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There are many ways to save money when grocery shopping, but going from store to store searching for the best price can cost you more money than you save. While most people think that going to a number of different grocery stores and getting the best price at each will save them money, the truth is that you will often lose money by following this process. Even though you'll rarely find a single grocery store that has the best price on every item you need to buy each week, visiting a number of different grocery stores is usually not the answer.
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There are a couple of problems with going to more than one grocery store for your shopping. First, most of the time the focus is so intently on the difference in the price of the food that the cost of driving from store to store isn't taken into account. AAA estimates that is costs about $0.57 a mile to drive a car. A big portion of this is for fixed costs that have to be paid whether you drive or not like insurance. AAA also estimates that it costs approximately $0.10 per mile for gasoline and a total operating cost of approximately $0.16 per mile (this includes maintenance and tires).
That means if you drive 20 extra miles to find better grocery prices at different stores, the total savings needs to be $11.40 or more to make the trip worthwhile if you use the $0.57 figure or $3.20 if you opt for the $0.16 figure.
The other major problem is that driving to two or more grocery stores takes a lot of time. When you spend your time driving from store to store, it means that you have less time to do other important things.
There is a simple solution to this problem that will allow you to save time, get the best price on the groceries and only visit one grocery store. The way to accomplish this is to shop at a grocery store which will accept competitor's advertised prices.
To keep customers, there are more and more grocery stores that will honor their competitor's advertised prices. That means you can sit down with the newspaper advertisements for all the stores in your area, choose the best overall price for the groceries you need that week and get it while visiting a single store. In order to receive the competitor's price, you usually must bring the sales advertisement to provide proof. You won't be able to switch similar items (to qualify most stores will insist it always be the exact same item), although stores will often match prices on competitor's store brand with their own store brand.
To find out if a grocery store will accept competitor's advertised prices, ask the store manager. Start at the most convenient store near you and ask if they accept competitor's advertised prices. If they do, ask exactly what you need to provide to receive the competitor's price when shopping. If they don't, move on to the next most convenient store until you find one that does. Once you have located a store that will accept competitor's advertised prices, you have instantly turned several trips into a single one while saving yourself a significant amount of both time and money.
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There are a couple of problems with going to more than one grocery store for your shopping. First, most of the time the focus is so intently on the difference in the price of the food that the cost of driving from store to store isn't taken into account. AAA estimates that is costs about $0.57 a mile to drive a car. A big portion of this is for fixed costs that have to be paid whether you drive or not like insurance. AAA also estimates that it costs approximately $0.10 per mile for gasoline and a total operating cost of approximately $0.16 per mile (this includes maintenance and tires).
That means if you drive 20 extra miles to find better grocery prices at different stores, the total savings needs to be $11.40 or more to make the trip worthwhile if you use the $0.57 figure or $3.20 if you opt for the $0.16 figure.
The other major problem is that driving to two or more grocery stores takes a lot of time. When you spend your time driving from store to store, it means that you have less time to do other important things.
There is a simple solution to this problem that will allow you to save time, get the best price on the groceries and only visit one grocery store. The way to accomplish this is to shop at a grocery store which will accept competitor's advertised prices.
To keep customers, there are more and more grocery stores that will honor their competitor's advertised prices. That means you can sit down with the newspaper advertisements for all the stores in your area, choose the best overall price for the groceries you need that week and get it while visiting a single store. In order to receive the competitor's price, you usually must bring the sales advertisement to provide proof. You won't be able to switch similar items (to qualify most stores will insist it always be the exact same item), although stores will often match prices on competitor's store brand with their own store brand.
To find out if a grocery store will accept competitor's advertised prices, ask the store manager. Start at the most convenient store near you and ask if they accept competitor's advertised prices. If they do, ask exactly what you need to provide to receive the competitor's price when shopping. If they don't, move on to the next most convenient store until you find one that does. Once you have located a store that will accept competitor's advertised prices, you have instantly turned several trips into a single one while saving yourself a significant amount of both time and money.
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