Okay, so you don’t want to bother clipping coupons, watching sales and hunting down the deals that disappear once you get to the grocery store? You can still save quite a bit of money on your grocery bill if you just follow a simple little rule.
Take advantage of the 80/20 rule the next time you are out grocery shopping. Basically, what this means is that you make specific choices for basic food. A full 80 percent of the food in your cart should be of basic form. For example, a bag of carrots would fall into this rule, while a bag of washed and sliced carrots would not.
When you buy food in its most basic form, you will automatically save money. Yes, in some cases, you will need to do additional prep work at home (such as slicing those carrots) but the savings will pay off.
So much of the time, we reach for the shortcuts on the shelf, and we wind up paying so much more for them. You probably know that processed food cost more, but many things that we buy these days we don’t even consider processed. For example, a whole chicken is more basic and cheaper than buying boneless chicken breasts. Boxed cereal is less basic than a canister of oats. The closer to basic you can get, the more you will save. Flour costs less than bread or cookies.
Because this is an 80/20 rule and not a 100/0 rule, it still leaves some room for convenience foods, but it forces you to really make the decisions about what is really worth having conveniently and what is worth the savings. For example, you may not mind making your own stuff but draw the line at baking bread. Or, throwing a salad together is a breeze, but you would rather not make your own soup. Happy saving!
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