A Perth mum-of-six has revealed the lengths she goes to keep her family’s weekly grocery bill down. Aussies have largely blamed the big supermarkets Coles and Woolworths for the soaring cost-of-living pressures being experienced around the country and many are looking for ways to claw back any cash they can.
Louise Connors said she spends between $500 and $600 per week on her family’s grocery shop. She told Yahoo Finance the “astronomical” bill was the biggest source of financial stress facing her family, who lives off an income of $70,000 per year from her husband’s water pressure business.
“About three years ago, I remember getting a massive, huge trolley for a fortnight for $350 and I can’t do a shop for less than $500 now,” the 37-year-old said.
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“We don’t buy ready meals or anything like that, it is just from scratch ingredients. It’s absolutely skyrocketed.”
Connors said getting the family’s bill down to even $600 required a lot of forward planning and time, with the mum planning every meal and making everything from scratch.
Connors said she checks supermarket specials “religiously” and now visits multiple different stores for the family’s groceries including Woolworths, Coles, Aldi, IGA and the local fruit and veg shop.
“I’ve got an app on my phone that shows you the weekly catalogues for all of the weekly stores. I’ll usually go on that on Monday night and see where coffee and things like that will be the cheapest and plan it around that,” she said.
“Because the costs are up, I couldn’t afford to go and get a weekly shop in just one store anymore.”
Connors admitted it took a “whole day” to do a weekly grocery shop for her family of eight.
To further cut down costs, Connors said she no longer buys additional things like specific school lunch snacks and buys items in bulk where she can. She also takes advantage of Rewards programs on offer from the major supermarkets.
“We eat a lot of healthy foods. It would be cheaper if I perhaps bought more freezer food and things like that. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword. We could change it by eating more junk food but I don’t really want to,” she said.
Aussies blame supermarkets for rising cost of living
A new survey of more than 1,000 people by the Australian Institute found 83 per cent of respondents thought supermarkets were to blame for a great deal or some of current cost-of-living pressures.
Six out of 10 people said the most notable signs of increased cost of living was groceries, followed by utilities (21 per cent) and transport (7 per cent).
Centre For Future Work senior researcher and report co-author Lisa Heap said the results showed the frustration Aussies had with the supermarkets.
“Australians are pointing the finger at supermarkets as public enemy number one in the cost-of-living crisis,” she said.
“It’s clear Australia’s supermarket duopoly is on the nose with the electorate.”
Saving becoming harder and harder
Connors said rising costs meant her family was only able to save the “very bare minimum” for specific things like birthdays or Christmas.
“Not for general savings, we can’t add to that at the moment at all,” she told Yahoo Finance.
“The emergency fund is not getting anything, which is hard to do but there just isn’t anything additional leftover to do anything like that.”
Connors said she was lucky to rent from a family member in Perth so they haven’t experienced sharp rental increases. They also have no car loans, gym memberships or other additional expenses other families may face.
Connors shared she has just started a small business, Fatty Boombas, selling brownies and cookies to help offset rising costs and hopes it will help the family “sustain the same standards of living”.
She’s also trying to save by reviewing her family’s household bills, including their utilities and mobile plans with felix mobile.
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