Investment Tip – Stay Away From the Grocery Store
Since living within a budget is a good short-term and long-term investment, I’m always looking for tips to help me get a better return.
I have a good friend who has twin toddlers and a third one on the way. One day when I was visiting with him, he told me about how he and his wife do their grocery shopping. When they started using Mvelopes, they began to realize that they would have large swings in their grocery envelope. As they analyzed it, they realized they were making many stops at the grocery store to pick up items they ran out of. And each time they stopped, they always ended up buying more than just the things they needed.
Grocery Stores, can you please put the milk and eggs at the front of the store so we’re not tempted to buy other things?
As this happened more and more often, they began to exceed their grocery envelope. To fix this, they came up with a master list of items, both groceries and household items. At the beginning of each month, they started buying non-perishable items (enough for the whole month). It took a month or two for them to figure out the correct quantities, but once they got that figured out, they began to see results very fast. Now they’re saving both money and time.
Kyle Lloyd, Accounting
John Winter
20. Aug, 2009
Great advice! We just did a similar thing… My wife and I sat down and decided what was reasonable for the groceries. Then that was our envelope for the month. I told her that if there is extra in the envelope each month than she can do whatever she wanted with the extra money.
Now the spender in the family has a reward for sticking to the budget.
As for our monthly non perishables we set up a monthly “ditto” auto-ship program with Amway Global. We love the products and get paid back since we are business owners too.
It’s easy to spend too much at the store, but when you predetermine what you want to buy then overspending is a thing of the past!
John Winter