Sort Through Those Colorful Sales

Often times, when you go to the grocery store, there are several items that are marked down – yellow tags, red tags, blue lights – a colorful array of possible savings. Just make sure you’re doing comparison shopping. This is something that my mother engrained in me from an early age and now it’s automatic when I hit the grocery store. I happened to notice myself doing it the other day & thought, hey, great blog idea!

Comparison shopping doesn’t have to be the difference between buying a generic product over a brand-named product. Sometimes you can get a discount on a big name item just by purchasing a larger or smaller size of the exact same product. For example, when I went to the store the other day to buy conditioner (which I use a TON of), the smaller bottles were on sale, but even with the sale price they were (per volume) still just slightly more than the bigger bottles. Sometimes sales are just an attention grabber.

On the flip side, companies will generally offer specials on their larger items. You may think, “why buy a small bottle of ketchup when the giant size is only a few bucks more?!” Well, you have to think about whether you’ll use the whole bottle of ketchup. Sometimes we buy huge items since they’re cheaper, in hopes that the whole product will be used. Oftentimes, those are pipe dreams, and the reality of the situation is that you could have saved a few bucks by knowing to buy only what you’ll really need.

So while a few cents may not sound like much of a difference, over the years, if you continue to comparison shop, you’ll find that you save a lot more just by taking a few extra seconds to make some quick, easy calculations.