I like to think of myself as a frugal shopper. I look at the sale circulars, subscribe to “deal” websites, and clip coupons. Going to the store is not a simple task for me, because I will actually read the “unit price” labels on the shelves and evaluate my options. I have felt the thrill of saving almost $100 in one trip to the grocery store by adding coupons to store specials. I’ve even watched a couple of episodes of “Extreme Couponing.” It’s obvious some people can really make coupons work for them.
I’m not one of them.
Compared to these people, I’m a very lazy shopper. My epic trip to the store was exhilarating- but exhausting, especially when I got home and had to figure out where to put all the extra stuff I’d had to buy to get the deals (you know, “save $2 on 3 boxes of blah-blah”). On my next trip to the store, I actually looked at shelf labels for products that I’d essentially ignored, thinking them inferior: store brands. In my mind, store brands equaled the white generic boxes from my childhood. The few of those my family tried did indeed turn out to be inferior; the toilet paper was thin and almost sandpaper, the crackers were pretty much the same, and the mac & cheese….well, I prefer to keep that memory blocked.
But that was more years ago than I will admit, and I thought maybe they’d improved in that time. The price differences were certainly enough to warrant another try. I took baby steps, though, and only bought a couple of things: corn chips and cereal, two things that had the most dramatic price differences. And, two things we still had at home. I thought I’d do a blind taste test with my family.
The result? In both categories, every member of my family chose the store brand as being tastier, and I found the chips to be less greasy than the name brand.
Buoyed by this success, on the next trip to the store I went to the check-out with about half of my items bearing the store’s name (I still wasn’t brave enough not to reach for the blue box of mac & cheese). I also found that this particular store ran specials even on their store brands, like “Buy 10 items [a mix from all over the store], save $5.” I am now playing “Extreme Couponing” but with store brands, and I find it to be a little less time-consuming and just as exhilarating as the name-brand version.
I may not be saving as much as the people on tv, and if that type of thrifty shopping works for you, by all means, carry on. I’ll be celebrating the fact that I finally worked up the nerve to reach for the box beside the blue one, and you know what? It was not bad at all! I have vanquished a demon from my childhood!
[Coupon cutting photo courtesy of OOingle.com. Cereal photo by Mairead (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).]
