Review: Better Groceries for Less Cash
Every Sunday, The Simple Dollar reviews a personal finance book or other book of interest.
Better Groceries for Less Cash by Randall Putala has a subtitle that pretty clearly describes what you’ll find inside the covers: 101 Tested and Proven Ways to Save on Food. While organized into chapters, this fairly short book’s main purpose is to simply relate a lot of methods for saving money on food purchases.
My wife and I already do a lot of things to reduce our grocery bill, from using grocery lists to making meal plans and clipping (some) coupons. Yet we still look for ways to trim our food costs even more, so this book was a welcome read.
While Better Groceries for Less Cash is organized into chapters, the focus of each chapter is simply to deliver a few specific tips on how to save money on some aspect of grocery shopping. So, rather than giving my usual chapter-by-chapter review, I picked out ten interesting tips to share and discuss.
Start your own cookbook The key to saving money on food preparation while still getting delicious meals is simply knowing how to cook. Randall suggests simply making up your own cookbook where you jot down notes on what works for you for every new thing you try. Just list the steps you take in a way that you can understand later. If it doesn’t quite work, note that and make a change to your steps (changing cooking time from seven minutes to eight, for example). Then try doubling the quantity (six eggs scrambled instead of three) and seeing how that works. It’s all about learning how to do it so you feel confident with raw foods.
Ignore lying signs Just because there’s a big sign advertising a great deal doesn’t mean that it’s really a great deal. Often, it’s the same old bad deal you’d get otherwise – they just put up a sign to make it look good. Stick to your list and ignore the “sales” you find inside the store unless you’re absolutely sure that they’re great buys.
Clip for products, not for brands If you need toothpaste, clip every toothpaste coupon you can find. Then, when you go to the store to buy the toothpaste, you can match the coupon to the toothpaste brand with the best price (possibly one on sale in the store). This often results in items that have an extremely low price, sometimes even free.
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