Shopping at Aldi Shaved 35% Off My Grocery Bill This Week

I knew Aldi was a discount supermarket chain, but I didn't realize how much I could save.

Week after week, as I go over my grocery bill, it feels like the same thought keeps running through my head: "That didn't used to cost this much, did it?" And I know I'm not the only one. Inflation has shot up over the past year and has yet to settle itself back down. It seems like the price of just about everything has gone up, including groceries.

As a result, my husband and I have been making an effort to ease the strain on our budget by lowering our weekly food costs where we can, whether by reaching for the generic-brand item that tastes the same as the name-brand or cooking more dishes that feature less-expensive ingredients. This week, we decided to try shopping at a different store to see if it would make a significant difference in what we paid, and whew, did it ever.

Filling up our cart at Aldi

We normally shop at our local Metro Market, a grocery store chain under the Kroger umbrella. It's a nice, big store with a ton of variety, but I wouldn't classify it as particularly high end or expensive. As I mentioned already, we're not shy about getting the generic brands, and we're pretty good about regularly clipping any available coupons on the store's app before we head out to shop. But even still, we've noticed our receipts totaling higher than they used to.

We're lucky to have plenty of grocery store options in our neighborhood, and we often pick up certain items at other stores where we think the selection is better. But this week, we decided to do our entire shopping trip at Aldi. If you're not familiar with Aldi, it's a German supermarket chain with nearly 3,000 stores in 39 states. It also offers extremely competitive prices, thanks to cost-saving ideas like selling primarily Aldi-exclusive brand items and its no-frills approach to shopping (renting a cart with a quarter, bagging your own groceries, and items being sold directly out of their shipping boxes rather than stacked neatly on shelves).

Comparing apples to apples

After our shopping trip this week, we felt good about the total we paid, but we thought it would be an interesting experiment to get a more precise measurement of how much we'd saved by shopping at Aldi. We went through our receipt item by item and built a virtual shopping cart on Metro Market's website. In the end, the Aldi bill was 35% lower than what we would have paid at Metro Market.

To be fair, not every item was an exact one-for-one swap. For example, the box of Cheez-It crackers at Aldi was 7 oz while the box at Metro Market was over 12 oz, and the cashews at Metro Market came in a 14 oz container versus 12 oz at Aldi. But for the most part, we were able to use pretty precise comparisons for this imaginary shop, and the Aldi bill still came out to significantly less than what we would have paid this week at Metro Market. Only three of the 18 items we bought were more expensive at Aldi.

Do what you can to eke out savings

Despite this significant decrease in our credit card bill, I don't see us swearing off Metro Market and shopping exclusively at Aldi from here on. But it was an excellent reminder that there are ways to protect our savings account balance during this time of higher costs.

Shopping at Aldi this week was a painless switch with a rewarding benefit. It made me want to look for other ways to save that could be right in front of me but I haven't yet thought about trying. Maybe I'll start doing more errands by foot or bike instead of driving around my neighborhood so I can save on gas. Or maybe I'll keep looking for more entertainment options at my local library before shopping at a store.

Whatever it is that works for you, see what changes you can make to keep more money on hand. You may be surprised how easy it is to find something that doesn't negatively affect your quality of life but does positively affect your personal finances.