A student's guide to supermarket shopping
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
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Many university students find themselves living away from home for the first time. When calculating your annual or monthly budget, your grocery expenditure can be one of the trickiest to estimate. And with so many supermarkets, convenience stores, pubs and cafes around, it can sometimes be the one that really drains your purse, without you even realising it.
Here are some top tips from mySupermarket.co.uk for getting the best deal on your groceries, ensuring that you don’t end the year surviving off pot noodles and value lager!
1. Shop together with your friends
In the same way that you and your flatmates work out the electricity and phone bills, set some time to work out your grocery bill together. Shopping in bulk is considerably better value than shopping for yourself. For example, a pack of 2 Tesco toilet rolls works out at 49p per roll, while a 12 pack is just 35p.
2. Make large online shops
There’s a simple fact that the more often you got to the shops, the more you’ll buy and therefore spend. Avoid popping into local shops each day and get into a habit of making one big weekly shop from the comfort of your laptop. That way, you’ll avoid buying all those unnecessary extras that somehow slip into our basket every time you pop into a shop.
3. Use mySupermarket.co.uk to shop at your local Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury’s or Ocado
More and more shoppers are doing the supermarket run online. It’s quicker, easier, no queuing, no pushing around dodgy trolleys and no carrying heavy shopping. The service is excellent and delivery only costs a few quid. Best of all mySupermarket will trim your bill down by up to 20% with its handy Price Checker, so you’ll spent less that you would’ve if you had gone to the supermarket yourself.
4. Look out for Special offers
Stock up when long-life products you want are on offer. Only get tempted by special offers when you would buy them over time anyway – if you don’t normally buy frozen pizzas, don’t buy 2 just because they’re on offer. With mySupermarket, you’ll find all the Special Offers in one department so you can scan through them before you buy anything else.
5. Trading down
Just because you’re a student, doesn’t mean that you have to give up all home comforts. Everyone has the brands that they’ll never swap like Diet Coke or Heinz ketchup. That said, for things that you’re not too bothered about, try trading down to the supermarket own brand or better still to the supermarket cheap range. For example, 80 PG Tips tea bags costs £1.52. ASDA’s own brand costs just 91p and ASDA Smartprice costs just 32p!
