Okay, hands up out there. How many of you are horrified at the idea of buying store brands? Quite a few, I bet. I know an awful lot of people who equate store brands with the depths of poverty.<\/p>\n
But where exactly do you think store brands come from? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll tell you where. They come from the exact same processing plants that make those name brands you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re so fond of. Many of them are made with the same formulations and ingredients.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be honest. Not all store brands are as good as name brands. I can think of one grocery chain, for instance, that has the nastiest peanut butter I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever eaten. And another whose canned soups have a very funny aftertaste. But many are very good, and certainly worthy of trying.<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the key. Give them a try, and see if you like them. If you look in my pantry, you will find macaroni and cheese, pasta and rice mixes, canned vegetables, and so forth that my family feels are tasty. And cheap!<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153But Gail,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I can hear some of you cry, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153what about coupons? You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t use coupons on store brands.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And I can also hear the chorus from the other side. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153See, we told you coupons were useless. Just buy store brands instead.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d What is my answer? Use both.<\/p>\n
The store brand is almost always the cheapest option, but not always. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen plenty of situations where the store brand is twenty cents cheaper than the name brand, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a fifty cent coupon for the name brand. Or maybe a coupon by itself won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it the better choice, but a coupon plus a sale will. The key is flexibility.<\/p>\n
Flexibility. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a word you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll hear a lot on this blog. So many books and websites will talk about developing a system, but every system breaks down under the right conditions. What you need to do is position yourself to take advantage of every opportunity that you can.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Okay, hands up out there. How many of you are horrified at the idea of buying store brands? Quite a few, I bet. I know an awful lot of people who equate store brands with the depths of poverty. But where exactly do you think store brands come from? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll tell you where. They come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.middleclasspoor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}