永远别在超市买这些东西
There's a right way to do your grocery shopping. In search of higher profits, supermarkets try to woo you with products that are more convenient, but also more expensive. These products include ready-made items that can be prepared much more cheaply at home, produce you'd be better off buying in its simplest form, and non-food items that are significantly less expensive at other retailers. I asked a couple of budget-minded bloggers to help me identify which supermarket offerings can blow your food budget - and then I ran the numbers myself. (To avoid having the results skewed by the high grocery prices in New York City, I used pricing from a Kroger supermarket in Mount Pleasant, Mich.) Here are the items to avoid. Precut Produce Let's face it: Cutting pineapples, cubing sweet potatoes, and peeling and slicing carrot sticks can be a temptation. The temptation to pick up precut fruits and veggies may save you some time and elbow grease, but it will take a chunk out of your wallet. Yet grocery stores charge you dearly for the convenience. Chop the veggies yourself, according to Amiyrah Martin, a blogger at Four Hats and Frugal: "They will up that price as much as possible," Martin says. "People are coming in because they really need [a product] - they're trying to save time, but they're actually spending way more money," she adds. For instance, a 14-ounce box of celery sticks at a Kroger in Mount Pleasant costs $2.99, but a large celery stalk that could produce well over a pound, once chopped, goes for just $1.59. Wielding your own knife saves you more than a dollar and you wind up with more. Prepackaged Snacks Another similarly expensive time saver: purchasing packaged snack bags of nuts or pretzels, instead of bagging them yourself, points out Laurie Heiss at Passionate Penny Pincher. At Kroger, a package containing 10 small bags of pretzels, each just under one ounce, costs $4.29 - while the 16-ounce value bag costs only $3.23 and contains more than half again as many snacks. |