While sitting on Redington Beach the other week, a friend dropped this personal finance bombshell on me. In one month, he cut his family grocery bill by about 40 percent.
“Wow,” I said, being a reporter who writes about grocery stores. “How?”
His answer: “Aldi.” The spartan discount grocer has 80 percent of what he needs, and he buys the rest at Wal-Mart.
It’s been three years and three months since The Tampa Tribune last calculated prices at Aldi, so I went back to tabulate the Tribune’s 30-item Market Basket list with Aldi versus Publix versus Wal-Mart.
Wow.
The good news is prices have stayed relatively stable at all three stores since March 2010. Walmart is up 7 percent and Publix 3 percent. (High diesel prices are a main culprit in food costs lately.) Aldi has come up 22 percent since they entered the Tampa market.
But even so, in the Tribune’s list of 30 representative items, Aldi was cheaper than Wal-Mart on 24 items for a savings of 14 percent, and cheaper than Publix on 29 items for a savings of 26 percent. Things like orange juice, mayonnaise, coffee, spaghetti and bread – basic things.
Read more on this story at tbo.com
