8 tips of smart shopping to save food costs in Japan

Food cost accounts for a large share of living costs. He that is master of costs, will soon be master of entire living costs. Do not take food costs lightly and put your effort to save money.

I want to show you Japanese wives’ wisdom of shopping and saving food costs. Japanese food prices are already extremely expensive. Knowing Japanese madam’s wisdom will help you survive your Japanese life.

Don’t throw away supermarket’s flyers

When you start living in an apartment, your mailbox becomes soon full of flyers from supermarkets and food delivery shops around your place. Too many frequent ads in your mailbox annoy you and you may throw these directly into a trash box without looking any of them.

But just wait. There are some clues to make your living easy in a pile of flyers you look it as garbage. Just keep the supermarket’s flyers in your hand. This is very important information to reduce your food cost.

You don’t read Japanese? Don’t worry. Japanese flyers use many pictures and outstanding price font. All you have to know from flyers are just what you want to buy and how much it is.

Just pick up supermarket flyers out of your mailbox.

Check inside the fridge and supermarket’s flyer before going shopping

When you go shopping at a supermarket, check inside the fridge and the supermarket’s flyer. Even if you buy reasonable food, if the same food is already in the fridge, there is a risk that you waste the food you bought in terms of freshness. (Even if a food is in the fridge, its freshness is being lost with times.)

Just check inside the fridge and think of what you can make by making the most of foods inside the fridge. If you need anything else to buy additionally to make a meal you think of, you just list the details up on your smartphone or something. This process can eliminate the waste of money.

Secondary, check the supermarket’s flyers before leaving home. What you need to check on a flyer are

In Japan, the price difference of a carton of eggs between sale day and normal day is sometimes double. Don’t lazy about checking flyer information before buying.

Restrict the amount of money you put in your wallet

The upper limit of money you use at a supermarket needs to be fixed as often as you go shopping. This is a measure to keep you from buying unnecessary stuff.

If leaving a lot of money in your wallet, you can’t control your instinctive impulse. You may have an urge for snacks or something which you think no damage to domestic finance even if buying one. If you allow yourself to buy additional foods by your impulse, food cost will suffer your living without knowing. If you decide the upper limit of money you use beforehand, you don’t need to rely on the power of will.

How you decide the upper limit of food expense is like you put one week budget in your wallet from the monthly food budget you decide. For example, if you decide the monthly food budget as 60,000 yen, you put 12,500 yen in your wallet per week. If you decide the day you go shopping in a week, you can set one day budget and it is more effective to buy only what you need to.

If you get small changes, put it in a piggy bank on a regular basis and at the same time as the new week starts, put all money left over from the weekly budget into a piggy bank and newly put another week budget in your wallet.

If buying expensive seasonings that go over the weekly budget, you use some money from a piggy bank. Then, your food expense will not go over the budget you decide.

Plan a meal menu beforehand

It is also important for you to decide what you’re going to make from food selections inside the fridge. Deciding a meal menu will reduce the risk of buying unnecessary foods. Using up all the foods inside the fridge is the most important thing to save food costs. You may find a lot of foods sleeping in the fridge without having used it since you bought, end up throwing it because of going bad.

Buying cheap foods at a supermarket also means you select foods with a short shelf life. Paying always attention to foods inside the fridge will reduce food costs in that sense.

As much as possible, you should make a meal menu in which foods inside the fridge should play a major role. If you can reduce food wastage by not using foods inside the fridge, you can afford to buy a little luxury food costing within the weekly budget and you can increase the variety of food menu.

Make a bulk purchase

Making a bulk purchase is a really common method to save food costs in the world. For example, buying a set of 3 onions tend to be way cheaper than buying only one onion in terms of price per onion. Buying 1 kg of meat tends to be 10 yen cheaper per 100 grams of meat than buying packed meat.

Except for the foods that can be kept in a freezer, you should buy the amount of food you can use up within the shelf life. Even frozen foods also have a shelf life. You just control a balance between bulk purchases and food’s shelf life in terms of using up all the foods in the fridge within the shelf life.

The best time to buy cheap foods at a supermarket

The time to replace old products with new products and sell up fresh foods because of closing time is a sign to discount displayed foods. Especially, an hour before a store is closed, fresh foods such as fish and meat become half the original price.

A supermarket open 24 hours often replaces old foods with fresh foods in the early morning. Targeting the time that foods in a certain category are discounted is one of the good strategies to save food cost.

Don’t go shopping when you are hungry

Being hungry attracts you to every single food displayed on shelves at a supermarket. You will probably reach your arms to a product unintentionally and look the attractive package and finally, you put it in a shopping basket. To stay rational, eat something if you are hungry before going shopping not to be caught in a trap of attractive food packages.

If you have nothing to eat in the fridge, you just drink water as much as you are full.

Take advantage of special benefit for a stockholder.

Taking advantage of the benefit of a complimentary ticket for a stockholder is one solution to save food costs. However, this is a story if you invest in certain major supermarket chains.

There is a case even your small investment gives you an opprotunity to receive a complimentry ticket depending on the company. You just check it out.