by Jeffrey Wright

Created on: April 25, 2010

As an ex Walmart cashier I got to learn a lot about prices, and see a lot of different combinations of food orders rung through my line.  Guess what I learned!   Basically, even though people make a great attempt at saving money at the register the vast majority are not having much success.  There are a few things that you can do to lower that shopping bill that you may not have even thought of!

First thing I noticed it is the seeming death grip that people have on the processed food section.  You know, the frozen TV dinners from things like Hungry Man and such?  The sad thing is that when you compare the serving amounts between making things fresh and buying a TV dinner that may only serve two, you end up saving a lot more on buying fresh over frozen.

Many people argue then, that they buy frozen over fresh because they just don’t have the time to slave over a hot stove to make a home cooked meal.  But there is at least one way to get around that obstacle that I can readily think of.  My suggestion is buy a crock pot! It doesn’t have to be an expensive one.  In fact I've seen them as low as twenty dollars before, and if you can catch a better one on sale all the better! You can make so many awesome meals using a crock pot, and use fresh ingredients doing it.  All you really do is find a good crock-pot recipe, follow it and then set the timer and your good to go.  don’t have to touch another thing until the dinner is ready!

Another money sapper that many people miss when they are shopping, is the plastic shopping bag.  Thinking back to my Walmart days, a customer in my line once made a comment that they would not buy a reusable bag because they have to pay for it, but the plastic bag they do not.  Or do they?  What a lot of people don’t realize is that plastic bags are an expense for whatever store they are shopping at.  The store has to compensate for that expense, as any store would.  How do they do it?  By upping the price of the product they sell, ie the food you are buying.  The less they have to do that the lower the price becomes.  In fact because you do have to buy the reusable bag, usually between fifty cents and a dollar, this actually makes the company extra money, and since they are making extra on that they may be able to even offer lower prices.

So don’t fear cooking fresh and certainly don’t fear switching to a reusable bag.  It saves you time, and saves just that little bit of extra money in your wallet that you didn’t need to spend.

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