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Buying In Bulk; A Thrifty Living Life Style

When the economy was flush, grocery shopping was a weekly errand to your favorite store, list in hand of foods that would provide meals for seven days or less, but times have changed.

An Average Family Of Four Can Save $180 to $240 a Month On Groceries Just By Following A Simple Buying Strategy!

Think of it this way – you used to plan a grocery list itemizing the ingredients you’d need to make lasagna, but now in your thrifty living mode, you’ll simply put ‘pasta’ on your list. At the bulk store, you’ll find eight-pound bundles of several kinds of noodles at cheap prices – buy a couple of them!

I know it’s 16 pounds of pasta, but during the next month or two months, or even three months, you’ll have a pantry full of pasta and you can get really creative in how to serve it. Do the same for frozen green vegetables, eggs, and meat – buy the bulk packages and be ready to lug home five-pound bags of spinach, five-dozen bundled cartons of eggs, and a 20-pound side of beef.

To really focus your food expenditures into a thrifty living plan, figure on spending $3 per person per day – for a family of three, that’s $270 per month. Make sure you’re buying in all four food groups – you know the drill – you’ve got to have fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy, meat, fish and appropriate compensations for vegans. At the store, stay on the lookout for bargains, but take care not to stray too far from your thrifty living grocery shopping list.

You might find a case of 24 cans of black beans, and beans are not on your list, but it’s too good of a bargain to pass up – so buy them! Just make sure to keep a running tally of what you’re spending as you go. You may have to skip that five-pound bag of peanuts in order to buy the black beans, but it may be worth the exchange.

When you hit your dollar mark – stop shopping and head for the checkout! When you really get the hang of bulk shopping, you can stock up for two or three months, and save a ton of dough on food – and that’s really thrifty living! You're not only saving on groceries , you’ll also save on gas with one trip to the store instead of 12!

Saving all that money sounds good, doesn’t it? If you’ve never shopped at a big bulk food store before, you may walk in for the first time beaming, just thinking about how much money you’re going to save by implementing the grocery shopping phase of your new thrifty living plan. However, your smile may falter as you enter these uncharted waters. You’ll need to be prepared to navigate a different kind of environment.

Maybe your favorite grocery store has aisles and aisles of gourmet foods, row upon row of international ingredients, boutique-lit shelves of organic produce, and every major brand of all you desire in food, all under one roof – with pleasant music and a snazzy deli counter to boot!

You are in for a different experience at the bulk grocery. Most big bulk grocery stores feel more like warehouses, and your first visit may be intimidating and even, yes, a little depressing – you may have the urge to run back to the expense of your former food shopping habit, but hang in there!

After a few trips, you’ll know the layout and you’ll actually look forward to sweeping through the aisles gobbling up mountains of bargains, masses of groceries, and paying a fraction of the food costs you used to pay when you shopped at regular stores every week.

You won’t miss the glitz and glam of your old grocery store a bit – you’re focused on getting the most bang for your buck, not music and lighting, and that will put a big smile on your face! Of course, if you’re only shopping once a month – or when you become an expert, only every three months – you will still need to pick up a few things in between trips.

After all, the expiration dates on milk or the freshness of lettuce won’t make it for 90 days. So yes, do stop into your old grocery store haunts to grab a gallon of milk or a bag of lettuce.

Nevertheless, to stay on your thrifty living plan by keeping a cash-only budget. Select an amount, say $30 per month, that you keep in cash on hand for groceries only. You may not spend it all each month, or you may spend it all in one week, but stay on budget. It’s easy to keep a tally – just set this money aside in a jar, a box, or a change purse, and only use it for food. One benefit of visiting your old grocery stores is to marvel at the high prices you used to pay.

And after a while, it will seem silly (and will even really bug you!) to purchase one can of tomato sauce. You know for sure you could get a case for much cheaper at the bulk store! One expense to be aware of and figure in when you switch to bulk shopping is the ‘member fee’. Yes, most of the bulk groceries require that you pay an annual fee to shop in their stores. It’s around $40 usually, and is worth it – you’ll save far more than that when you buy bulk regularly.

Most of these stores offer a free member card that’s good for several months or several trips, so you can try out several stores and bulk grocery shopping before you pay the fee. It’s worth it to experience a couple of stores in your area to find out which one suits you best as far as location, stock, pricing, and atmosphere.

Many of the bulk stores are chains, so that if you live in Massena, New York, you can find the same store when you’re four hours from home in Syracuse. Sometimes the number of stores is a factor in selecting which merchant you’ll patronize. If you’ve got relatives or a job or a recreational activity that takes you to different parts of your state or across the country, it’s a great asset to your thrifty living plan to always know that your groceries can be bought at a bargain at ‘your’ store.

Another perk to the bulk grocers is that most of them have various sections offering non-food items at really cheap prices. I was delighted to find an office supply aisle in my bulk grocery – I bought a box of 1,000 business envelopes for a few dollars! The beauty and health care sections of bulk stores can be very limited in what they offer – it’s not like the drugstore with hundreds of brands available – but you can find top of the line products at drastically reduced prices.

For instance, topnotch moisturizers, shampoos, and vitamins are available from only a few manufacturers, and often for one time only, but take note and buy when you see these bargains – they are definitely a complement to your new money saving , thrifty living lifestyle. And by the way, when you shop bulk, bring your own bags and boxes to put groceries in for the trip home. Whether you choose self-check out or a cashier, all your groceries will be put back in a cart at the end of the checkout line.

Most stores do have a pile of odd shaped cardboard boxes that are free for the choosing, so as you leave, you can grab a bunch of those, put them in your car and then fill them up with your groceries. Just remember, you’ve got to dispose of all those boxes once you get home.

On the other hand, you can save those boxes in your garage and bring them with you for each trip if you’ve found some that really fit your car or SUV.

If you’ve saved plastic or paper bags from other stores, you can bring those with you and fill them up at your car when you’re all checked out. And guess what – you can even go without bags or boxes!

I’ve done it – just filled up the back area, seats, and floor of my SUV and then carted it into the house with carry-alls at home. Try a few ways – you’ll find what works for you. There’s one more challenge a ‘newbie’ bulk shopper needs to meet – at-home storage space.

Now that your thrifty living plan has kicked in and you’ve got a stockpile of canned and jarred goods in cases of 12-packs and 24-packs, and foot-high stacks of five-pound frozen vegetable bags, and giant boxes of bulk cereals – where are you going to put it all? First, unpack all the containers – you’re more likely to grab that can of corn when it’s not bound in the case of 24 with plastic wrap. And then, think pantry.

If you’ve never had one, get creative and make one. You can convert a broom closet with shelving, or re-purpose an island, or re-arrange your kitchen cabinets. You’ll find you can become an expert at categorizing and stacking to take advantage of space and make access convenient and logical to the foods you need. You may even ‘shop at home’ – go to your pantry and select a week’s worth of items and place them in your kitchen cabinets for ‘immediate’ use.

Grouping food categories, such as all grains in one cabinet and all canned goods in another, also helps you keep track of what you’ve got stored. Grocery shopping in bulk is actually fun and I look forward to doing it every few months – it has cut bucks off my grocery bill and is now a big part of my thrifty living lifestyle. And there is nothing like that sense of abundance and well-being when the pantry is full!

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