Staying within a budget: limit price and unit price

One of the fundamental ways to keep your grocery bills down is to be mindful of items' prices. Knowing what a given item regularly costs will allow you to spot true bargains when they appear, and stock up on non-perishable (and to a certain extent, also perishable) grocery items in order to lower the average price you pay, both for these items and for your shopping jaunts in general. To help me determine what to buy and what to leave on the supermarket shelf, I keep in mind two concepts: The item's limit price and its unit price.

Snapping for $$ - photography apps which can make you money

Do you like snapping photos with your smartphone as you go about your daily activities? Believe it or not, you can make money from this hobby of yours.

There are several apps available where you can upload photos taken with your smartphone's camera. Advertisers from all over the world are constantly looking for good-quality, genuine photos not necessarily posed or taken by professionals, and these apps are the perfect venue to connect between them and amateur photographers around the world. While this probably won't make you lots of money, it's a great incentive to hone your photography hobby while making a little something on the side out of it.

Selling your stuff online, without shipping it overseas

If you're like the average Anglo-Israeli, you probably have plenty of stuff hanging around your house that you don't really need and takes up space in your closet or shed. Stuff that other people might enjoy and use.

 Of course, you always have the option of donating your stuff to charity, giving it away (e.g., via Agora or Freecycle) or selling it on eBay, but this isn't always the best solution for heavy, fragile or very expensive items. Try sending, say, a large crystal vase abroad, and you'll end up either with a huge shipping bill because of the weight of the padding, or a broken vase and one very dissatisfied customer. Your best bet is probably to attempt to sell it to someone nearby, preferably someone who'll pick it up from your house or an agreed-upon meeting place.

 To this end, you have several options online. You can also help others get rid of their unwanted stuff , and help the planet as a bonus, by buying secondhand and helping others recycle their unwanted goods.

Saving while grocery shopping with smartphone apps

As a grocery shopper for almost all of my adult life, I've long since found out that here in Israel, at least (and I suspect everywhere), there is no such thing as one store with the lowest prices on everything. Some people get around this by shopping in several supermarkets every week, getting only the lower-priced products at each store. As I have neither the time nor the inclination for that, I keep a mental list of which stores tend to have lower prices on which type of groceries, and depending on the contents of my shopping list for the week, the coupons I have on hand and the sales advertised on Israflyer, I choose where I'll be shopping that week. But though old habits die hard (at least for me), there is a better and easier way to shop cheaply in the 21st century.

Not long ago, I introduced you to an app that enabled you to determine which gas station in your immediate vicinity was cheapest, even before you get into your car. Wouldn't it be nice if there was an app or a website that did the same, only for the supermarkets in your area? 

As luck, or rather technology, would have it, there are several. While all help you out with your comparison shopping, each comes at the task from a slightly different angle, so you might want to try them all before settling on one or the other. As with Fulltank, the information is 'crowdsourced' - prices at different supermarkets is relayed as close to real-time as possible by the site's/app's users. All apps mentioned are entirely free to download.

Saving at the pump with your smartphone: Fulltank

A car is a notoriously expensive machine to own: what with licensing, insurance, garage bills (even assuming nothing goes wrong with the car mechanically) - and the largest of car expenses, gasoline (petrol for you non-Americans) - the luxury of owning and running a car can run to tens of thousands of Shekels a year. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to lower the costs somewhat?

Well, thanks to a free, homegrown smartphone app, you can.

Using Shopping Coupons in Israel

Going shopping with coupons here in Israel isn't quite the experience you may have become used to back in the old country. The market is much smaller here and the competition will never be what it is in a country with many times the population of ours. I don't expect ever to make out like the pros on Extreme Couponing do, where people manage to buy hundreds of dollars' worth of merchandise for a pittance. But as Israelis become savvier shoppers and more demanding customers, coupons have been slowly entering the market and it's possible, with proper planning, to shave quite a few shekels off your grocery bill each week.

What's the best use for vouchers (tavim)?

If you're like most salaried employees (known in Hebrew as schirim), or if you've taken my advice and signed up for one or more online survey sites, you're probably in possession of a number of gift vouchers, known locally as tavei shai, tavei kniya or just plain tavim. These vouchers are usually issued by one of the large supermarket conglomerates - Shufersal, which owns Shufersal, Shufersal Deal, Shufersal Sheli and Yesh, produces Tav HaZahav, and The Ribua Kachol (Blue Square), which owns Mega, Mega Ba'Ir, You and Zol B'Shefa, issues Rav Tav.
Other than the supermarkets owned by the company issuing them, these vouchers can be used in a variety of chain stores you often find in malls.

Companies who give these vouchers as a holiday gift (Shai LaChag) to their employees before Rosh HaShanah and Pesach each year typically buy them at a discount, which makes it an attractive proposition for them. The limits upon their use - many stores don't allow purchases with vouchers of items on sale, or their use annuls any other discounts on the items - make them a somewhat less attractive proposition for you, at least as compared to a plain cash gift. However, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth and see how we can make the most of these vouchers.