Shopping with your family can quickly burn through the paycheck. Whether it’s that new toy your son is begging you to buy or the latest Apple phone you want but don’t really need, there are various bear traps lingering about shopping centers and department stores waiting to get stepped on by the inattentive shopper. Here are five tips to help you avoid the common shopping traps that befall the inexperienced and unprepared families.
1) Develop Good Shopping Habits
Thrift stores can test your endurance in shopping. Most secondhand stores host a chaotic environment filled with hardcore shoppers and limited merchandise. Develop a primary and secondary shopping pattern wherein you first scout stores that are worth further looking into and then conducting a secondary search on individual items of stores that passed your initial or primary search. Develop the habit of checking online since often you can get things cheaper and faster than buying locally.
2) Budget for Nutritious Meals
Grocery shopping is a popular activity for many families and households. But it is often stained with poor money-management habits. Come up with a weekly meal plan and then shop in advance for the ingredients you will need for each dish. Having a week’s supply of groceries will allow you to save up on frequent takeouts and restaurant dinners while also avoiding any food spoilage from buying too much.
3) Be Open Minded
When shopping with the family, most members will want to buy the advertised food brands they saw on TV. However, they have to pay for all that advertising somehow. So name brand choices are also the more expensive ones. Being open-minded about trying out generic alternatives can yield tremendous savings. Sometimes the generic alternatives are not as good but often they are fine. This will require you to do some research in finding viable alternatives.
4) Use Discount Coupons
On those items where you have to buy name brand because the generic just doesn’t measure up… use discount coupons. If wielded properly, you can save up to 20 percent every month in groceries or basic supplies. Coupons and promo codes from places like Discountrue are easy to use, whether you are shopping online or via a physical store. The tool is also versatile and can be used with groceries, furniture, clothing and even mattresses.
5) Dine In at Food Courts
After a busy day of shopping, everyone is hungry and tired so you may not feel like cooking and in a moment of weakness your family might opt for dining at a pricey restaurant in the mall. To save some money, you can dine in at your mall’s food court instead. The choices are much wider since you have multiple food chains operating side by side. Another option is to stop by the grocery store and pick up a roast chicken in the deli department. Often they are almost the same price as the ones you cook yourself and so much cheaper than even fast food (and much healthier as well).
Family shopping shouldn’t be a dreaded weekly or monthly activity. Instead, it should be treated as an opportunity to bond with family members and an opportunity to teach your children to be good shoppers.
Image Courtesy of DigitalArt and FreeigitalPhotos.net
