in this.

Online shopping is mostly a disappointment.
My first thought when it comes to savings was online shopping, due to this I started checking all stores for click and collect or delivery.
I already had a pick n pay account due to testing it out years back and I created a Makro account to test out their online store.
I found both to be a huge disappointment and am now back to where I started more or less (well, besides having compared the two and finding that their prices are very similar on most items, I also now have 2 shopping lists I can use while walking around other stores to compare pricing).
Makro: Only allow businesses to purchase groceries online and not individuals.
Pick n pay: I would have to drive around an hour there and another back to click and collect, the local pick n pay no longer support online shopping, I also do not shop at the local pick n pay hyper but that is another story.
Takealot: Sell nappies and formula, usually at much cheaper prices than any walk in store and occasionally you can bring that down even more with a discount code.

After searching for online stores I noticed that just about every store out there has an app which gives you discount vouchers and specials, some of them are also connected to your shopper cards.
I have installed a few of these and will be testing them over the next few months.
 
i shop weekly

Each store has different stuff that you need on special

I also go to a mall which has pick n pay, game and checkers

if the price is very good i buy more than 1 of the item

We have stuck with more or less the same budget for a while now
 
We used to but due to sons creche location and closing time we have to fetch him before doing anything else. To get to a mall from work used to take us 10 minutes, now it's over an hour.

That leaves Saturdays or Sundays and I do not want to go to the mall every weekend. Closest mall is way too busy, next closest adds around 2 hours driving time to the day.
 
Good idea this thread.

Takealot sometimes stock things you wouldn't expect.

A few months back they had cat litter for R89(going for R130+ in the shops). I see it's now up to R189. Should've stocked up when I had the chance.
 
I often to my shopping in Sweden. It's a 30min drive to the border from miss Voicy's house so when I'm there over weekends we just take a trip. It might sound silly, but when you buy R2k worth of goods which would cost you roughly R5k in Norway, it makes the drive worth it.

People do it so much now that the open borders occasionally stop vehicles and do duty inspections and dish out crazy fines if you have more than X amount of alcohol/tabacco/etc per person.
 
Bighit said:
If you want to squeeze more out of your stores, there is always Eezi Coupons - http://www.checkers.co.za/eezicoupons.html

You think Coupons and oh no, but it has worked for us and then I still get ebucks on top of my checkers purchases.
Click to expand...

Yea, I found the checkers, spar and shoprite apps (my most common shops nowadays). Glad to hear they are useful.
May install the pick n pay one as well but thanks to how useless the one by us is the only time I shop at a pick n pay is when I visit my parents.
 
We shop to replenish stock. Checkers gets most of the shop, because of 15% in EBucks, PnP the balance.

Not everything we buy is sold at both stores.

Replenishing stock has the advantage that if the price is not to our liking, we can wait until the stock is almost out before buying.

If there is a special at a good price we stock up.
 
hj2k_x said:
Good idea this thread.

Takealot sometimes stock things you wouldn't expect.

A few months back they had cat litter for R89(going for R130+ in the shops). I see it's now up to R189. Should've stocked up when I had the chance.
Click to expand...

My dog uses the lawn. Fantastic to not own a cat it seems.
 
Billy said:
We shop to replenish stock. Checkers gets most of the shop, because of 15% in EBucks, PnP the balance.

Not everything we buy is sold at both stores.

Replenishing stock has the advantage that if the price is not to our liking, we can wait until the stock is almost out before buying.

If there is a special at a good price we stock up.
Click to expand...
We used to but all the changes in routine have us playing catchup again.
I cleared out my cupboards last weekend throwing away whatever was past shelf life or just no longer useful. Looks like a bachelor lives there now. 80% empty.


boxerulez said:
My dog uses the lawn. Fantastic to not own a cat it seems.
Click to expand...
I have no idea where my cat does her stuff. I don't care as it's not in the house.
 
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