I remember when I first left home, and had my older sons, that shopping day meant about five bags of groceries, and they'd work out at about $5 a bag. Well, granted, this was in 1980.
Now, I estimate that a bag of groceries is costing me around $20 if I shop at Aldi (and that's an Aldi bag which is bigger than the usual flimsy grey ones) or a minimum of $32 if I shop at one of the other major supermarkets.
We still average 5 bags of grocery whatnot, excluding the inevitable toilet paper and dog food which miss getting bagged.
So one of my cost cutting goals this year is to try and find ways to get my five bags of groceries to under the $20 per bag mark. It's an easy way of doing a quick overall tally each week or fortnight. If I'm edging up over the $20-$22 per bag, clearly I'm doing something wrong.
Whether this strategy might be through adhering to shopping at Aldi and even then being more conscious of what I buy, or whether it means reverting to doing the majority of our shopping at the fruit market remains to be seen. I know I've done an Aldi only challenge a few times and it's astounding what a difference it makes over a three month period.
So fess up. How much per bag of groceries do you average, and how many bags of stuff do you buy when you shop?
