A CASE STUDY IN SUPERMARKET SHOPPING
Budget supermarket chain Aldi claims you can cut your grocery bill by up to 50% simply by shopping there instead of one of the big two – Woolworths or Coles.
Well that can’t be right, can it? Surely not!
One of our Cash Flow Program clients, a couple with 3 children, has been working closely with us to improve their financial position and reduce their money worries.
The shop included things like toilet paper, tissues, air freshener, dish cloths, deodorant, sunscreen, batteries, lots of fruit and vegetables, meat, some biscuits, sauce, cous cous, jam, honey, vegemite, potato chips, mayonnaise, gnocchi, spaghetti, pies, lasagna, cheese slices, cooking spray, eggs, spices, jelly, pasta sauce, porridge and bread.
It came to $152.62 and that night, after the children were in bed, they sat down and used the Woolworths website to work out what they would have spent.
Sure there’s a few things we need to disclose here. For example, they ended up with different brands of sauces, pastas and other packaged products. But the things that mattered, like Lynx deodorant, Kleenex tissues, Vegemite and Banana Boat sunscreen were exactly the same brands and the fruit and vegetables were all the same varieties.
To their surprise, the same grocery shop would have cost them $226.50 – that’s a saving of $73.88, or 48%.
After tracking their spending for several months, they were surprised to find they spent about $1200 every month at the supermarket. The mere thought of halving that bill and saving $600 a month was enough for them to test Aldi’s outlandish claim.
Now we’re not sharing this story to encourage everyone to ditch their favourite supermarket and only shop at Aldi. What we’re excited about, is that our Cash Flow Program and the financial tracking and support it delivers led to this family taking it upon themselves to identify an area of their household budget they weren’t happy with, and fix it.
They have decided that their medium and long term goals and objectives are more important than their favourite sweet chilli sauce and camembert and that’s what our program is all about. It’s about evidence-based financial decision making.
If you apply this same saving to their average spend, they could save approximately $576 every month. That’s right, we’re talking nearly $7000 a year.
The critical step is tracking your spending so that, together, we can identify what is costing you and your family from achieving your goals and objectives. Maybe it’s the way your mortgage is structured, your utility bills, credit cards, car loans, personal loans, insurances or even takeaway food. Once we know, there are lots of things we can do to improve your position and work towards achieving your financial freedom.
