Switch and Save!

We all love our brands, right? We find something we like to eat/use and we tend to stick to it. We’ll walk into the store and grab that product without looking at the products around it. I’ve been guilty of this with our milk selection; we get the same bag every week without thinking there could be something else that is cheaper and tastes the same. I wanted to post this little blog as a reminder to always look around/ look up in Flipp the items you buy.

 

There can be a lot of savings here if you are willing to give the no name brand a try too. This is often as much as half off the “name brand” stuff, with similar tastes/effects.

 

-Water. We love Nestle water, but these can be expensive ($3-$4 for a 24 case is expensive in my brain). At some point we decided to try a case of no name bottled water for $2-$2.50 as we go through bottles like crazy (YES, I know, we should just get a water cooler or Brita filter. That’ll be our next “switch”), and found we liked the taste of this too. While we love Nestle, I think we can say we’ve switched to literally whatever is cheapest. BUT, we watch the sales and watch the Flipp app as we stock up when the Nestle water goes on for $1.99

-Milk. As I said a little earlier, we kinda blindly grab our milk every week without glancing at what else is on sale. By accident, my husband picked up a bag of the more expensive milk, which was something like $5.99 (our milk is usually $4.27). We tried it, and basically couldn’t taste a difference. Looking at the Flipp app to make our grocery list this week and I see that the more expensive brand milk we tried is actually cheaper this week than our normal brand! We will switch this week and save a little money while not forfeiting taste

-Snacks. I’ve been totally converted to the Shoppers Drug Mart “pringles” cans (I buy them when they’re $1) as I actually find they taste better than the $3 Pringles cans now. Ditto for chips and pop.. not paying for the brand name on the package means I can usually get chips for $1 each and cases of pop for $3 while still satisfying that craving

-Same for soup cans.. Walmart has some great deals on their Great Value cans for .57. My husband was able to go shopping and picked up 30 items for less than $29 that included mostly “Great Value” (Walmart’s brand) products, including 10 Great Value cans. It also had 10 bags of instant oatmeal for $1.50 total. It’s pretty impressive to get 4 bags of groceries for less than your weekly grocery budget (allowing us to go and buy meat this week too!)

-Drugs. While this is argued on some forums I see, I’m a big fan of buying the no name “knock-off” of the real thing. I buy Restoralax, which runs around $25. This gets pricey fast, so one time I tried a bottle of Shopper’s “Clearlax”. Literally worked the same way, had the same ingredients, but saved me $3. This is a similar situation to the water we buy, as I will default to the switched bottle of Clearlax, but when there is a Restoralax coupon for $3 off and the bottle goes on sale, you can bet I’ll pick up the branded stuff as it’s now the cheaper option. Similar story to cold meds and headache pills.. The same product for a little bit less?.. sign me up!

 

For every item going into my cart, I will look it up on the Flipp app and see if the same item is cheaper anywhere else. This can include searching a word like “milk” instead of “Neilson” to make sure I see all brands with that item (including the no name brand) on sale. It’s a couple dollars each trip, but over a month that adds up!

 

SOMETHING TO NOTE:

You cannot “price match” the no name brand. Price matching works on the same size and brand of a product in another store. You can price match Bananas and potatoes as these are usually not branded, but as soon as there is a brand name, even if it’s literally No Frills’ “No Name” brand, you can’t go into Walmart to price match as that exact brand isn’t carried there. If there is an amazing deal on a no-name product that week, then you will need to drive to that store to actually get it.