Tough times: more ways to save

What a month it's been. Global economic events prove that issuing lots of people with low-interest debt they cannot service is a lousy idea. Locally, the ANC had a few shake-ups and our highly esteemed Finance Minister resigned, and then un-resigned, much to everyone's relief.

On the bright side, the price of petrol has come down a bit, and you'll also be glad to know that what happened overseas in America won't send huge ripple effects our way. (South African companies were not as exposed to securities linked to the sub prime mortgage market as companies in Europe and Asia were.)

And there's even optimism amongst economists that our interest rate might come down a little over the next few months.

However, our food prices remain higher than they were this time last year. Perhaps you've been forced to change your food-shopping habits, and luxuries no longer find their way into your trolley. Are there other ways to save on grocery purchases?

Information about saving money on food invariably advises the shopper to "buy in bulk and save". Money Matters embarked on a small exercise to find out if this statement is in fact true.

We compared eleven basic grocery items across five stores: Two bulk-buy stores: Makro and Trade Centre, and three grocery stores: Checkers, Spar and Pick 'n' Pay. We chose the grocery items at random and documented our results in the table below.

  
You can draw your own conclusions, but it's safe to say that depending on where you shop, certain items will work out cheaper if bought in bulk. Only if you live nearby a bulk trading store, that is, or else you'll spend in petrol what you save on groceries!

You might not have space in your pantry cupboard for 6 bottles of mayonnaise (or enough money to spend R92 on mayonnaise in one month), but if you split the bulk purchase with a couple of neighbours, it becomes viable in terms of storage space and cash flow.

Other ways to save:

• Don't discard the adverts that come through your postbox. Scan them for specials on items that you regularly buy. (Buying 6 litres of soya milk on special is not a special if you don't really drink the stuff.)
• While you are shopping, use the calculator on your cell phone to work out rand per kilogram prices and do comparisons. Sometimes a 2kg pack of washing powder is cheaper than buying 2 x 1kg packs, but sometimes it's not – you need to work it out.
• Watch out for so-called specials. While we were drawing up our comparison table, we came across a "special" on toothpaste at a certain store, where two tubes where banded together with a bright yellow sticker that said "Special Banded Pack". Believe it or not, the price for a single tube was R5,89, and the price for the 2-pack was R11,99 – which works out to R5,99 per tube. The "special" therefore worked out 20c more expensive than buying two single tubes!