Buying in Bulk: Part 2

Saturday, April 19, 2008

OK, so I have isolated the items we buy the most often and then decided what was the most expensive. It is a greater value to buy items we use often in bulk and buy items that are higher-priced, but last a long time, on sales. After all you want to use everything before the expiration date. Like I said, it's not a savings if you throw half of it away.

The way I used to decide what we used most often was easy. I looked at my shopping receipts for last month and this month to date, and wrote down what we bought the most of. next I used my common sense to think about what we use, eat, and drink every day.

The second step was to look to see what was the largest single price purchases we made. Again I looked at my receipts and used our memories to narrow down and pick out the more expensive items we use.

Looking at the list it's easy to eliminate a few items from the bulk list. Things like lettuces, and kiwi we could never eat on time and don't freeze well. Then there was items like fresh cheese and yogurt, not only do these spoil quickly but we don't eat them steadily.

Now that I have my list of items that I can use in bulk, it's on to stage two. It's time to figure out how much the items are per unit or wait. I will do a little more consideration on items after I finish the normal unit price.

I know this seems like a lot of work for a shopping trip, but when every cent makes a difference, a little calculation and prudent planning is worth all the time you have.