Find out which are the worst (and best) days for deals, where you'll find the priciest (and cheapest) items shelved and who you should never bring with you.
By Lynn Andriani
Trying to Avoid Crowds
Anyone who's spent time catching up on their
celebrity-gossip magazine reading while slowly making their way toward
the register knows that Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays are the busiest
days to shop. But while switching your weekly grocery run to a Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday may save you a little bit of time, it
probably won't save you money. Retailers know that most people shop on
weekends, so that's when they offer their best deals, says Roger
Davidson, who has held senior positions with major grocery chains such
as Supervalu, Wild Oats Markets and Walmart. Stores often start their
sales on a Thursday and run them through a Sunday, which is the busiest
day. Another reason to head to the store on days when it's crowded:
Research shows we're less likely to buy unnecessary items when we're
surrounded by many people. If you really love having wide-open aisles
but still want to benefit from markdowns, try Thursday or Friday
mornings.
Not Realizing They're Low on Detergent
When Kasey Trenum, a money expert at
Savings.com and cofounder of the online, money-saving course
Time2SaveWorkshops.com,
first started trying to cut her household spending, she looked at where
most of her money was going—and it turned out that items she bought
every few weeks, like detergent and diapers, were her biggest expenses.
So Trenum began looking for coupons and buying those products when they
were on sale or she had a coupon (or both)—not just when she was running
low. She's been doing this for years, and just a few weeks ago used
coupons to score six bottles of detergent, four containers of fabric
softener and two packages of dryer sheets for less than $8 total.
Avoiding Products Shelved at Eye Level
We've been trained to look high and low (literally) for the
best deals, but sometimes the least expensive items are right in front
of us, says Davidson. Do a quick scan up and down before you put that
can of green beans in your basket, he advises, since many retailers are
starting to place items with value prices at eye level—especially
cheaper store brands (which, Davidson reminds us, are usually the same
quality as national brands, since many of the companies that make them
also make store brands).
Enlisting Their Partners to Help
We knew shopping with kids isn't recommended if you want to
spend less ("But Mom, I neeeeed these
cocoa-fruity-yogurt-cereal-cupcake bars!"), but we didn't realize that
bringing a man along also meant we'd likely wind up with a bunch of
things we didn't set out to buy. Davidson has done research that has
shown men are less strategic when shopping and tend to throw more
impulse buys into their baskets. (Additionally,
this eye-opening article reveals that 60 percent of purchases are unplanned—regardless
of the shopper's gender.) If you do have to bring your kids, give them a
job—Saving.com's Trenum lets them push the shopping cart—to distract
them.
Going to Dollar Stores Just for Extras
Trinkets and small gifts (e.g., floral nail files, colorful
pens, 20-packs of hair elastics) aren't the only things worth buying at
dollar stores. These retailers can be gold mines for canned and bottled
foods—think pickles, olives, salsa. And while we're on the subject of
non-traditional places to buy groceries, avoid stocking up on food at
drugstores, says Davidson. They tend to price everything from chips to
pasta higher than supermarkets do.
Falling for Half-Aisles
Experts who lay out grocery stores know that a long aisle
with no escape route can be off-putting (Davidson says a lot of people
will look down it and think, "I don't need anything there,"—even though
they very well might). So designers are starting to put cross aisles in
(they're like cross streets, running perpendicular to main aisles),
since their research shows there's a greater likelihood a shopper will
be drawn to them, thinking there's an easy way out if she doesn't find
what she's looking for. That isn't to say short aisles have expensive
items and long aisles have cheaper ones—but it is a reminder that we can
easily get seduced into making an impulse buy in a short aisle, so
remember to stick to the script. Get what's on your list, and don't pay
attention to an aisle's length.
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