1.- Supermarket selection

Not all supermarkets are the same. Although the vast majority of people in Spain go to Mercadona, I go to Consum, why? Discounts. If you are a member (which doesn’t cost anything), there are certain products to which a discount called a ‘cheque regalo’ is applied. Just for buying these products you accumulate 1.25% of the total monthly purchase if it is more than 125 €, or 0.75% if it is less than 125 € but more than 50 €. In addition, you can choose 9 products through the app to which a personal discount is applied as long as the average of the last 5 months is more than 125 euros. And what’s more, there are exclusive discounts for members called ‘cheque crece’.

I shop for myself, and I tend to eat out quite a lot, I make purchases of about 30 euros for 10 days, that is to say I don’t reach the 125 euros needed to get the biggest discounts, I have accumulated 20.12 euros since January 2022. It is not much, but because I buy little. If it was a family of 4 people and they spent 30 euros per person (the same as me), they would spend 120 euros every 10 days, that is 360 euros per month, only applying the discount of 1.25% per month, they would save 54 euros per year, without counting the discounts on personal products or the ‘cheque crece’.

2.- Always go to the same supermarket

When you go to a new supermarket you don’t know where things are, and you waste a lot of time finding the products you need, and on the way there you ALWAYS pick up more products.

3.- Have a definite shopping list and a definite shopping day.

I think it is essential to know what you want to buy, if you can follow a menu, it will be easier at the time of purchase. Besides, I have an assigned day to go shopping, always on Mondays. Why? Because the weekend is usually when I eat out and if I buy fresh produce on Friday, it will probably start to go bad on Monday.

4.- How to choose a product

There are people who don’t care much about the price and directly take the product without thinking about the price, the size… what I do is: first think about what I need, sometimes it’s cheaper to buy more, but if I have to throw it away it will end up being more expensive. Secondly, look at the price/kilo. If you look on the label there is a small piece of information written on it, that is the price per kilo, this is important if you want to compare products. For example, the other day I went to buy salmon and I always buy frozen salmon because I always thought it was cheaper, but I compared it with fresh salmon from the fishmonger’s and the difference was not that big, and the difference in quality is huge.