A Thrifty Fifty Dollar Grocery Shopping Challenge
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Credit: Jack Sparrow of Pexels
It's of high relevance to the 2020s to take my own fifty Australian dollars
shopping challenge and explore the possibilities. It's a challenge due to economics but also an up-to-date experiment. I think it's an experiment because a few years ago, I would just order 40-50 dollars worth of
groceries and that would last a week, but now the same shopping list costs 60-80 dollars. I wanted to find out how I could bring my bill down to 40–50 dollars. Searching online, the most prominent tips are to shop seasonally for fresh produce and lower meat consumption but research the best times to buy different meat and seafood products from supermarket butchers and delis or local small businesses.
By putting the idea into practice, naturally, I found that there was no easy answer. My concept incorporates advice for holidaymakers who can save on food costs while on holiday, those saving at home for a suitable budget for outgoing activities, and those interested in groceries as shoppers or regular household meal planners. Note that you won't get everything you need in one small shop, so saving a lot in one shop isn't impressive - it's to save plenty in hundreds of shops that speaks loudest and results in the least wasted money.
When searching for strategies, aside from shopping seasonally, it was advised on Google that frozen foods are known to be cheaper, but knowing that created my
next problem, which is I want 'less packaging, more health'. I think that the overall aim needs to be clearly stated because if you just want junk food and don't have any environmental aspects to your groceries, then there are other strategies one can deploy. As an example, to order heaps of cheap junk food on
Woolies and
Coles , start an or use your online account and key in the word in the search bar for 'half price specials' and navigate to the search results that are sorted as half price. It is certainly not wrong or illegal to buy cheap groceries, and I can say I sometimes try this just to take a break from making my own foods and try some interesting new products that catch my eye. New products, including natural protein foods, new age drinks, pouch yoghurts made with new age milk, as well as old favourites like cheap Maltesers, Thins crisps, and Mountain Dew, plus much more, including multipacks, make the half-price shop an ideal escape from constant cooking and food preparation.
But shopping for half-priced novelty junk foods, especially if applied consistently, won't improve your health due to the presence of high calories, additives, and low fibre, hence, it's not sustainable overall. So to shop healthy definitely implies buying seasonal fruits and vegetables, while to shop environmentally indicated to me to use less caffeinated drinks and milk powder over packaged milk. Recently, I was shocked to see the number of empty UHT milk cartons build up over a week of usage, but I realised that ordering many in each shop resulted in a bit of extra heavy lifting for the delivery drivers. Using milk powder seems good for the environment, due to reducing the packaging used for UHT milk consumption, and I have seen potential in
proper tips to make my powdered milk drinks taste better. I am currently realising that with those linked proper tips, I could use generic-branded milk powder and save baggage, carton usage, and the environment all at once, and even money!
So, to better understand the fifty-dollar challenge on Boxing Day as an
Uber One member buying at Coles, but it could easily be Woolies, I will write my shopping list out and the benefits with each item. Note the prices are for the item total - for example, 10 Roma tomatoes for $4.50 implies $0.45 per tomato in the list below.
Here's my less than fifty-dollar spend:
10
Roma Tomatoes ($4.50) ideal for gazpacho, pasta, curries, lentil curries, sandwiches, and hot soups - in other words, they are very versatile and almost half-price compared to earlier this year! 4 large
Cavendish bananas ($3.40) which are delicious frozen in smoothies, teas, fruit salad, home-made ice cream, on toast, in cereal, very versatile, and the peels are potentially
a source of food . 2
white onions ($1.92), ideal for
gazpacho , curries, and pasta, are worth paying a little more than brown onions as they are useful for substituting for garlic, hence very versatile.
2
Lebanese cucumbers ($1.70): cucumbers are an ingredient for gazpacho,
raita , salad, and cucumber cubes in water, a hydrating fibre boost if consumed plain. They have been known to be used in sandwiches. Note the continental cue works out slightly more expensive than buying two Lebanese cues for $1.70 at $2.95 from Coles at the time of purchase. 1 kg
carrots ($2.85) but buying I'm Perfect or Odd Bunch carrots is even cheaper and more environmentally sound.
The remainder of the shop included basics like 2
apples because they are out of season ($1.92), 6
washed potatoes ($3.66), full cream
UHT milk ($1.75), three litres of
fresh light milk ($4.80), and Pattu
red lentils, (1kg for $4.55). Note that Pattu black lentils cost less at the time of purchase; my reason for picking red lentils is that they cook through faster, so I figured that they are more convenient plus might save on electricity usage. Also included is 1 kg of generic
white sugar for $2.00, 1.25 litres of
soda water for $1.30 (as the two-litre option is often sold out), and the empty bottle is a good personal water bottle around the home. I added
Earth Choice Wools and Delicates, which is mild, hence better for most washes (I prefer to save the stronger detergents for more heavily stained clothes) at $2.85 and
Coles toilet paper four-pack for $4.40.
A third specification aside from healthy shopping and environmentally-friendly shopping that I wanted to add to my shopping is
to buy made and produced in Australia. The fresh produce made sense to me for Australian-produced shopping, but buying fresh meats and seafood also made sense in that context. I checked the pack of Pattu lentils on my list, and it had the
Product of Australia logo and also a reference to Australian grown. The soda water, sugar, and milk are Australian, which I checked on the labelling rather than assumed, and the Earth Choice Wools and Delicates laundry liquid is made in Australia while the Coles toilet paper is packed in Australia from imported materials. Interestingly, the Uber service fee at $4.16 is unknown as to the relevant economy that benefits or doesn't from that transaction, while the $2.08 tip goes to Australian drivers. I could see that over 90 percent of the money spent on my Boxing Day shop is spent on Australian-made and owned enterprises. Incidentally, the total when adding the groceries, the service charge, and the tip was (41.6 + 4.16 + 2.08), which is equal to $47.84.
There is a communal and not just individual effect of the challenge, credit: Harper Sunday of Pexels.
I decided to think of
a shop that is the opposite of my challenge shop because I thought it would show that my challenge shop and similar shops can be healthy, cost-efficient, and overall useful for long-term personal finances. I found the opposite was expensive junk food and that my bill for a few junk food items cost $46.00, not including service charges or tips. As an example of an expensive junk food item, half a litre of premium ice cream costs 12–15 dollars at most retailers. In theory, if you did what was on the opposite of the challenge shop every day, the weekly bill is 7 multiplied by $46.00, which is $322.00 versus the $41.60 for the grocery items on the challenge list not inclusive of surcharges. Note that I think that the challenge list can last an entire week and that the opposite appears to result in using up expensive foods quickly and thus needing more food. However one would have to order different items for most future shops to see the long-term benefits of my challenge. In general, my challenge shop can be done in different ways as a healthy and sustainable shop, whereas doing the opposite is to buy expensive junk food and use it up quickly.
So that was my thrifty fifty-dollar grocery shopping challenge - it ought to have gotten me to analyse a small bit of the living costs problem to get one to save money by applying it to one's own problem (if applicable) on a larger scale, or should I say a longer-term situation.
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#shopping 299980 - 2024-12-26 05:34:46