“I go around the shops every day”: townspeople told how to save tens of thousands of rubles

The old truth: if water leaks from the pool, you need to either pour more water into it, or caulk at least some of the holes. The first option is pleasant, but not accessible to everyone; it is a separate discussion; but an audit of consumer behavior is something everyone can do. If there are any problems here, they are not of a technical, but of a psychological nature – that is, they are generally surmountable.

— What is discount search? — says Oleg Buklemishev, director of the Center for Economic Policy Research at the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University. — You convert your free time into money. But very often, and one must be aware of this, that in searching for low prices a person stumbles upon the low quality of goods. If it is a food product, it is most likely close to expired. Or the sellers first used a cunning move – first they raised prices and then lowered them. Many sales are “dancing” around this topic.

Sellers can and love to artificially inflate prices, and only competition limits them, the expert emphasizes. “It’s the same with manufacturers,” says Buklemishev. — A conventional chocolate factory, whose sweets are selling poorly, changes the recipe, switching to cheaper ingredients. There is a complex chain of relationships here. If retail demands maximum discounts from the manufacturer, the manufacturer also reacts by reducing product quality, reducing packaging, and so on. And it is almost impossible for the consumer to understand whether prices have actually decreased based on the weight and quality of the product, even if you follow one brand. And we have such a variety that it becomes impossible to analyze the relationship between quality and price.”

So, sellers are far from fools; they will not reduce the price on their own. However, they are well aware that if they do not sell the products now, the goods will have to be thrown away. And here is the point where a non-lazy consumer can save money.

Family Thrift

“I’ll tell you straight: buying without looking at stocks and expiration dates is bourgeois extravagance and not our approach,” laughs 47-year-old resident of Zamoskvorechye Valentin Alekhin. He characterizes his beliefs as socialist, but it’s not just the idea: saving is also important. Therefore, Valentin buys almost most categories of products in supermarkets on the verge of expiration – in this case, stores most often announce promotions, often discounting 50-70% of the price.

“I always buy sausages, sausages, and dumplings this way,” says MK’s interlocutor. — Dairy products are rarely offered on such promotions, but they do happen; in this case, I stock up on them too. I take a lot – because for everything that you can’t eat right now, there is a freezer. Not only sausage can be frozen, but also milk and bread. However, when bread is on the verge of expired, I don’t freeze it, but make it into croutons with tomato paste – it’s simple and tasty.

According to Valentin’s calculations, he saves about 10 thousand rubles a month on his own table – not bad money. However, you have to pay for this saving with a narrow choice: for example, you have to buy not just any sausage to choose from, but the one for which there is a promotion. True, often on some products, as MK’s interlocutor noted, promotions continue for months.

This approach also has one more inconvenience: not everyone, especially the fairer sex, supports it. “Once I met a wonderful girl, we had a great time, went to exhibitions,” says Valentin. — They were going to visit me, and before that they went to the store. I picked up “expiring” boiled sausage on sale because it was really cheap; I chose wine, which was not bad, but they sold it for just 300 rubles… And somehow the date didn’t work out, the girl ran away and never got in touch again.”

The skills of such frugality, as Valentin says, he got from his parents. “As a child, I remember I always suffered: why can’t we buy a new tape recorder, player, TV? – he recalls. – Despite the fact that there was money in the family. It’s just that dad, an engineer with golden hands, didn’t want to waste money pointlessly; That’s why, say, he preferred to buy a substandard TV at a second-hand store and fix it himself.”

There are several types of consumer savings, explained Vyacheslav Belobzhetsky, an economist and expert at Opora Rossii, to MK. “Chain stores regularly offer discounts on certain products both for club card holders and for all customers,” the expert notes. — There are also discounts due to the expiration date of the product. When the expiration date expires, discounts can be 40–60%.”

The range of discounts in chain stores (both with and without club cards) can be very different: 5, 10, and 40–50% for some categories of goods, the expert notes. And – this is important – discounts of this type are often made at the expense of suppliers; Stores need this to maintain general demand (people go to their usual store expecting discounts and buy goods with very different markups).

Cashback hunter

Oleg Rodin, a 38-year-old technical writer and father of three children, is used to saving in a different way – using numerous loyalty programs, cashbacks, promotions and other marketing tools provided by banks and retail chains. “I have dozens of plastic cards from four banks and dozens of loyalty cards “wired” into my phone,” Oleg says about his tools. — If I actively used my wallet, it would be the size of a purse from the nineties. The smartphone has several applications for tracking stocks. I choose a gas station in advance using the card, finding out what the price of fuel will be for me, taking into account my discount and the possibility of refueling with bonus points.”

This approach requires constant monitoring of multiple information flows, but thanks to his work, Oleg got used to it. In addition, according to him, this extra work is fully “paid” – the gain amounts to several tens of thousands of rubles per month, if you compare the prices of the actual purchase with the prices “without a card”.

“For me, this certainly makes sense, since I take care of my wife, children, elderly parents – there are many and different expenses, so there is no need to neglect promotional prices,” says MK’s interlocutor. — On the scale of an entire family, such “management” allows you to receive another, albeit small, salary of thousands of 50 rubles. Not extra money at all, especially since I’m already used to living like this.

The flip side of this high-tech approach to savings is complete transparency for big data collectors. But Oleg has come to terms with this factor: “Living in a modern metropolis and not leaving a digital trace about your consumer habits is a utopia,” estimates the Muscovite. “But I’m not ready to go into the forests for the sake of anonymity and even spend several tens of thousands of rubles more every month.”

Discounts in the form of cashback from payment systems can indeed be a tool for consumer savings, confirms Vyacheslav Belobzhetsky. Another question is that for the same financial product such shares are most often limited – the restrictions are within 5,000 rubles per month. This is precisely why (or at least partly why) people who prefer “high-tech economy” sometimes have dozens of cards of various kinds: the truth that “five old ladies is already a ruble” has not been canceled.

With a bag around the area

If 35–40 years ago Moscow housewives could spend half a day going to grocery stores throughout the area for the usual “consumer basket” due to shortages, now housewives go around the shops to save money. Moreover, often these are the same women and men who did this during the half-starved perestroika years – they are just now 35–40 years older. True, most of them do not seem to consider this a disaster: rational behavior, nothing more.

“There is simply no store where everything would be equally profitable,” says pensioner Lyudmila Petrova. “Therefore, if there is time and the weather is not too terrible, I buy in different stores: in one of the chains there is a good price for eggs and vegetables, in another – for milk. The bread from the bakery I need is sold in a separate grocery store, where you can also buy Belarusian sausages. But eggs in the same grocery store cost exorbitant amounts of money, 170 rubles per dozen. But the vegetable shop there is not profitable at all, and besides, I caught the saleswoman putting in broken tomatoes…

As a result, in a day of shopping, sometimes it is possible to “rewind” the 10 thousand steps recommended by the doctor, shares Lyudmila. But in bad weather (and especially in winter, when it’s slippery and frosty), walking around the shops is uncomfortable and sometimes even dangerous. But you can save in a similar way without leaving your desk – if you shop online and use several marketplaces and online stores instead of one. Many older generation housewives have successfully mastered this method during the coronavirus pandemic.

“This is not always economically justified, since logistics costs arise, for example, for transport,” says Svetlana Kazantseva, associate professor of the basic department of trade policy at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics. — And if the size of the discount in physical terms is low, then transportation costs may turn out to be more than the discount received.

If we talk about visiting several sites in order to find the best purchase option, it’s a different story: finding a benefit is much easier, since the costs of this search process are almost zero. The specific amount of savings depends on the type of product and can range from a few rubles to tens of thousands of rubles, the expert emphasizes.

“We need to remember about the asymmetry in the possession of information between the store and the buyer,” says Vyacheslav Belobzhetsky. — The buyer, unless we take into account the situation with an extremely limited set of products purchased regularly, does not have information at a particular point in time about the price ratio in the store relative to his previous visit, for example. In addition, on the scale of network trade, the range of products per customer is predicted. Accordingly, within this set (basket) you can shuffle the prices as you like, the main thing is to maintain the total amount. Or changing it a little. And then the buyer will have a feeling of a profitable trip to the store, a feeling of price stability.

We have a plan

“The main approach is not immediate savings, but planning,” recommends economist Vyacheslav Belobzhetsky. — Already at the beginning of the month you need to plan expenses and compare them with income. If the revenue part is small, then you need to think about how to fulfill the expenditure part at lower costs or reduce it. But it is important to understand that all costs should be taken into account, not partial ones. For example, if there are discounts somewhere, then the algorithm should be like this: is there a plan in the budget for these purchases? If so, then you need to add the cost of the product with the cost of its delivery/travel to pick it up. And only if there is a real benefit to make purchases.

True, it is important not to overdo it with the plan. “There is such a type of consumer as discount hunters, they are also “cherry pickers” (from the English cherry-pick – “to pick cherries”), says Svetlana Kazantseva. — This name in a figurative sense means choosing the best option from the possible ones (the icing on the cake). Such consumers plan their purchases in advance; in their example, one can observe the effect of deferred demand, that is, when the implementation of demand occurs with a delay after its actual appearance.”

These consumers also tend to buy in reserve, notes Kazantseva. Sometimes they will be disappointed: goods purchased at discounts may become unusable before they are needed.

“In addition, discount hunters sometimes get excited and, for the sake of a discount, are ready to buy something they don’t need at all,” says the expert. — Then the problem arises of what to do with it next: they either try to sell it or donate it.

Such people cannot be called “discount addicts” – this is a type of consumer behavior characteristic of a rational economy. Although if this process becomes the meaning of life, one should “sound the alarm.”

When planning, Kazantseva says, information about expected income is first compiled, after which, based on this information, you can plan expenses, dividing them into different types: essentials (food, housing), periodic needs (clothing, shoes), rare purchases, for which you need to regularly save money (car, apartment).

“If you maintain such a transparent family budget, then unnecessary expenses will be immediately visible and, based on the results of the monthly analysis, it will be possible to draw conclusions for the following periods, for example, what expenses can be avoided,” the expert sums up.