If you are a bit like me and you like buying certain brands especially when it comes to things like coffee, chocolate, health and beauty products as well as cleaning products plus many more!  Often these branded products come with a premium price tag and you will often pay more compared to the supermarket equivalent, which one of the driving factors behind the popular television show ‘Eat well for less’.

Whether you buy the product because you do feel it is better quality, tastier, smells better, lasts longer or you just like the marketing you can be very smart about how you shop branded foods/products and you can actually save money.

Over the years I have created a science of tracking offers across various supermarkets and tend to only buy my favourite products when they are on offer and therefore save me quite a bit of money! I have found that the big supermarkets tend to work on 4 week offer cycles, and it tends to be the same brands will come on offer on these cycles. More often than not, the same brands will be on offer at the same time across a few of the supermarkets, but my advice is check which is actually saving you the most money. The 3 for 2 or buy one get one free, multi buys get the cheapest free, tend to be the poorer offer as it is just encouraging you to buy more than you actually need and not really saving you money. Some supermarkets are more guilty of this than others so just be aware of it when you are doing your shopping list especially if you shop in a few different supermarkets.

If you do want to shop like this here are some of my useful tips to help you truly save money;

1. When the product is on offer at a discounted price like save £1 etc, pick up an extra item on that weeks shop, get to know how much roughly you will use and buy accordingly across the offer cycle. It’s best to avoid bulk buying for the sake of it as otherwise it is likely to go to the back of the cupboard and be forgotten about and you won’t have actually saved any money! The idea is that when the product comes back on offer again your supply will be running low and you will have to restock and hence you won’t have to pay full price for the item
   ever!

2. Be price savvy and shop around for the offers across a couple of the supermarkets for the same item as you may notice quite a difference in the price!

3. Get familiar with the usual price of your favourite products, so that you know how good offers are e.g. multi buy offers and avoid exaggerated original prices that make special offers appear to be better value than they actually are. Don’t fall into this marketing ploy!

4. For fresh food like your fruit and vegetables, when they are in season and in abundance you will find supermarkets will offer discounts on these products as they will have an oversupply. It is a great way to save money as fruit and veg can be frozen down very easily and also vegetables are great for making soups, which can be frozen and save you both time and money when you need that handy lunch or quick and easy healthy breakfast smoothie! Stay tuned for an upcoming blog on buying to suit the seasons!!

5. Get to know your supermarket you tend to do most of your shopping in as each supermarket will release their new offers on a certain day of the week and some will even tell you the date when the offer runs out, again a tailored shopping list will help you plan how much to buy when it is on offer!

Being well prepared and writing a shopping list will help you shop offers correctly and will also help prevent those impulse buys and the best way to make your shopping list super-effective is by writing a meal plan for the week. That way you can work out what you're going to eat every day, incorporating the ingredients you already have and need to use up and you won’t over buy.