Save our Bogofs: bargain-hunting is a great little distraction

I put myself through a gruelling six £60-shop marathon to pick up 6,000 bonus points

Some supermarkets are planning to abolish buy-one-get-one-free deals (Rex)

Imagine my horror when I heard last week that some supermarkets are planning to abolish buy-one-get-one-free deals. Large retailers have been accused of contributing to food waste and obesity with their confusing offers, but for 21st-century hunter gatherers like me, they are about as close as we come to a real-life kill.

The government-backed Money Advice Service asked more than 2,000 shoppers to choose the best-value deal from a series of complex multi-buy offers, and found that they couldn’t, and they probably waste more than £1,000 a year as a result. But not me! When life is too short for Sudoku, calculating the best-value large white onion is the best way to incorporate exercising our brains and warding off dementia into our busy lives.

And the things you learn when you bulk buy fresh food: the microscopic ripeness window of an avocado… the fact that you will never, ever finish one whole bag of satsumas, but if you take them to work your colleagues will polish off two while your back is turned… that you can freeze cheddar, but it makes it very crumbly when you come to grate it over your bolognese (made with two packs of minced beef for a fiver, of course)….

The only better mental exercise than besting the bogof is the middle-class beat-the-casino game that is trying to get the better of the loyalty card points system. If each point is worth a halfpenny, then 100 points is only 50p off. So, do you buy those 36 tins of cat food to get 100 bonus points, or will you kick yourself the following week when Whiskas is on a three- for-two? Is it worth a couple or three flatmates keeping separate cards to frighten the supermarket into offering one of them a 10 per cent off deal if the card isn’t used for a few weeks?

Before Christmas, I put myself through a gruelling, six £60-shop marathon in order to accumulate 6,000 bonus points. I nearly fell at the last hurdle when the small print murmured that alcohol couldn’t form part of my total, but I made a last-minute switch at the checkout, and now I have enough AA batteries to last a lifetime.

I’m not quite a Wombler – that’s what they call people who scour supermarket car parks for discarded receipts and save them all up to redeem enough points for a Mars bar – but the rush of satisfaction that came from apparently beating the system made my Christmas, and bought 30 quid’s worth of presents.

Of course, there are more sensible ways to save money in the supermarket: never shop when you’re tired or hungry… always make a list and stick to it… buy from the bottom shelf, where the cheaper brands are kept… hover by the “reduced” section, elbowing elderly shoppers out of the way, when you see the assistant with the pricing gun approaching.... They’re not as much fun, though. Bring back our bogofs!

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