I usually grocery shop about 5 minutes away, but in Sunday's paper there was an ad for 8-inch blueberry pies for $2.49 at another grocery 20 minutes away. The cheapest I've seen locally lately was $6.00, so off I went. I bought 2 and found a few other items cheaper as well. I remember 8-inch pies being $1.99 usually and $0.99 when on sale.
We have almost given up shopping at our local grocery store, instead drive about double the distance to go to Costco for groceries and gasoline. There’s just too big a difference. Gas prices have narrowed a bit but there were times when Costco 93 octane was over a $1/gal cheaper than regular gas stations. Costco gas is a Top Tier rated gasoline as well. Same with other stuff. A 40 lb bag of bird seed is $20 there. Half and Half is about what its name says, almost half the cost. Costco rotisserie chickens, $4.99 for a whole bird.
I have a salad with almost every dinner, sometimes with lunch AND dinner. My local Walmart and Food Lion (each 8 miles from home, in opposite directions) have mediocre produce. So I've started making the 50 mile round trip once a week to go into Charlottesvlle and shop at Aldi and Kroger. I eat berries on my cereal every morning, and the savings for strawberries + blueberries + blackberries as Aldi came close to covering the cost of gas before prices went up. I time those trips so I can lunch at a Chinese buffet, so it's shopping + a meal trip. Other than that, I guess we all recall going through weekly paper ads to make our shopping lists. Or I recall looking for stereos, TVs, and stuff like that and driving all over the place, physically shopping and price/inventory comparing. The internet has been a shopping blessing and a shopping curse. The blessing has come in being able to "shop" (either actually buy, or at least investigate local price & availability) without leaving home. The curse has been that the internet has caused so many stores to go out of business, so there is less to buy locally that really require doing so in-person (mainly clothes and shoes.) @Thomas Windom comment regarding COSTCO has me thinking of looking at renewing my membership. The nearest one was 45 miles away, but I just saw that there's now one in Charlottesville. I just need to manage my impulse control, or it's a net-negative. It's still a marginal benefit for a single guy.
Since we have only one supermarket and no department stores in the town that I live in, we do drive to Bangor from time to time, which is about 60 miles or so, each way. If we're already in Bangor, we might do our grocery shopping there too, because, well, it's not so much that the prices are better because it's the same supermarket chain, but the Hannaford in Bangor is a bigger store with more options. So, never mind, I didn't really answer the question. Oh, we do have a BJ's card (which is like Sam's Club only they don't hate white people), but don't use it often. I generally discourage going there because there's so much stuff that we often end up buying something we don't need, and we already have enough clutter around here.
i 'm quite sure that blueberry pie was worth every mile! you may have found a place you'll frequently use too
For a bargain I do just about anything last week I saw an ad online for a new discount store in my area it's called DII. We went to visit the closest one to us which was about 15 minutes away. My wife and daughter are still in their shopping, I had to quit the tour because of my back but I did purchase a few items before I left the store. From what I saw their prices are decent and some are exceptional. If you have one in your area maybe worth a try.
Not only did you get something you really wanted and find a few other good things but it does a body good to take a little drive and see places and people you don’t see every day.
Normally, my personal bargain hunting goes as far as my fingers to the keyboard which does allow someone else to travel a thousand miles or so to deliver the item that I probably didn’t really need. Yvonne, on the other hand, looks at the ads and if there is something with a substantial enough savings to travel 5 or 10 miles to buy it, we do. Yesterday, we went about 15 miles round trip to buy chicken wings and potatoes. Dunno about the potatoes but chicken wings can run anywhere between $2.99 to $4.00 a pound but they were on sale at the IGA for 99 cents so off we went. Now, since Yvonne has been setting us up for an apocalyptic event, there isn’t a whole lot of freezer space for a bunch of chicken wings so I only snagged 3 pounds but since I won’t pay the higher pricing, having a few wings for a change was worth the trip.
our freezer is full of our tomatoes, okra,corn,beans, zucchini, that I barley have room for what meat and chicken are in there. As for anything else, just shop Amazon mostly for other items. I miss getting to shop around other stores