(WFSB) – All month long Channel 3 is helping you save money.
One of the biggest concerns right now are the rising cost of groceries.
Eyewitness News sat down with consumer finance expert Clark Howard to get tips on how to prevent food costs from eating into your wallet.
The cost of groceries has been sky rocketing.
People are paying on average 10 to 15-percent more for food now than they did a year ago.
So what’s a family to do?
We spoke to Clark Howard, legendary personal finance expert for his tips on how to save money at the supermarket.
“What I recommend is what I call the reverse shopping list with groceries. You rethink how you shop, where normally what people will do, even if they’re conscientious about grocery shopping, they make a list of the items that they need or that they’ve decided they want and even if they menu plan, they come up with a list. What you do right now with inflation how it is, is you do something totally different: You look at the sales that are posted that week online by various supermarkets or um, you know with traditional newspaper flyers, and you develop your grocery list based on what’s on sale, not what you normally would do, which is here’s my list,” said Clark.
One of Clark’s famous mottos is ‘shop at stores with concrete floors’ meaning warehouse club stores like Costco.
He says these stores can be great for buying in bulk and he recommends nine items in particular that last a long time:
- Apples can be stored for months in a cool dry place.
- Strawberries are easy to freeze.
- Onions and peppers can also be frozen and added to meals easily later.
- Dry pasta and canned goods have a very long shelf life.
- So do rice and oats.
- Meat is usually the most expensive item in your meal. Buy it on sale and freeze it.
But if you do prefer to go to a grocery store, Clark says switch up where you go.
“There’s such difference in pricing based on where you shop rather than going with the habits of what’s been convenient and comfortable. Just ‘cause you know in the store you like to shop and that the milk’s on aisle 6 and the beef’s on aisle 11, you, you go into uncharted territory into places where you can get a better deal and you just have to be like a visiting team trying to figure out where the locker room is,” said Clark. “But if you do that, you’ll pay a lot less for your food.”
“So are you talking about, like an Aldi or a Walmart Supermarket as opposed to your Stop & Shop? I mean, is that what you mean?” asked Eyewitness News.
“Exactly. You know, you look at Walmart. They’re the nation’s largest grocer now. And their prices, day in and day out, will be typically 20% lower than a typical supermarket. Aldi will be 30-40% cheaper depending on the product category,” said Clark.
Clark says with a little bit of planning, a willingness to try new things and to break old habits, you can save money not only during rising inflation, but day after day, year after year.
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