Money Saving Amy: Four top tips on saving money at the supermarket from a Wolverhampton mum

Hello everyone. Welcome to another week of money saving tips. This week we’re talking about how to save at the supermarket, from getting the most for your money, to earning from your grocery shopping. I’ve got lots of tips to get your money back into your pocket.

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1) Loyalty cards

Despite this being a well known saving back, there are, surprisingly, still lots of people who do not utilise loyalty cards. If you’re one of those people and thinking ‘are they really worth it?’, the answer is yes! These are the easiest and quickest way to save at the supermarket, and many cashiers will ask you if you have a loyalty card, meaning you’ll be prompted so you don’t forget.

Loyalty cards can not only earn you extra money to spend, but recently shops are reducing prices for loyalty card holders. While this is a tactic by the supermarkets to encourage people to have a loyalty card, so they can track people’s spending habits, it also means that if you don’t use a loyalty card, you’ll be paying an unnecessary premium on your groceries.

Many of these loyalty schemes have extra perks throughout the year, such as double up events, bonuses and extra savings. The Tesco Clubcard scheme is one of my personal favourites, not only do you get access to clubcard prices, you can also double up your points at partner brands such as West Midlands Safari Park, Pizza Express and lots, lots more.

Loyalty schemes from Co-Op, Morrisons, Lidl and Sainsbury’s also offer personalised discounts, depending on your usual shopping.

2) Cash back

Cash back is the second easiest and quickest way to ensure your grocery shopping isn’t breaking the budget. The average UK household spends upwards of £4000 per year on groceries. Assuming that you get a consistent 4% in instant cash back, this is a huge £160 per year back into your bank. And this is just groceries alone, you can also earn cash back on insurance policies, coffee trips, theatre tickets, clothes shopping, train journeys, and lots more. This can easily and quickly add up to hundreds per year.

My favourite cash back apps are Top Cashback, Quidco, Everup, Jam Doughnut and Airtime rewards. I would highly recommend having all of these apps, to always ensure you’re getting the highest rate offered for your groceries. You can earn cash back whether you’re shopping in store, having your shopping delivered or even doing click and collect. You can also still use your loyalty cards along side this instant cash back, this is called ‘deal stacking’ and ensures you get the most for your money.

3) How to get the most for your money

Here’s two tips to ensure you are getting the maximum amount of product for your hard earned money. Firstly, pay attention to the price per kg, rather than the price of the item, this has taught me that buying in bulk is often much cheaper in the long run and I now bulk buy many items such as rice and pasta. The initial outlay is more, but the product lasts much longer. I also do this with items such as washing powder, toilet roll and sauces.

Similarly, take a few extra moments to weigh your packaged items, if scales are available, such as peppers or chillis, as the packet may state an estimated weight, but the contents inside could actually vary in weight, so make sure you’re getting the most for your money.

4) Olio app

If you’re struggling to make your food budget stretch, the Olio app is a fantastic app that could help to keep your food shops down with free food. Kind volunteers collect excess food from supermarkets and list it on the Olio app for people to collect, plus there’s often people having cupboard clear outs listing their unused items, all for free. It’s worth bearing in mind that a lot of the food collected has a use by date of that day so needs collecting and using fairly quickly, but many items such as bread, vegetables and eggs will last well beyond this. This is also a brilliant chance to stock up your freezer with ready to go veg and bread for future cooking, a time saver as well as a money saver!

I hope these tips help to stretch the grocery budget further, and get money back into your pocket! Money saving Amy.