Watching Your Spending Habits: Groceries

The way we spend our earnings or our money is crucial to our act of saving money. How much we spend determines how much we save. If you can actually step back and look at your patterns of spending, your dreams for the future and the real impact of your choices every day, you may be surprised how much of your spending contradicts the dream. It's a sad reality for many people. 

So, here are a few considerations to begin with...Let's do some watching on your spending habits with your groceries.

Watching Your Spending Habits: Groceries

1. Make a list so you don't forget anything. Only buy what's on the list. This makes it easier to stick to your budget.

2. Put your grocery money in an envelope. Don't take any other cash or cards with you so you can only spend what you have.

3. Buy in bulk. Unless of course you are living solo. One thing quite common in our Filipino culture is "tingi". We tend to buy in small pieces or packets. Buying in bulk is counter-productive for our culture. The story of "tingi" is understandable. But in reality, we can save more with bulk.  

4. Go grocery shopping once every two weeks. Every payday. Use all the food in your pantry before you buy more.

5. Eat a meal or snack before you go to the supermarket. When you are not hungry, you tend to buy less food.

6. Consider buying generic goods or the grocer’s brands. Honestly, I prefer some brand name products too for some items. For others, I do not mind generic or store brands if they can save me money. 

DID YOU KNOW!!!

Find what works for you and switch to generic brands for at least a part of your grocery list.

With the first six suggested practice alone, we could have saved much. Watching our grocery spending habits can truly change our whole financial picture. So, here's more:

7. Watch out for expiration dates on perishable goods. This appears as common-sense, but I am surprised at how many people do not pay attention to expiry dates. No point getting a gallon of milk if it is going to turn sour with a couple of days. Same goes for meat, eggs, yogurt, spreads, frozen items, deli/bakery items etc. 

Some people say you can use a few items a few days after expiry – but I personally value my health more than money and would rather avoid buying such items in the first place.

8. Go and get your grocery when you are in a hurry. Maybe you need to go out in a couple of hours. Or your favorite show is going to be on TV after a couple of hours. Armed with your grocery list, you should be in-and-out very quickly with little time for meandering and getting tempted to buy things you don’t need.

Remember the reason you're saving in the first place: TO BUILD A CACHE OF MONEY. 

The money is not for you to move it around or to blow on your next big purchase. Saving is not even just to cut expenses. 

It is truly not impossible to create strategies and habits that will eventually mean your money's working for you. One way to start working on it is by watching your spending habits. And we begin with our groceries. 

Not quite an expert yet; but I am determined to use what I have known to work, stronger into the habit.

Let's journey together. Tell me how things are going with watching your spending habits.