Investment Tip - Stay Away From the Grocery Store
Since living within a budget is a good short-term and long-term investment, I’m always looking for tips to help me get a better return.
I have a good friend who has twin toddlers and a third one on the way. One day when I was visiting with him, he told me about how he and his wife do their grocery shopping. When they started using the Finicity Money Manager, they began to realize that they would have large swings in their grocery envelope. As they analyzed it, they realized they were making many stops at the grocery store to pick up items they ran out of. And each time they stopped, they always ended up buying more than just the things they needed.
Grocery Stores, can you please put the milk and eggs at the front of the store so we’re not tempted to buy other things?
As this happened more and more often, they began to exceed their grocery envelope. To fix this, they came up with a master list of items, both groceries and household items. At the beginning of each month, they started buying non-perishable items (enough for the whole month). It took a month or two for them to figure out the correct quantities, but once they got that figured out, they began to see results very fast. Now they’re saving both money and time.
Kyle Lloyd, Accounting
Tags: Envelope Budgeting, grocery envelope, grocery store, investment
August 21st, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Over spending on a grocery store has been a killer for me too.Often time I will go to a grocery store to buy just 2-3 things I am out of stock and end up buying many more.The problem has now compounded with the advent of retail chains endorsing the concept of “One Stop for all everything you need” .I will often go to these chains and be presented with so many commodities that I get tempted to buy more
than my current needs.Fortunately ,I have come with a solution.I write in a peace of paper before going to grocery store what I want and I also write in bold that “I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO BUY ANYTHING EXTRA” .It works .Since then I been to Grocery store at least thrice but did not buy anything I do not currently need .
To conclude I would say ,you are right
AVOID GOING TO GROCERY STORE OFTEN
IF YOU CAN”T AVOID THAN THIS TRICK MIGHT WORK
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:12 am
I do my grocery shopping at Sams Club and Wal-Mart. Since I live way too far away from those stores, I do my grocery twice a month and when I do forget something to buy I had to wait for like 2 weeks to get it. So, I decided to make a list of things to buy on my blackberry and whenever I think of something I need I write it down quickly on my phone and as the list grows I wait and do my grocery shopping. But yes, I do go through my list and prioritize them to see what I really need. I am a single guy but since I work out tons I spend tons on food. Imagine a single guy spending almost 400 dollars on grocery a month. But most of the time I buy whole food (not easy microwave food) so it is cheaper and tastes better when I cook.