Budget Friendly Grocery Shopping for the Ruralite

Life in a rural community has its privileges: slower pace, fewer people, more space. Many people love the positive elements of a country environment, but one significant downside can be the cost of groceries in such a setting. While some rural communities are large enough to support a few mainstream retailers, others are limited to small shops. Shopping such venues can be costly, and the products available, limited.

While you may want to support local businesses, it can be difficult if your budget is limited. There are many strategies you can implement in your grocery shopping efforts, in order to curb your grocery costs, and still support, to some extent, that local business.

The following budget friendly tips are appropriate ways for the ruralite to strategically approach grocery shopping.

The first step in developing a shopping plan in a rural setting is to evaluate the costs and potential for local shopping.  Whether you are looking at the potential for living in a rural home, or whether you are newly located in such a community, you will want to browse the shops and stores available, and examine the costs of your typical purchases.  If you have previously lived in a more suburban setting, you will have a grasp of the difference in costs. For the ruralite who has access to big name grocery stores, there may not be a significant difference.  However, if your options are restricted to individually run stores, or convenience stores, you will potentially see a bigger discrepancy. 

Additional tips for local shopping:

• Know price matching policies, and make use of the practice in order to minimize gasoline usage to different stores. This is also handy if the advertising store runs out of its discounted products. This is dependent upon the number of stores located in your town, of course.
• Study the sales cycles of your stores, and stock up on the current sale items. If case lot sales are held periodically, set aside money specifically for the event.
• Use coupons, where applicable, but don't use coupons unless they truly do make a purchase cost effective. It's not a savings if you didn't need it, and had to spend money to get it.
• Watch for managers' specials, day old bread racks, and products being moved out at low prices due to approaching expiration dates.

If you don't have mainline shops available locally, you may want to take a trip to the nearest community which does provide such options, taking stock of the costs of the products you traditionally purchase. Evaluate how often you would consider traveling to that community in order to shop, and estimate the cost of groceries, as well as gasoline, for those trips. Compare these monthly costs to those of local shopping. This will provide a benchmark for determining the value of long distance shopping. Only you can determine your own preference for local, verses long distance, grocery shopping, with a personal perspective on the value.

Additional tips for long distance shopping:

• Plan ahead, and stick to the plan. Shopping in another town can be tiresome, particularly if your list is long, and your stops, numerous. Deviation from your plan will cause you to overspend.
• Give yourself time. If you are in a rush, you are less likely to carefully evaluate whether a purchase is a good deal or not. Rushed shopping leads to quick, or emotion based, purchases.
• Eat before you shop. If you shop on an empty stomach, you will be tempted to purchase on impulse. Many warehouse club stores offer sampling. You can enjoy these samples, but don't let a quick bite lead to an unnecessary purchase.
• Load carefully. Take your time in loading your groceries into the vehicle. If you are working with a friend, organize whose purchases go where, in order to avoid end of the day frustrations. Make sure that your goods won't roll around, get dented, squished, or spoiled. You will be tired when you get home, and well organized placement of your goods will make for easy unloading at home.

Many people who live rurally are able to balance local and long distance shopping by planning periodic stock up trips to a larger community, where staple foods are purchased in bulk. They fill in with perishables, purchased locally, during the rest of the month, quarter, or whatever time frame it may be that such long distance grocery shopping is planned for.

If you are going to make stock-up shopping a practice, it's important to have reliable storage available for your purchases. A good freezer makes it possible to stock up on meats, cheeses, and dairy products.

Air-tight storage for bulk grains and baking goods, likewise, is important, as rural areas tend to see a great deal of rodent activity. An organized pantry is helpful for keeping track of your stockpile of grocery items, so that your purchases are concentrated primarily on needed items.

Develop a network of friends and acquaintances in your community, and you will have the opportunity to further curb costs on monthly grocery expenses. A cooperative buying group, "co-op", is simply a group of individuals who team up in purchasing, whether expenses are shared evenly, and products as well, or whether group purchases meet a set of criteria in order to receive delivery to the community in question.

**One type of cooperative approach to groceries is to network with others who shop long distance. By working together, for example, two families can alternate long distance shopping trips, with one family making the purchases for both, and thus cutting the financial impact of gasoline for the trips. This will require some good organizational skills, as well as a good sense of prices, especially if one family does the shopping for all. It's also possible to work out a carpool shopping trip, sharing gas costs, and each individual on the trek making his or her own purchases. You will want to be sure that the vehicle in use has the capacity to accomodate the purchases, and you will need to bring ice chests for dairy and meat products

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**Another approach to cooperative buying is to participate in a buying club, in which many members work together to purchase from a specific company. The company then delivers to a pickup point, where the organizers of the co-op meet to gather up the purchases, and distribute to members. Members may be asked to share gasoline costs for those who must pick up the delivery. Businesses such as Azure Standard require that a certain dollar amount be ordered by a group, in order for a group to qualify for a delivery. The benefit for the cost concious consumer is the opportunity to buy quality foods in bulk, and at reasonable costs. Whereas directly ordering from such a company would include extreme shipping costs, using the cooperative approach limits delivery charges. The result is great savings, good food, and minimal, shared gasoline expenses.

Online grocery shopping is becoming, more and more, a viable option for purchasing staple items, as well as canned goods and paper products. Likewise, health and beauty products can often be purchased through online stores. Searching for coupon codes, shipping discounts, or rebate programs, these can be very budget-friendly methods for purchasing household goods.

There is economic impact when consumers aim for the best grocery prices, as detailed in the video at left. Big box stores can restrict the ability of small grocers to continue operating, and furthermore, long distance and non-local purchasing choices of residents can reduce business for local stores. Some states are striving to assist those small grocers in surviving, as their presence provides a direct benefit to people, in that there is access to fresh foods.

For the ruralite, there may be significant savings in other areas of the budget, which afford a little more luxury in the food budget. However, each family must weigh its own issues, and plan accordingly for grocery and other shopping.