Comparison Shopping - How stores work against you.

I remember how cool it was when stores started putting "extra" information on the shelf tags to make comparison shopping easier. This was, of course, years ago.

I've been slowly putting together a price book of all of the "everyday" prices at stores in my area for the things I buy regularly. The first time I took my note sheet along, I was far too trusting. I thought to myself "Well, they list the break down on the tag on the shelf!". I ended up coming home with a sheet scribbled all over with prices and weights and volumes. Some time later, with the help of a calculator and a lot of patience, I had the pricing broken down into usable form.

Not surprisingly, the best prices are on weird combination. As an example, the 3.8 ounce box of Splenda is the best value at my local WalMart - by about 5 cents an ounce. No one buys that one, because the "price comparison" information lists "price per pound" (which is insane) while most of the other sizes of Splenda list the "price per ounce". Too hard to do the math on the fly, people just ignore that option and choose from the others.

I didn't have time today to check other items, but I've noticed it in the past with Olive Oil, Coffee, Cheese and other staple (for me, anyway) items. The best price is one of the choices that is listed differently from the others. I'm going to do a little research over the next week or so and see what I find out. In the meantime, if you want to comparison shop, take the time to use a calculator - your wallet will thank you.

Grocery Guide

Over the past few weeks, I've started a Grocery Price Guide. It's an idea I've seen on several blogs now, so I thought I'd share my experience with it.

Put simply, I made a list of as many items that I buy regularly that I could think of. At this stage of the game, I made no judgments about if the items were dumb or not, just made a list of what I typically buy. Keep in mind, I've ALWAYS been a pretty good comparison shopper - I never buy anything without comparing it to other items of the same type. If this isn't a strength for you, then you may wish to make a "first pass" with your list and see if you're just spending some "dumb money" anywhere on your list.

Next, I made columns for each of the stores in my area that I have access to:

WalMart
Publix
BJ's Wholesale
Sweetbay
Albertson's

We also have Sam's, Costco, and Winn dixie in this area, but I currently have a BJ's card, so I'm not going to buy a membership anywhere else until that expires. Winn Dixie is too far no matter how good a deal they may have - and with gas prices going up, that will just get worse.

Yesterday, I was in Publix, and I took my list with me. It turned a 3 minute "just grabbing 3 items" trip into about 40 minutes as I wrote down prices.

Yesterday, I had to go to WalMart to get 1 item. BJ's is right next to the closest WalMart, so I took my list and went to both places. Albertsons is having a sale on boneless, skinless chicken breasts (1.69/lb) so I'll go there with my list over the weekend. At some point I'll have to get to Sweetbay.

I think shock is the right word. Prices are all over the place. BJ's and Walmart split things pretty much down the middle, with a few (large) exceptions. Ground Turkey? Worst price: Walmart $3.75 a pound. Best? Publix - by over a dollar! $2.69 a pound. Keep in mind this is ground turkey breast. Walmart does have "15% fat" ground turkey for $1.89 a pound. Since I brown the meat first, that may actually be better for turkey chili.

Fortunately, Publix is on the corner, so gas isn't an issue, really. Walmart and BJ's are next door to each other, and I hit BJ's for gas (usually within $0.02 of the lowest price in the area, if not the lowest, so I accept that for the consistency). I can be fairly confident of being able to get the lowest price available and still only make two trips (fuel wise).

I highly recommend putting a list like this together. I've already found out that several sale items I was going to go get are more expensive at the sale than they are regularly priced at other places. It's also nice to be able to make an informed decision on whether or not to get something one place or the other, or if this week it's worth paying a little more for a single item (or 2) to avoid having to make 2 trips.

I haven't tracked it, but my guess is that I'm saving between $5 and $10 a week just by knowing where to buy what. That doesn't sound like much, but it stacks up and I only shop for me. If I'm only saving $5 a week, in a year that's still $260. Imagine how much the savings would be for someone that shops for 2 (or 4) people.

HDTV Antenna - the simple way

So I've mentioned that I'm considering dropping cable TV after the spring season, due to the fact that the 2 "cable only" shows I just can't wait for DVD for are ending, and pretty much everything else I watch is on the major networks.

So I started looking around for an antenna for my TV. I was a little shocked by the wide selection (and the prices! $25 to over $100??? For an antenna?) and I suspected that since the "HDTV" antenna was sitting right next to regular old coax cable marketed as "HDTV READY!" with a fair markup, there may be some hype going on.

Back to the internet to do some research before I spend "dumb money".

As it turns out (as I suspected), an HDTV signal is broadcast over the air in the same manner that TV has always been broadcast. The difference is in the tuner, not the antenna. Something else I learned is that there are a lot of people making their OWN antennas. Hmmm.

So I grabbed a basic design, and decided to go "all out". I bought the screws (98 cents) the washers (88 cents) and the UHF/VHF Transformer (sounds impressive, doesn't it? $3.79 at Lowes). The board, wire coat hangers and cable TV cable were all "reclaimed" or "found". Total cost to me was under $6. That's a savings of $14 over the cheapest "store bought" rabbit ears I could find, and given the nature of rabbit ears I have no doubt that this works far better (just take my word on the engineering techno mumbo jumbo, K? THX!)

I used this design (video) and it took me about an hour while watching Reaper yesterday afternoon. Hooked it up today, and get a BETTER picture than Comcast for the local HD stations. I pick up about 24 stations total, although 6 of those are "regular" and "HD" versions of the same station.

I'll get some pictures up later, but I'm quite pleased with myself.

When Frozen is better than fresh...

Let me get this out of the way first. For me, frozen chicken breasts make more sense and are a much better deal than fresh. This, for me, is an epiphany. I've always had an aversion to buying pre-frozen meat. Odd, given that I've never had the same issue with pre-frozen veggies. The past few weeks, I've been defrosting and using pre-frozen chicken breasts. The deal was too good to pass up. I was looking at BJ's at "freezer package" fresh chicken breasts - packed in easy to separate packs that you put straight into the freezer!

I'm a single guy. If I buy 12 packs, then 11 of them go straight to the freezer and become "pre-frozen" anyway. All this time, I've been paying $0.79 (average) extra a pound for the privilege of paying for freezer wrap (ziplocks, foil, whatever), spending 15 minutes separating it all out, wrapping it up, and turning it into pre-frozen myself.

From here on out, I'm getting the cheaper, frozen ones from the start.

The tyranny of "stuff"

Stuff. In America, we have a LOT of it. In fact, we have so much, we often pay people extra to store it for us. "Self Storage" places are everywhere.

We're so attached to our "stuff" that we understand and validate stories like this:

"I know of one couple who couldn't retire to the town they preferred because they couldn't afford a place there big enough for all their stuff..."

How horrifying. To NOT retire to your dream area because you're so attached to your "things" that you need to be sure that they have a nice place to live.

Being in a place where I'm remodeling my world view and psychology, I see both sides of this. The American consumer in me understands on an emotional level this attachment to stuff. Intellectually, I can acknowledge that it makes no sense at all, and is, in fact, outdated.

I read an interesting article a week or so ago about our attitude towards "stuff" and how it's outdated. The author made a good point - go back and look at old pictures. From the 40's, 50's, 60's and even into the 70's - don't look at the people, look at the backgrounds. Notice how empty the houses are. There is a distinct *lack* of "stuff". If you look at old houses, from around the turn of the century, you'll find they didn't have closets in the bedroom. There was no need for them - stuff was rare and valuable and often everything a person owned would fit nicely into a trunk or chest of drawers.

But then something happened. Record players became common. Followed by the 8 track. Now you could own music and other things that had previously been radio only for most folks. This was followed quickly by cassettes, CDs, VHS, DVD, Computers and computer software and cheap crap from sweatshops in far away places. "Stuff" was no longer rare and valuable, it was all over, easy to find, cheap to acquire and always (in the back of our minds, anyway) useful!

Except...our attitudes about "stuff" didn't change. In our heads, we still think of stuff as "rare and valuable", even though it isn't.

I'm guilty of this - big time. In the past, I've paid $80 a month, for a year, to store things that I had been in boxes for the 2 years prior. Round numbers, adding tax, we're talking $1000 to store things I hadn't used for years, and as it turns out, didn't use for years after that. If I want to be totally honest about the cost, I paid an extra $50 a month in rent to have a garage to store my extra "stuff" after that. So total is $1600.

My lease ends on 4/30 - and you can bet I'm dropping that extra $50 a month from my rent.

That's a side benefit to my real purpose. My real purpose is to "detach" from my stuff. Somewhere along the line, I, like most Americans, stopped owning "stuff" and started to be owned by my "stuff". This is not an acceptable state of affairs. At this point in my journey, I'm vaguely aware that there's a balance between having things and not having things, and appropriate and inappropriate relationships to things. I'm not sure where the line is, but I know I'm way over it. Better, then, to have not enough attachment than too much. That is my thinking, so it was time to act.

I spent this weekend going through my things in boxes in the garage. I'm not done, but it's a start. The idea is to get rid of everything that won't fit into my apartment. I'm also going through my apartment and getting rid of anything that doesn't fit some simple criteria:

1) Do I use it at least once a month?
2) Is it irreplaceable?
3) Does it have a specific purpose that makes it useful?

Honestly, I had to "create" category 3 when I realized that my plunger wasn't irreplaceable, and that I hadn't used it in over a year. It's one of those things that you just have to have, even if you aren't using it. Many of my tools also fit into that category, but I've had to tread lightly to be sure that I don't use it to "protect" things that should go.

I've scratched the surface, I'm really not sure how far into the process I've gotten. I know that there was one full car load and then about a quarter car load that's gone to Goodwill already. Yes, I got a receipt - on one hand, the spiritual journey requires I detach from my stuff and stop seeing it as valuable. On the other hand, I'm trying to learn fiscal responsibility, and living in the real world it's silly not to take the $700 or so in tax deductions (and recoup some of the $1600 I've wasted storing this crap!).

The other thing I struggled a little with is what to do with the "stuff" that has value to other people. Yes, I'm perfectly OK with looking at my collection of Magic: The Gathering cards as ink on paper to be thrown away, but I also know that I can trade them for Government Issued Ink on Paper. In the end, I see no reason not to sell what I can. I'm not going to any great lengths - some stuff (trading cards and "collectible" hobby items) will go to local shops, some stuff (a few small furniture items) will go to Craig's list, and the rest (Software, games, DVDs, watches) will go on Ebay. Again, I may as well recoup some of the expense of carting this stuff around.

At the end of the weekend, I feel lighter than I did at the beginning. I still have a ways to go to get to where I want to be with my "stuff". Another issue that's come up while I've been working on this is my relationship with my "space". There's a whole 'nother post coming about the re-arranging of my apartment....