Am I the only one who listened to their mom's grocery advice and now saves $60 a month?
My mom kept telling me to shop the perimeter of the grocery store and skip the middle aisles, and I rolled my eyes for years. Started doing it 8 months ago and my weekly bill dropped from about $140 to $80, mostly because I'm not grabbing chips and frozen meals I don't need. Anyone else got a parent tip that sounded boring but turned out solid?
Honestly the "shop the perimeter" thing is real and I'd take it one step further. Once you stick to the outside walls, you start noticing that the middle aisles are where all the fake food lives, so it stops being about saving money and turns into eating better without even trying. The snacks and frozen stuff are built to make you buy more than you planned, and once you skip them for a few weeks you don't even miss them. My mom's boring tip was making a list and sticking to it no matter what, and I used to blow it off, but now if it's not on the list it doesn't go in the cart. It sounds so dumb but it kills all the impulse buys the same way your perimeter trick does. Tbh the boring parent advice always wins because they had decades to figure out what actually works before we did.