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There are so many of you that only have one local store nearby or you just have a local Dollar General and no grocery store. The big question for you is, what value do you get by traveling to another city with better stores. Is it worth the gas to drive 30 minutes to a Publix or Kroger because they double?
My thoughts on this:
If you are within a 30 minute drive of other stores, it is at least worth looking at the list of deals for those stores each week. You don’t need to travel every week, since most weeks you’ll look at a deal list and only want one or two things. There will be weeks though that you see these stores have an amazing ad and definitely want to consider traveling. In general most folks that do this end up traveling maybe twice a month for deals.
When you do drive to other city, also try to maximize your time and maybe hit a second store you don’t have too!
One more way to look at traveling for a deal is mathematically. Let’s say you drive my husbands pick up truck 20 miles one way to get to a Publix. He gets 13.5 miles to the gallon in the city. That means approx 3 gallons of gas round trip. If you assume gas at $3.50 a gallon right now that is a cost of $10.50. I know most of you don’t drive a pickup truck, but I wanted to go with the most expensive option. On a good week at Publix though you can leave saving $50-$100 easily, so the cost is covered by the savings.
My last two cents… I personally think 30 minutes is a max to drive. While the cost of gas can be absorbed by assume savings, you need to also consider the value of your time. Spending 1 hour driving to and from the store plus time shopping, you are spending a lot of valuable time and might not see the savings as a benefit after you’ve spent half a day just to buy groceries.
What are your thoughts? How far would you drive to save on groceries?
