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Want to Save Money Shopping? Choose Generics and Store-Brands.
In the last year or so, inflation has been a clear and worsening burden on a lot of people. Prices for almost everything are going up, and, although there's not much you can do about rent-increases, higher real-estate taxes, Personal-Property-tax, or.....(something we often discuss in the vehicle-threads) the price of new vehicles short of take-it-or-leave-it, you can save a significant amount of money, especially at the grocery and drug stores, by looking for items on sale, coupons, store-brand items, and discontinued items that are marked down. I don't usually recommend buying cut-rate gas (unless it is a Tier-1 fuel), for reasons I have discussed in other threads. But, in the grocery store and drug stores, it is usually a different matter....you often get the same quality (or better) at substantially lower prices by buying the store-brands for things like cereal, mouthwash, toothpaste, laundry detergent, coffee-creamer, etc.... and avoiding the national-brands you see advertised on TV. It's usually the same ingredients...at a lower price. Add that to any effective-coupons or other discount-factors, and you can save even more. CVS, for example, often runs sales on the vitamins/suppliments I take (which can often cost a fair bit), in Buy-One / Get One Free, (in effect, half-price) so I stock up if and when I need them....and the chain is known for its long register-receipts full of more coupons for future purchases. Giant, Safeway, Wegmans, and many of the other grocery stores have store-brand things that, even at regular price (although many of those prices have recently been going up) are well-below the prices of equivalent items from national-brands. If you have doubts about the generic store-brands, you can look on the labels/ingredients on the back of the items...they will usually verify what I said about being the same things at a lower price. As for prescriptions, many pharmacies won't honor discount-coupons because of regulation-complications, but, even there, Generic lower-cost versions of many drugs give you the same medication at a substantially lower price than the big-name drugs (Lipitor, Plavix, Nexium, etc...) that the drug-companies love to advertise on TV....at big prices. Since my heart surgery in 2010 (which some of you will remember) I take several / BP / cholesterol medications myself...and save a lot with the Generic brands, even the relatively small part that insurance doesn't cover.
And, if available in your area, there are discount /no-frills grocery stores like Lidl and Aldi, which are low-cost chains by nature, and give you some of the lowest prices to start with. Wal-mart also has a grocery-section in many of their stores where you can save a lot of money over big-name grocery stores, though there is often not the same choice of products as in the major grocery chains.
So, no, you don't just have to toss all of your hard-earned money away every time you go shopping.....take a little time to examine things on the shelves, compare prices and brands, keep those coupons you get in the mail, and you can (yes) save at least some of it.
__________________
In the last year or so, inflation has been a clear and worsening burden on a lot of people. Prices for almost everything are going up, and, although there's not much you can do about rent-increases, higher real-estate taxes, Personal-Property-tax, or.....(something we often discuss in the vehicle-threads) the price of new vehicles short of take-it-or-leave-it, you can save a significant amount of money, especially at the grocery and drug stores, by looking for items on sale, coupons, store-brand items, and discontinued items that are marked down. I don't usually recommend buying cut-rate gas (unless it is a Tier-1 fuel), for reasons I have discussed in other threads. But, in the grocery store and drug stores, it is usually a different matter....you often get the same quality (or better) at substantially lower prices by buying the store-brands for things like cereal, mouthwash, toothpaste, laundry detergent, coffee-creamer, etc.... and avoiding the national-brands you see advertised on TV. It's usually the same ingredients...at a lower price. Add that to any effective-coupons or other discount-factors, and you can save even more. CVS, for example, often runs sales on the vitamins/suppliments I take (which can often cost a fair bit), in Buy-One / Get One Free, (in effect, half-price) so I stock up if and when I need them....and the chain is known for its long register-receipts full of more coupons for future purchases. Giant, Safeway, Wegmans, and many of the other grocery stores have store-brand things that, even at regular price (although many of those prices have recently been going up) are well-below the prices of equivalent items from national-brands. If you have doubts about the generic store-brands, you can look on the labels/ingredients on the back of the items...they will usually verify what I said about being the same things at a lower price. As for prescriptions, many pharmacies won't honor discount-coupons because of regulation-complications, but, even there, Generic lower-cost versions of many drugs give you the same medication at a substantially lower price than the big-name drugs (Lipitor, Plavix, Nexium, etc...) that the drug-companies love to advertise on TV....at big prices. Since my heart surgery in 2010 (which some of you will remember) I take several / BP / cholesterol medications myself...and save a lot with the Generic brands, even the relatively small part that insurance doesn't cover.
And, if available in your area, there are discount /no-frills grocery stores like Lidl and Aldi, which are low-cost chains by nature, and give you some of the lowest prices to start with. Wal-mart also has a grocery-section in many of their stores where you can save a lot of money over big-name grocery stores, though there is often not the same choice of products as in the major grocery chains.
So, no, you don't just have to toss all of your hard-earned money away every time you go shopping.....take a little time to examine things on the shelves, compare prices and brands, keep those coupons you get in the mail, and you can (yes) save at least some of it.
__________________
