Supermarket Savings

The cost of living crisis is hitting everyone and now is the time when we should be looking at where we can save some money. Not everyone is entitled to claim benefits, not everyone is able to pick up extra hours or work a second job. Everyone does have to eat though, and I have looked at whether or not it really is possible to make significant savings on a weekly shop. 

Obviously not everyone will do a big weekly shop so you may not suddenly see £20 knocked off the cost of your groceries, but if you take the small wins it really can build up. There is often a wide gap between branded and supermarket own brand items and often, there is not much of a difference in quality. To see how large the gap was I looked at some common items someone might buy in a  weekly shop for a family.

You can see the results in the table below. For this I took a common brand and compared it with the supermarket own brand. No other offers or promotions were taken into account and all products were compared based on quantity or closest to it. All prices were found online and while they may change often it is likely you will still a similar gap between a common brand and the supermarket’s own brand.

In the table above you can see a difference £11.72 between all the branded and supermarket label items. Everybody will have a different shopping list but hopefully this shows the potential savings. If you can only save £5 per week by doing this then that is over £250 per year! 

It is worth pointing out that some supermarket brands were more expensive than common brands, just be sure to compare prices on some products. The biggest offender here seemed to be pies!

So if you are looking for a way to save some extra money on your weekly shop or your groceries try these two things.

1. Swap some branded items for a supermarket’s own brand. Try the product and see if you can notice a big difference in taste or quality, a lot of people can’t.

2. Look out for offers and promotions. You may enjoy Coca Cola, but maybe pick up the Pepsi if you see it on offer even if there is only a small difference in price. If you do this with a lot of products you can also save a few quid. 

This approach may seem too small and simple to make a difference but, as a famous supermarket advert once said ‘every little helps’. You will see the savings build up.