Strategic Shopping by Store

In the months since the new FitFin app launched, I’ve had fun leveraging the data on my receipts to spot-check how much items cost at different stores. And I’ve been surprised in several instances. For example, I buy a 3-liter bottle of Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice every week, and that bottle costs $5.28 at Walmart. What was surprising is that the exact same product costs $4.19 at Target! Even more surprising is that the exact same product costs $6.39 at our local Kroger grocery store! If I consistently bought that item at Target each week, I would save $56.58 in a year on that one product versus what I spend at Walmart. And I’d save $114.40 buying it at Target versus buying it at Kroger. And that’s just on one product!

Other items were just as surprising. For example, we buy a lot of Dial antibacterial hand soap, and we’ve found that it costs $1.69 at Target, $1.47 at Walmart, and $1.29 at our Kroger grocery store. However, it’s often 10 for $10 at Kroger. Since we usually buy about eight at a time, by intentionally purchasing it at the Kroger store, we save $3.76 when buying it there vs. Walmart, and $5.52 vs. Target. And Oscar Mayer Turkey Bacon costs $2.98 at Walmart and $3.29 at Target. Since we buy three at a time, we’re saving $0.93 just by buying it at Walmart.

Now I’m not saying that it’s always practical to drive all over town each week to buy different products at different places, but I am now conscious that if I’m at a certain store, to buy some of those products that have been highlighted as cheaper by FitFin.

To compare prices within the app, just click on the My Items icon in the footer menu, then go to Item Search and search for that item name. Note that in order to maximize this tool’s effectiveness, it’s best to rename item names since they’ll most likely have odd/different names on each store’s receipt. For example, that bottle of cranberry juice is named “Ocean Spray” on the Target receipt, and “100 CRANBRY” on Walmart’s. For consistency, I rename them the same (it literally takes two seconds to rename them once I’ve done it once because it pulls up names from memory).

As you can see by the three examples I’ve shown, by being strategic with where I buy products, I can save a pretty decent chunk of change. And that’s just three items!

Check out how this and other cool features work by going to http://www.fitfin.com, and download either the iOS or Android app and start strategically saving!