Savings around the house: Kitchen

The Kitchen is the biggest area where you can save money in; it does take patience, dedication, organization and careful reflection on items that you use the most.

Coffee or tea:

Tip #1 Know your prices and tolerance.

Strategy:

These days some stores have price per 100g. This helps you compare the price amongst items between name brands, no names and quantities. Here is where personal preference or tolerance for a cheap tasting tea comes in. To me tea and coffee are fairly important so I always choose a mid range product that has a fair balance between taste and price. 

To demonstrate, for instance, you could choose a second rate tasting tea such as an orange Pekoe tea for about 2.99 for 100 bags but the taste is second rate. In this case you might have a cheap tea but the taste is also that-cheap, and cardboard like. Alternatively, a mid range product even from a store brand orange pekoe ($3.50), Tetley (4.00-5.00 for 70 teas) or other would be a much better option. You not only get mid range value for the product but a great tasting cup of tea, which you will appreciate on days when you really need that cup.

Here are some strategies for getting the best value from coffee or tea when shopping:

#1 you can look at price per gram which some stores have in small (tiny writing) underneath the price. Look for the lowest price per 100g; this gives you a quick comparisons without having to do any thinking besides spotting the tags and comparing.

You can either choose amongst midrange teas/coffees you drink or check out the whole section and have the teas and coffees compete against each other.

You will be surprised these prices do sometimes differ between stores. For example a package of tea at one store like Thrifty foods might be less/more than one at superstore.

#2) Teabag packages: Compare packages by choosing midrange, then take the price of the product and divide by the number of teabags in it. This results in your price per teabag.

Example of a tea I recently bought for my husband. Tetley Naturally Decaffeinated Green tea. 80 count for $8.48. Therefore the answer rounded to nearest hundred would be $0.10. So, each tea bag costs $0.10. With this information I can compare to another package of tea. Thus Tazo tea bags 4.48 for 20 teas works out to (rounded off) to $0.22 each. The clear winner between the two teas would be the decaf green tea coming in only at 0.10 each.

#2 Check out the stores clearance section.

Often stores have clearance sections usually at the back of the stores or in lesser used spots where you can often find a bargain. One caveat don’t buy everything in this section even though you might see 50% off, you need to really study the price and know your prices to determine if a product is worth buying. Also, don’t forget to check expiry dates and decide if you can use a product before the expiry.

Scenario from about a month ago- I scored a bargain on coffee!

I wondered over to the clearance section and I couldn’t believe my eyes.  

I bought multiple packages of the same product within reason. I do this on occasion when the deal is too good to pass up. This is how you can save money over the long term, but I’ve never actually kept track of how much I actually saved over the years.

The price tag label said Limit of 12, it was of a brand that I haven’t heard of Azzuri coffee (so I was taking a bit of a gamble), but I thought worst came to worst I could mix it in with another better brand of coffee.

I got 4 packages of this coffee: 2 of them were Dark roast (beans), and 2 of them were Medium roast (grounded). One of the factors I consider is the expiry date being Sep of 2021. So I knew I had plenty of time to drink them. The cost was $6.41, with a price of 15.99 on Amazon. So although I paid $25.64 in one go on coffee I saved , it was well worth it. as I only paid $25.64 for 4 coffees which otherwise would have cost me $63.94!!, so cost savings of $38.30.

#3 Lets not forget about an everyday staple Sugar!

I use to buy packages of sugar between $3.50-4.50 for 2kg. I only bought smaller packages of sugar because we didn’t have a car to transport large bags of 10kg sugar. Now, because we do most of our shopping by delivery, I can buy a 10kg bag of sugar, which therefore lasts us several months at $12-14 per bag.

Math calculation: Buy 5 packages of 2kg bags over time: $3.50 5= 17.50 vs 1 package of 10kg bag of sugar at $12.00 (when you find them on sale).

Savings over time: $5.50 minimum when you buy the larger bag.

Things to consider: You need to have containers to store the sugar. What I do is I save up big empty pickle jars and use this as a container or use empty buckets after 4 L ice creams to store the sugar. I am not going for aesthetics when it comes to storing extra supplies as I have pretty containers which are on the counter for everyday use.

Thank you for reading!

Do comment on your favorite money saving hacks below or any topic suggestions you might have!