Breaking the Code, Part 1: A Deal is a Deal

In March I became a mom.  In April I slowly started doing some work from home.  In early May I started getting back into the office for a few hours at a time.  In late May, I quit my job.  It was a tough decision that I wrestled with for weeks on end.  After several discussions with my husband, we both felt it was the best decision for our family.

Abruptly changing to a one income family meant we needed to evaluate our budget and find more ways to save money.  Before that time I had never paid much attention to our food bill but once I started breaking it down I was shocked at the amount of money we spent monthly at the grocery store.  Granted, not all of that money was on food but also bathroom essentials, paper products, etc, nonetheless, it was shocking.  I think I was most shocked because we hardly eat out so I guess I magically thought that meant we didn't spend much money on food.  A change was needed.

As I tend to do, I over corrected and decided that we needed to put a cap on the food bill, cutting it by about half of what we had previously been spending.  We were not to go over one cent and if we were out of food money, then I guess we were just going to have to starve.  Well that obviously didn't work well.

Then I started to realize that when I shopped for food, I didn't really know what a "good deal" was.  The ads suggest something is a good deal by using words such as "price cut", "save", and "clearance" but were they just trying to fool me?  A deal is a deal right?  Turns out, it's an advertisement so yes, they are trying to convince you to buy their product and they will do everything they can to accomplish that goal.

To break the code and find out what really was a deal, I started to record prices of common grocery items.  Anyone who knows me knows that I love any excuse to create an Excel spreadsheet, so that's just what I did.  Here are the categories in my spreadsheet:

It's a pretty simple strategy.  Item refers to what you are buying.  Price is what you paid for it.  Size would be the weight or quantity.  Column D is not necessary but I was just curious to know what I was paying the most for in terms of price per ounce (to calculate that, you simply divide the Price (column B) by the Size (column C)).

Here are a couple of examples of how you would fill out the sheet.  If you buy a dozen eggs, you would fill it in like this, Item: Eggs; Price: $1.98; Size: 12 count; Price per oz: $0.17 each.  If you buy a box of Ritz crackers, you would fill it in like this, Item: Ritz Crackers; Price: $2.50; Size: 13oz; Price per oz: $0.19/oz.  If you buy grapes, you would fill it in like this, Item: Grapes; Price: $2.00; Size: 16oz (= 1 pound); Price per oz: $0.13/oz.  Get the picture?  This can be a long process if you only take information from your store receipts, so I decided to speed it up and start buying newspapers to get prices from the ads (Tip: Sunday newspapers have the most ads).  

**Once I started to fill the sheet with several items, I chose to sort them alphabetically.  You can do this in Excel by going to Data in the top toolbar --> Sort --> Sort by: Item; Sort On: Values; Order: A to Z --> OK.  This will put all of your items in alphabetical order so they are easier to find.**

I quickly began to see that I had consistently been paying 2-3 times more for an item than I needed to.  For example, the box of Ritz crackers that I mentioned above, it normally would cost $2.50 for a 13oz box but now I pay no more than $1.30 (that's half the price).  At Walmart (the place with all the deals right?!), you pay $2.58 for an 8.9oz box; I now pay $0.88 (that's a third of the price!).

I was shocked to find how much money I had been throwing out the window.  There are more strategies involved with how to get deals like this and I plan to reveal them over the month of March.  I hope you stay tuned, and in the mean time, start paying attention to what you're paying for items at the grocery store.  It might shock you.