Monday, January 18, 2010

Grocery Buying Thought # 4: Use the Step-Down Method

In the spirit of being overwhelmed...

Looking back over my posts about grocery buying, I realize some of it sounds a little extreme. Budgeting should not stress you out. If you hate cooking, it probably isn't worth it to make everything from scratch.

So, what can you do?


Use the step-down method! (See my original post about it. I love this.) You don't have to go from buying all the finest groceries to all the cheapest. You just have to take a few steps down, and keep doing it until you are within budget.

What do you really care about?

Prioritize. If you love gourmet butter, buy it. But that might mean you need to buy store-brand on a few other items. Keep the things you really want, and step down on the things that don't make as much difference. You'll hardly notice (but your budget will).

Improve your plan. Have to have deluxe frozen pizza? You could decide to buy only when it's half price. Or you could start buying it half as often. That counts as stepping down too.

See, we really don't have to do everything. Life is good.

1 comment:

Molly said...

Oh funny--I just did this the other day. We have a great salmon recipe. I went to Costco to get salmon and realized the tilapia was much cheaper. I almost skipped it thinking that fish is too expensive and we should just eat chicken. But then I realized that I really wanted fish and could be okay with the fact that I was at least buying the cheaper fish. (And I realized I like tilapia much better anyway...)