I can highly recommend the Franklins loyalty program. You get points for every $ spent, bonus points for specials that you trade in for store credit. Over the course of last year I earned enough points doing small shops (for just me and a child) to get a $20 discount one week, and a completely free grocery shop at christmas which really helped at a time of the year when money is tight.

Another Tip:

Grow your own veg. It might cost a small amount to set it up, but as an example: a packet of lettuce seeds costs $3 and you get 1200 seeds in the pack – thats 0.003 cents per lettuce. Compare that to the supermarket price and its a huge saving!

On the topic of toilet paper, recently we almost had a “catastrophe” (two rolls of toilet paper in the house, and we’re a family of 5, so it’s like a roll a day). We had to buy a small pack from the supermarket before we bought our bulk pack, and when my parents went out to get the bulk packs, they bought like 3 (also, we have 3 toilets in the house). These bulk packs have like 72 rolls of TP in each, so we’re stocked for a while.

Also, as we’re Chinese, we tend to buy a fair bit of specialty ingredients, supermarkets just charge way too high for a lot of them. There’s a bunch of suburbs close to us that sell the things we need and at good prices, so it’s good for us.

I’ve started doing this with toilet paper. I swear they’re ripping us off when it comes to essentials…it’s just a bit of tissue and they charge ridiculous prices knowing they can get away with it.

“2. Never shop on an empty stomach”

This is so true. Ever since I made a point of eating before shopping, the impulse junk food buys have stopped. It also means less instances of my waistline regretting that packet of chips I should never have bought…

*we’re spoiled in Melbourne, totally spoiled – most of the food in our house comes from Vic Market, with top-notch free range meats and eggs from Gasworks farmers’ market (www.mfm.com.au for inner-Melbourne markets), and ’special’ ingredients / bulk buys of rice/grains/spices etc from my favourite Indian store (near Victoria/Church St in Richmond), the Asian store at Vic market, and the Mediterranean supermarket in Sydney Rd, Brunswick.