Ready 4 Shopping 

BEFORE SHOPPING

Check your pantry to see what you already have. Don't spend money on things you don't need.

Plan your spending to avoid impulse buys.

Grow it or Make it yourself and save!

Make a price book, and frequently refer to it. For more information about price books, click here.

Prepare your menu for the week around what you already have, and what's on sale.

If your area has food co-ops, Join up! A food co-op can reduce your weekly food bill by as much as 50%.

Shop for items BEFORE you run out of them. If you run out of an item you'll have to pay whatever the store is charging that week.

Due to volume discounts, larger stores are generally cheaper than smaller ones.

Avoid trips to the "corner store".

Make a grocery list during the week. Take it with you when you shop. Stick to it.

If you go to the supermarket early in the morning (before 9am) you have a better chance of getting mark down items. Local stores in my area mark down fresh veggies and fruits, frozen items, milks, and meats.

Shop alone - this will save lots of money and frustration.

You have heard this before, but it is so true ... don't shop for groceries on an empty stomach.

Clean out your refrigerator, it will be much easier to put away groceries.

Due to volume discounts, larger stores are generally cheaper than smaller ones.

More often than not, the best sales are on the front and back of your supermarket flyer.

AFTER SHOPPING

Always return a product that is spoiled.

Send off for rebates to get items free, or nearly free!

Learn the sales cycles of your favorite stores, and know when to expect certain items to go on sale.

Shop at bakery outlets. Breads and rolls freeze very well.

Remember that no particular store has the lowest price on all items.

Create a "shopping pool". Agree with family and friends to shop sales for each other.

Shopping

Shopping, the pursuit of the majority of the population in the run-up to Christmas, is one of the most important ways in which people can discover their own individuality and gain reassurance of their authenticity, says University of York sociologist, Professor Colin Campbell.

In an academic paper called ‘I shop, therefore know that I am,' Professor Campbell says that modern consumerism is defined by the prevalence of wants and desires over needs, and by its individualism. He also suggests that we discover who we really are through our tastes and preferences, such as liking red wine rather than white, or Lord of The Rings rather than Harry Potter. But in order to know that we like these things we first have to try them – that is to consume them.

"Viewed in this way the activity of consuming can be considered as a vital and necessary path to self-discovery," says Professor Campbell. "While the marketplace itself becomes indispensable to the process of discovering who we are."

Professor Campbell stresses that he's not saying that we ‘buy' our identity through what we purchase, but that we discover what we are like by exposing ourselves to a wide range of products and services.

He adds: "This view of self-identity is very new. Our grandparents and parents were far more likely to see themselves in terms of their status and position in various institutions, such as their family, religious beliefs, race and nationality - all counting for more than something as insignificant as taste. They would have seen themselves as farmers or fishermen, fathers, Presbyterian or Catholic, Englishman or Swede, rather than through their taste in wine, music or leisure-time activities." Professor Campbell observes that the slogan ‘the customer is always right' is now echoing through the world of health, where there has been a growth in complementary and alternative medicine at the expense of conventional medical practice. He argues that this is clearly because the consumer assumes they are better placed than the experts to judge what is in their own best interest.

This applies to religion as well, he says. "Here too the authority of the churches, in the form of the clergy, is rejected in favour of the individual's claim to select his or her own version of ‘eternal truth' - a process which has led to the development of what is often referred to as the ‘spiritual supermarket'.

"Consumption can comfort us by providing us with the certain knowledge that we are real authentic beings – that we do indeed exist. In this respect the slogan ‘I shop therefore I am' should indeed be understood in a literal sense.

"The more intense our response, the more ‘real' – or the more truly ourselves – we feel ourselves to be at that moment," he says.

And he comments on fashion: "We need regular exposure to fresh stimuli if boredom is to be avoided. Hence the importance of fashion as a mechanism for the regular and controlled introduction of ‘new' products. It is primarily desire that has brought goods into existence."

And he says that the phrase ‘retail therapy' is an accurate expression that we should regard as directly comparable with something like participation in an encounter group.

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