{"id":1821,"date":"2008-06-05T05:00:11","date_gmt":"2008-06-05T12:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/?p=1821"},"modified":"2019-10-08T19:47:09","modified_gmt":"2019-10-09T02:47:09","slug":"unit-pricing-get-more-food-for-less-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/unit-pricing-get-more-food-for-less-money\/","title":{"rendered":"Unit pricing: Get more food for less money"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was written by Charlie Park at PearBudget<\/a>.<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

Recently, Get Rich Slowly readers got upset at the idea of spending $6 on a gallon of milk. Reading that, I had to chuckle a little bit: Shortly before we had to give it up, our milk went up to $11 a gallon.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yup. You read that right: $11. A gallon.<\/p>\n

Technically, the milk was free, but the boarding and care of the animals that give us the milk went up to $11 a week for every gallon we got. The payoff was awesome: farm-fresh<\/i>, antibiotic- and growth-hormone-free milk. And the expense was necessary: My wife was nursing twins, and she\u2019s allergic to milk from the store. (Now that the babies are weaned, we\u2019ve stopped buying it from the farm.) But the result was the same: We drank a gallon of milk and it cost us $11. Yikes.<\/p>\n

So why, if we were willing to spend $11 on milk, would I be qualified to write about saving money while shopping?<\/p>\n

In order to have the money for such expensive milk, we had to keep an even sharper eye on our other grocery spending. To not compromise on the foods that matter to us (organic beef, good produce, hormone-free milk), we had to find other ways to cut food costs.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Standard Advice<\/span><\/h2>\n

Almost any \u201chow to save money on groceries\u201d article will tell you one of five ways to trim costs. You\u2019ve probably seen them before:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Buy different kinds of food (lentils in place of meat; generic instead of premium).<\/li>\n
  2. Buy from a cheaper source (Food Lion, rather than Whole Foods).<\/li>\n
  3. Buy in bulk (from Costco or another consumers\u2019 union).<\/li>\n
  4. Buy only foods that can be reused or recombined with other leftovers to make new meals.<\/li>\n
  5. Use coupons or sales to only buy when items are discounted.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Each of those methods is a good way to watch what you spend. And new tools like The Grocery Game<\/a> help to compare costs. Unfortunately, those options aren\u2019t always possible, or they don\u2019t do enough<\/b>. Maybe you don\u2019t have access to a bulk food club. Maybe you have trouble finding coupons for the kinds of food you buy. Maybe you already buy generic brands, but it\u2019s still not enough.<\/p>\n

    Luckily, there\u2019s something that you can do \u2014 today \u2014 that takes no planning, requires no math (usually), and that will save you money every time you shop<\/b>. It\u2019s called unit pricing<\/i>, and it\u2019s pretty neat. If you\u2019re a grocery guru, you almost certainly know about unit pricing (it\u2019d be great if you could add a comment to the post about unit pricing techniques you use); but if you\u2019re new to grocery shopping, it\u2019s possible nobody\u2019s ever told you about unit pricing, or explained how it works. Let\u2019s change that.<\/p>\n

    Unit Pricing\"\"<\/h2>\n

    In most states in the US, and in more and more countries around the world, every time you see a price tag at a grocery store, you\u2019ll actually see two prices. The more prominent number is the real price \u2014 the amount that the cashier will ask you to pay when you get to the cash register. The smaller number, tucked away on the side of the price tag, is something called the unit price<\/i>. Often, the unit price will be in a smaller font size, printed with a lighter color of ink, or the real price will have yellow highlighting on it to call attention to itself. Ignore the big, bold, yellow-background number. Embrace the unit price.<\/b><\/p>\n

    The unit price is the amount you\u2019re paying for each \u201cunit\u201d (ounce, pound, etc.) of the product you\u2019re buying. By giving you a standard unit to use to compare products and packages, the store lets you make a more informed choice. You can let the store do the math for you, to make it easier for you to compare prices<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    Here\u2019s an example: I have a small party coming up, and I\u2019d like to buy some soda. I\u2019d like to avoid 2-liter bottles, if possible, opting for single-serving containers.<\/p>\n

    I go to the store, and it turns out I have seven different options (plus the two-liter bottle):<\/p>\n