Fisher
Has No Life - Lives on TB
Fair use
http://www.bnd.com/business/story/592386.html
Pinching pennies on groceries
McClatchy Newspapers
Friday, Dec. 26, 2008
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Even in a recession, you have to eat. But with food prices up 7 percent this year and projected to go up at least another 3.5 percent next year, it's not easy to fill the grocery cart.
Doris Jones has started eating just two meals a day. She drinks water and juice to stay full.
Jones, 62, has a part-time job at Target and gets a small pension from General Electric. Her husband, retired from the now-nonexistent GTE phone company, doesn't. Though they are empty nesters now, they still have a son in college.
With everything costing more, food is just one place where she's skimping.
"I try not to do things I'm not needing to do," Jones said. "I feel like I don't know what happened to the money. I'm still buying the cheaper products, but the money still goes away."
Many shoppers have time-tested strategies for saving at the food store. Some pinch pennies out of necessity, others because it's habit or for the sport of it.
But in the past year as prices for all kinds of staples from rice to cheese to butter have climbed, fewer shoppers are indifferent to the cash register total.
Coupons have taken on new importance -- The Promotion Marketing Association now reports that 97 percent of the people who do the majority of the shopping for their households use coupons at supermarkets.
Shoppers walk the aisles, scanning sales fliers and punching numbers into calculators. They stand in front of the cereal boxes, comparing prices, doing the mental math on buy one, get one deals. Others bypass certain aisles and products that were once a staple of their pantries.
For Stacey Bianco, cookies top a long list of things she's cut out of the family budget. She's trying to trim her monthly grocery bill for her family of five from $600 to $400.
"I've stopped buying the $5 electric toothbrushes and have switched to the old 98-cent hand toothbrushes," said Bianco, 40, a stay-at-home mom from Raleigh.
"And these next two weeks, it's going to be a lot of soups, sandwiches and salads instead of a lot of meat."
Pushing a cart down the shiny aisles of a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Raleigh, Bianco was armed with a list, a calculator and pile of coupons in the pocket of her black coat.
She said she has clipped coupons off and on for 15 years but was forced to resume the habit when money became tight this year. Her husband works as a maintenance supervisor.
"When the gas prices went up, I had to start cutting the food budget back down," she said.
Her children, ages 7, 11 and 16, have noticed the changes. But Bianco said they are learning to adjust.
"The kids are complaining about not having as many snacks," she said. "There are no cupcakes. I buy popcorn. Popcorn's cheap."
Cutting back at the food store is almost inevitable, with the economy officially in a recession and consumer spending slowing across the board.
There is a high level of sensitivity to food prices because food is essential and the food store is one of the places where American shoppers spend the most time. Most families visit twice a week and spend an average of $97.80 a week there.
Next year, the estimated 3.5 percent increase in food prices could easily go higher if gas prices rise again, bad weather again affects crops or some unforeseen event affects the supply chain.
"We're looking at basically a 10 percent increase in food prices" over the two-year period of 2008 and 2009, said Brian Todd, president of the Food Institute, a New Jersey group that tracks food pricing. "That hasn't happened since the late 1980s."
At the very least, most people are trying to keep their grocery spending level as prices increase.
http://www.bnd.com/business/story/592386.html
Pinching pennies on groceries
McClatchy Newspapers
Friday, Dec. 26, 2008
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Even in a recession, you have to eat. But with food prices up 7 percent this year and projected to go up at least another 3.5 percent next year, it's not easy to fill the grocery cart.
Doris Jones has started eating just two meals a day. She drinks water and juice to stay full.
Jones, 62, has a part-time job at Target and gets a small pension from General Electric. Her husband, retired from the now-nonexistent GTE phone company, doesn't. Though they are empty nesters now, they still have a son in college.
With everything costing more, food is just one place where she's skimping.
"I try not to do things I'm not needing to do," Jones said. "I feel like I don't know what happened to the money. I'm still buying the cheaper products, but the money still goes away."
Many shoppers have time-tested strategies for saving at the food store. Some pinch pennies out of necessity, others because it's habit or for the sport of it.
But in the past year as prices for all kinds of staples from rice to cheese to butter have climbed, fewer shoppers are indifferent to the cash register total.
Coupons have taken on new importance -- The Promotion Marketing Association now reports that 97 percent of the people who do the majority of the shopping for their households use coupons at supermarkets.
Shoppers walk the aisles, scanning sales fliers and punching numbers into calculators. They stand in front of the cereal boxes, comparing prices, doing the mental math on buy one, get one deals. Others bypass certain aisles and products that were once a staple of their pantries.
For Stacey Bianco, cookies top a long list of things she's cut out of the family budget. She's trying to trim her monthly grocery bill for her family of five from $600 to $400.
"I've stopped buying the $5 electric toothbrushes and have switched to the old 98-cent hand toothbrushes," said Bianco, 40, a stay-at-home mom from Raleigh.
"And these next two weeks, it's going to be a lot of soups, sandwiches and salads instead of a lot of meat."
Pushing a cart down the shiny aisles of a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Raleigh, Bianco was armed with a list, a calculator and pile of coupons in the pocket of her black coat.
She said she has clipped coupons off and on for 15 years but was forced to resume the habit when money became tight this year. Her husband works as a maintenance supervisor.
"When the gas prices went up, I had to start cutting the food budget back down," she said.
Her children, ages 7, 11 and 16, have noticed the changes. But Bianco said they are learning to adjust.
"The kids are complaining about not having as many snacks," she said. "There are no cupcakes. I buy popcorn. Popcorn's cheap."
Cutting back at the food store is almost inevitable, with the economy officially in a recession and consumer spending slowing across the board.
There is a high level of sensitivity to food prices because food is essential and the food store is one of the places where American shoppers spend the most time. Most families visit twice a week and spend an average of $97.80 a week there.
Next year, the estimated 3.5 percent increase in food prices could easily go higher if gas prices rise again, bad weather again affects crops or some unforeseen event affects the supply chain.
"We're looking at basically a 10 percent increase in food prices" over the two-year period of 2008 and 2009, said Brian Todd, president of the Food Institute, a New Jersey group that tracks food pricing. "That hasn't happened since the late 1980s."
At the very least, most people are trying to keep their grocery spending level as prices increase.
My stockpile of toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, etc., was all free or were money-makers using coupons.
