Chasing the Fionist Dream

By this point, we’re sure you’ve read our top ten and ten more ways to save money at the supermarket. You’ve found the ones that work for you, finetuned your shopping habits and are already saving money. But like you, we are always striving to learn more and optimize our shopping habits.

In a previous post, we mentioned that we visit Machsanei Hashuk on Wednesdays, since we have a weekly errand across the street and that is their shuk day. Last summer they had a weekly 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 sale, where they have items on sale for each of those numbers, and sometimes a 1-9 series for each grocery department. You can see all of the sales in advance on their website or Facebook page, and if you miss doing that, you can pick up a supermarket circular at the door. While just about everything is expensive these days, stores try to lure you in with loss leaders – items they make little to no profit on – in the hopes you will buy more expensive items once you are there. We find the 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 sales a fun challenge to stock up on things we need for less. Our best Wednesday shops are the ones where every single item is on sale. And if not, then the only exceptions are price controlled pikuach items.

By Wednesday this week, we still had a fair amount of produce, so despite it being Wednesday shuk day, Fiona bought less fruits and veggies than usual, but she did find some other goodies in the weekly circular sales and made sure to get some.

Now think like a Fionist and take a look at our receipt below.

Can you find?

2 pikuach items (that are price controlled and cost the same everywhere)

1 item that was accidentally scanned from another customer, caught on the spot by Fiona, and then removed

1 splurge item way out of our normal acceptable price range, but it’s been a while and it will be great in a salad this Shabbat

6 sale items including treats for Shabbat and our kids’ favorite flavor of toothpaste

Had Fiona made it to 100 shekels, some more sales would have kicked in and she’d have been eligible to get 400 grams of sliced cheese for 9 shekels and 3 kg of tilapia for 50 shekels, which are both great deals and things we eat. However, it’s all for the best, since she was running out of room in her backpack. 🙂 The sales will return (or still be around next week), so it’s all good.

So how did you do? Did you find all of the things on our list? We marked the answers below using the same colors as the list above.

In case you don’t feel like working through the math and calculating sale prices, we paid 2.90/kg on cabbage, 7.90/kg on apples, a pack of 8 mini milky equivalent puddings for 8 shekels, 2 tubes of kids’ toothpaste for 5 shekels each, and a four pack of bar soap for 7 shekels. In addition to that, we spent 4.90/kg on a cantaloupe and SIX (!!!) freaking shekels for one nice looking avocado that will be perfectly ripe by this Shabbat (sigh).

Heading into this store on Wednesdays doesn’t require much extra time or energy since we are waiting around right there anyway, and we enjoy the challenge of looking through their sales and finding inexpensive things we need.

And as a reminder, if you can (though sometimes we can’t manage it either when shopping with little kids), always watch the register while you’re checking out. Make sure that all sale items are priced properly and no extra items (like roast shoulder of beef, ahem) are accidentally scanned along with your purchase. This way, you can catch and correct mistakes in real time instead of after you’ve already checked out – or not at all.

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Do you live near a Machsanei Hashuk or other supermarket that has shuk day and weekly loss leader sales? Do you check their sales in advance? What kind of great deals did you get this week?