h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I buy most of my shopping at Aldis, a very cheap supermarket. It is far cheaper than the other leading supermarkets. When i split up from my ex-wife, they saved my life, because I had very little money to spend indeed.

I do my shopping in several different supermarkets. It takes longer but as I know where I can buy certain products at a better price, in the long run it's worth the extra time.

You have to weigh up the costs of travelling to the different supermarkets though.

It may be cheaper to pay the extra for the groceries than to pay the travelling costs to get to the supermarkets and back.

over here, we have places that are named 'dollar store' and my favorite, located next to a dollar store is 'save-a-lot.' yeah, most of the stuff is generic, but i DON'T NEED gourmet egg noodles for three times the cost. i can recall a bean-and cheerio 'casserole' in a frisbee over the sink from past years.

In Australia we have a chain of grocery stores operating under the moniker "Not Quite Right".
They trade in stock which is in some way imperfect - damaged cans, blemished packaging, past "best before" date (but still within "use by") and overproduced lines - still perfectly palatable and healthy, but at a fraction of usual retail cost.

low-cost food is not as good quality as 'brand' food, in other words, u pay for what you get!!!
humm nice
alex

well paying more is not necessarily healthier. nearly all processed food and tinned foodis full of preservatives and additives. i try to eat foods in their natural state if i can. that is i try to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. i also try to eat meat that hasnt been mucked about with, inorder worders i avoid burgers, nuggets and other such stuff. of course i am no saint i like pizzas, but not everyday.

If you are remotely connected with any small business you can probably blag yourself a "trade" card for the local wholesale depot. Most of these (e.g. Makro) will issue two or three cards per business on request, and if you can't get one yourself you can probably persuade a cardholder to sit in the coffee area after signing you in...

You have to buy large quantities of each individual item, but if you restrict yourself to essentials that you would be buying anyway and buy three months' worth at a time (washing powder, fabric softener, toilet paper, coffee, sugar, lime juice cordial, catering size powdered soups, pasta etc...) you can save between 10% and 20% over even the cheap supermarkets. Don't buy canned food, as big chains like LIDL can often undercut even the local wholesalers, but if it's in a bag or a bottle it's worth stocking up on.

Basically, use a credit card, and only buy things which are still cheaper than supermarket prices when you've taken two months' interest into account.

I had a Makro card..it expired..&..was cancelled due to lack of use..(never used it)..For that type of buyng you need your own transport..&..the cash to buy bulk..neither of which I had..

As for buying cheap food..I prefer to by 'brand' products that are on special offer..or shops own brand..rather than cheap 'imported' products.

Emmily

Technically, most LIDL stuff *is* the shop's own brand... It's just cheap because of the quantities they buy; no local (= British) supermarket can compete with an organisation with outlets throughout Europe - there are three LIDL stores in Aberdeen alone!

For example, it's the only place where I would consider buying potatoes in a can; 15p gets a large can of washed, peeled, ready-to-cook "new" potatoes, enough for two hearty portions or three small ones. A taxi from the nearest LIDL to my house costs £2, but I can save three times that if I am buying a decent load (4 bags or more) of shopping.

Note, the "no-frills" approach extends to the carrier bags; you have to pay 3p for a standard flimsy bag or 10p for a big, strong one - but don't think of this as meanness, rather as a healthy incentive to "recycle" your old carrier bags.

One other tip - keep a look out for freezer centres such as "Iceland" doing "meal deals", where paying £4 or so for a main-course item gets you £5-£6 worth of freebies... Even if you don't have a freezer, you can put the stuff in the fridge and eat it as several meals over two or three days. The ice-making compartment is usually good enough to extend this to a week or so for however many of the items you can squeeze in there.

It's a myth that "branded" foods are somehow better. Who do you think produces the supermarkets' own-label products? Reputable manufacturers! It wouldn't help the supermarket's image (or own-label sales) if they put their name to rubbish.

What it boils down to is that you can either judge value-for-money, or you can't. If you can't, you're stuck with paying over-the-odds for labels or falling for that other myth: "buy the best (i.e. most expensive) you can afford". Most expensive does not guarantee best. Indeed, you only have to read a few consumers' association reviews to know that.

The key to saving, every time, is getting value-for-money. That doesn't mean exhausting treks around the neighbourhood. Pick a convenient supermarket and buy the best value (if mental arithmetic isn't your forte, take a calculator).

It's some of the products in the shop 'Peet' above mentioned..that have ended up uneaten in the bin..ok..some of their products are alright..but..it's trial & error as to which..
I've worked in a shoe factory..&..seen different labels put on the exact same shoes..so I know a lot of items by 'different' companies are manufactured by the same company..

Given the choice..I'd rather have an Iceland shop on my door step..then a Lidl shop....

Emmily

testing the store vs. name brand, evaluating cost vs. effort and definitely bringing your own bag/box/carriers. there are a few things i insist on buying the names, especially peanut butter. skippy, all the way!

We got our DVD player from LIDL, £150 including 6 speaker surround sound system .

Lidl is great for things like jam, tinned stuff, jars of sauce (their sweet and sour is lovely), chocolates and crisps. Their frozen meat *can* be ok dispite the slightly dodgy looking packaging.

We've got a lidl 5 minutes walk up the road (next to Wickes, B&Q, matalan, brantana, argos and a shiney new TK Maxx) although I admit we tend to drive there...its up hill all the way and the pavements are nasty and often full of dog muck - not great for wheelchair pushing.

I generally do all my shopping in sainsburys though , there are millions of tescos stores near us but they all make me chlaustrophobic and stressed, personally if I can I'd rather pay a little bit more and not feel like I've been through a mangle after shopping.

Asda do great pizza's though - when I was at uni one of their 12" meat feasts would do me for 4 days (cooking a quarter a day with some oven chips) and it would only cost £1.99.

I do get new bags every time I shop too, I reuse them as bin bags..if I had to pay for plastic bags I'd use the blue box things they do at sainsburys and buy biodegradable bin bags but for now I can't persuade hubby that either is worth the expense.

I'm a sucker for diet coke so I always stock up when its on offer somewhere (somerfield occasionally do 60p a bottle) and I buy multipacks of the cans to take to work (and when I get a chance I buy a couple of crate from makro 25p a can )

hi well you are the first person i have encountered who has tesco phobia. I only buy a few things in tesco. If you want to meet the real riffraff, shop with me in aldis my favorite store lol.

aldis...just a posher version of lidl (well our nearest one is).

I also don't like tesco's because they told me off for parking in their car park to go to work, but they only caught me out because I parked in the empty bit of the carpark so as not to bother anyone else. If I actually *had* inconvenienced their customers I doubt they would have noticed the car. Had to start paying £4 a day to park instead of spending the £4 on my lunch (bought from tescos)...ho hum.

I avoid Tesco in protest at the dreadful ads - I'll start shopping with them when the interfering busybody played by Prunella Scales is fatally injured in a horrific trolley pile-up engineered by her long-suffering daughter.

Here in Barcelona we too have several LIDL supermarkets and some of their products are just as good as anyone else's and sometimes I even find them better. Their low-fat yoghurts are excellent and much cheaper than other brands and my all-time summer favourite is LIDL's peach- flavoured iced tea, it's delicious and cheap as well. Then we also have Carrefour which is more expensive than LIDL but they often have buy two and get another one free promotions which brings the prices down quite a bit. As I said before I think it's a case of looking around and weighing up the pros and cons before deciding where to shop.

Our local Sainsbury's has a hot rotisserie counter, and they often put things like freshly roasted, marinated chicken wings out on display for people to try - free of charge.

I find that two or three of these, accompanied by a selection of free tasters of cheese and salami from the deli counter, make for a nutritious, balanced and tasty lunch!

Ideal if you're on a budget!

Shopping late's also good. I usually don't manage to get to my local supermarket (Sainsbury's, if you were interested) until 7, 8pm, and there's usually a good selection of reduced food at that time for a very very reasonable rate (5 double choc cookies for 30p, usual price 99p on Friday, as well as 10p for a 70p coleslaw, 30p for corned beef, etc, etc). That way it also means you can try out some of the more expensive items at a decent price.

If you were really really strapped for cash I'm sure you could find a variety of products for free in various places. Why buy sugar when you just need to pick up some of those little packets in restaurants every time? Same with tomato ketchup, and any other sauces for that matter. You could also manage something similar with toilet paper, paper towels, etc...