How To Save Money By Switching To Generic Groceries

Saving money is a primary goal of many people, but it can be a seemingly difficult goal to accomplish. After all, there are some items that you simply must purchase in order to lead a comfortable life. After all, who would want to live a life without laundry detergent or toilet paper? When you learn how to save money by switching to generics, you can easily take advantage of tremendous savings on the products you need.

You Can Save With Generics If You…

Learning how to save money by switching to generics could result in tremendous savings. This means that you may not have to alter your lifestyle or comfort level to save money. If you want to know how to save money by switching to generics, consider these important tips.

1. Understand That the Quality Is Very Similar

You may think that the quality of generic products is significantly lower than the quality of brand name products. The reality, however, is that many products are virtually indiscernible with regards to quality. This includes things such as toilet paper, batteries, makeup, personal care products, cleaning products and more.

Consider how much money you spend on these products each year. Then, focus on the fact that you can get products of similar quality at a dramatically reduced price if you know how to save money by switching to generics.

If you are uncertain about the quality of some generic items, consider making a switch in your home without telling anyone about it. Pay attention to whether other family members notice a difference in quality, flavor and more with your grocery purchases.

2. Compare Different Store Brands

You may think that the term “generic” applies to one specific type of product, but the reality is that it applies to all store brands. You can find generic brands at your local grocery store, at the corner drug store, at discount stores and more. Each of these stores may price their generic products differently.

With this in mind, you may save money on generic products when you research which store’s generic products are more affordable. Use the Internet to save time researching prices. Furthermore, remember that store prices can vary, and promotions also may change weekly.

You may think that you only need to research prices once every few months. The reality is that you need to research prices every week or two if you want to avoid paying more than necessary on your grocery products.

3. Be Open to Shopping at Multiple Stores

If your grocery cart each week is like many other people’s carts, you may have a wide range of products. These products may range from staples like butter, milk and bread to cosmetics, cleaning supplies, paper products and more.

Some stores may have lower prices on specific items than others. However, you likely will not find that one store that has rock bottom prices on all of the products you need. It may seem like a pain to break up your grocery shopping efforts into multiple trips to several different stores.

However, when you consider that you may easily spend $150 to $200 per more each week on groceries, you can see that reducing this expense can dramatically help your budget.

Buying more of a specific item when it is on sale or available at a special price may help you to reduce the number of trips you need to make to different stores each week.

4. Look for Generic Alcohol

Learning how to save money by switching to generics always relates to your alcoholic beverage purchases. While brand names are most common with regards to alcoholic beverages, you may be able to find a few generic items for the alcohol as well as for any mixers that you may add to your drinks.

Alcohol can be very expensive, and whether you are a regular drinker or you are planning a big event with family and friends, switching to generic products is a great way to reduce spending on these items.

Recommended read – How to Save Money on Beer

5. Use Coupons on Generic Products

You may think that coupons and promotions are only available for brand name products. While many manufacturers issue coupons and offer promotions on their brand name merchandise, remember that some stores offer in-store coupons that can be used on their own products or generic brand as well.

For example, your grocery store may offer a coupon for the store brand of ketchup. The generic brand may already be more affordable than the brand name item. Also, the coupon savings means that you can buy what you need at even lower price.

Get in the habit of looking in your store’s circular or flyer before you start shopping for groceries. This is a great way to learn about promotions and savings offers on generic products throughout the store.

6. Know How to Comparison Shop

Generic products are usually the cheapest option, but there are exceptions to this. When you need to learn how to save money by switching to generics, it is important to know how to quickly and easily compare prices.

Remember that the packaging or container size may be different between generic and brand names as well. So simply looking at the price tag is not a smart way to comparison shop.

Instead, when you are at the grocery store, focus on the smaller number located in the corner of the price tag label. This smaller number shows the per unit or per weight cost of the item.

By looking for the lowest cost per unit or per weight, you can easily determine which product you should buy as well as which size of packaging is most affordable. When you take this step, you may be surprised at how frequently the larger or bulk packaging is not always the most affordable option available.

7. Use Generic Cleaning Products

From keeping your home environment clean and sanitary to using personal hygiene items and more, you may need to buy a significant amount of cleaning products throughout the year.

The cost of laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, some types of personalized soap and more can be astronomical. Additionally, these items can easily inflate your shopping bill. You may not want to skimp on quality when you are looking for cleaning products. Therefore, you may feel inclined to reach for the brand name products that you love.

However, given the fact that quality on most generic brands is very similar or the same as brand name products. You may simply be tossing money out the window when you only consider brand name cleaning products.

Knowing how to save money by switching to generics can help you to reduce your expenses in many ways. You can see that generic groceries and more are all available as possible options to you. And these generic products may be available for a fraction of the cost of the brand name products. Now that you know how to save money by switching to generics and how to determine which price is the most affordable overall, you can make more educated buying decisions.