You are herePenny-wise and pound-foolish?
Penny-wise and pound-foolish?
Interesting post yesterday on Free Money Finance about a couple of articles that discuss saving money on groceries. Some of the tips include the classics like cutting coupons, but also things like keeping a price notebook to record the prices of the stuff you normally buy?
My mom has always been a coupon person and a bargain hunter. She'll drive all over town looking for the best deals on organic produce. I've never fully understood that philosophy. It seems like your time is worth more than trying to save $.50 on a cucumber. At what point does the gas you're using and the time you're spending outweigh any small savings? I know that small numbers add up, and especially when you have a lot of mouths to feed, it may make more sense.
For my wife and I, who both work, it's just not usually worth it to try and do all this bargain shopping and coupon clipping. We order our groceries online and have them delivered for $10. Most of the things we buy are staple items and I do a quick check to see if there's another brand or something that's on sale. There are several "luxury" items that we simply do without if they're not on sale.
The ironic thing to me is that I have seen a LOT of people who clip coupons and bargain shop to save a few pennies, but never contribute anything to retirement savings, never purchase a home, and never really get their act together when it comes to the bigger things. My wife and I try hard to keep the small things in order, like not eating out too much, and checking for things on sale at the grocery store, but we try a lot harder to keep the big things in order, like saving for retirement, moving our careers forward at a good pace, and investing in stocks and real estate. I'd much rather get a few of the small things wrong and hit the big ones than the other way around.
What about you? Do you have a different perspective on this?
I've never understood coupon clipping either. I'd like to see how much money an hour your saving when you add up the time it takes to dig through all the coupons, clip them out, finding the specific product in the store and waiting an extra freaking 15 minutes in line waiting for the cashier to ring 'em up and usually haggle over a few of 'em. I think that would be a pretty low hourly rate and I'd like to think my time is worth more than that.
However one thing I think that is worth doing grocery-wise, if you don't have them delivered regularly, is to shop around a bit. Make a list of all the items you usually buy week to week and compare their prices at 2 or 3 different places. My wife has saved us a lot simply by knowing what to buy where. And our grocery stores are so close together, the cost of going to several stores is minimal.
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