Stocking up the Cupboards

We are special shoppers. I admit it freely. There is a certain pride in hunting down specials. But we are very careful to make sure the items on special are things we actually NEED. There's not much point being suckered into buying something that you aren't actually going to use. Plus of course these days you also need to take time and petrol costs into account - no point heading right across town to save 30c on a grocery item if it took you an hour and cost $2 of petrol! But within our usual haunts, special shopping works well for us!

We save quite a lot of money on our groceries by buying things on special. We can do this because we almost always have a little bit of extra cash available for just such occasions. Plus, as we live off last month's income (a habit of the past couple of years that has revolutionised our cashflow and my stress levels and one I cannot recommend highly enough!), we sometimes dip into next month's grocery money if we see a really good special on our regular buys ahead of time.

Weetbix is one such item. Usually around $6.00 a box, Boyo goes through 1 box every 11 days. That's 33.2 boxes a year according to the calculator! So if we can get it on special at $5 a box, we will save ourselves $33.2 a year. Not much, you say? Maybe not, but when you add that to all the other things we get on special, it all adds up. And, we fairly often get it cheaper. Today it was $4.50 a box. Sometimes we get it at $4 a box. Next time that special comes up, I plan on buying up large...Weetbix has a long expiry and as this has been Boyo's staple food for the past however many years, I don't think we are likely to end up with unused Weetbix on our hands anytime soon!

We recently got some beans on special (seen above stacked on a shelf in the pantry...ah, the garage!). They were $1.29 a tin. Usually a 'good' special is about $1.50 so I was keen to stock up. I've started using them regularly in soups, casseroles, and meat dishes. Good protein, and a lot cheaper than meat even when bought by the can. I used to buy dried beans and cook my own, but have found myself too busy lately so that's one task that was always getting missed out, and we weren't benefiting from having beans in our diet. So I've decided to compromise and buy tinned beans. They are still good for us, and still comparatively cheap. Our bean tin stock now consists of: borlotti beans, cannellini beans, chick peas, and 4 (or is it 5?) bean mix. Hopefully they will last us several months!

Are you a specials hunter? What's your favourite regular item to get on special? Some of our others include: Munchkin's formula, toilet paper, and juice...all items we use a lot of.

Amy

Wednesday, 27th April, 2011