By: Dan Gentile
Credit: Shutterstock
Grocery shopping can be daunting. There are so many choices. So many temptations. So many different flavors of Ben & Jerry's. And so many ways that you can waste an entire paycheck making amateur mistakes.
To help you navigate the aisles, we enlisted the advice of Teri Gault, founder of The Grocery Game. She's dedicated her life to helping folks save money, so we asked her for some tips for surviving grocery stores with your credit intact. Here are 5 of the costliest mistakes you can make, and how to fix them.
Credit: Flickr/agrilifetoday
Buying meat on autopilot
Perhaps no other department holds the same savory riches as the butcher section, but it's a sinewy minefield of potential mistakes. "I see people all the time thinking they're getting the sale deal, but putting the wrong one in their cart," Gault says. "There are different-sized packages, different cuts and grades of meat -- boneless, with bone, etc." Her advice: always ask the meat man where to find the deal.
Not checking if sizes are accurate
"A pound of bacon is often now 12oz," Gault says. As illegal as this sounds, it happens, so always check that the numbers add up.
Credit: Flickr/Rick
Buying produce by the bag
"Unless the bag is on sale, often the per-pound price can be better," Gault says. When you see how much extra you're spending on onions, you will cry and cry again.
Getting enough potatoes to feed Idaho
This is a caveat to price per-pound bag rules. "Potatoes are almost always cheaper by the bag than by the pound," Gault says. But she cautions that two 5 lbs. bags could be cheaper than one 10-pounder, a rule of thumb that also applies to items in the rest of the store.
Credit: Flickr/JeepersMedia
Sticking to the front of the dairy case
"Haste makes waste," Gault says. The newly stocked dairy items are always in the back, with older items pushed to the front. Reach into the cold depths of that case and check the dates to make sure you're buying the freshest product.
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