Cut Your Grocery Budget: Tips for Shopping on a Tight Budget in Nigeria

Almost every day, the price of basic foodstuffs like rice, beans, yam, oil .e.t.c in Nigeria keeps increasing and every neighbour in your compound is probably now an economic and financial advisor, knowing all the best things President Tinubu should be doing right to make the economy better while their own financial statements even needs help.

That’s why we wrote this article, to show you only expert-verified tips on how you can shop for food in Nigeria within your budget, below are 7 tips you can easily implement today

7 Tips to Shop for Food with Little Money in Nigeria

1. If it’s not necessary, don’t buy it - Have a Shopping List.

When you go to the market or use an online grocery shopping store like Grouby, it can be tempting to add items to your cart that are not essential for your daily meals. To avoid overspending, it is always wise to create a shopping list beforehand and stick to it. This way, you can buy only what you need and leave the rest for others.

Here is a downloadable grocery shopping list builder template. To create your digital shopping list in less than 5 minutes. 

2. Buy in Bulk.

Almost nineteen thousand (19000) persons on Nairaland have viewed the question - Why buying in bulk is cheaper? But is that true?

According to some conversations on Nairaland, buying in bulk saves you more money as you tend to buy at the retail price as compared to buying individual stocks that would have had accrued cost by the sellers.

LendingTree carried out research across 30 different products and they discovered that buying in bulk can save shoppers about 27% as compared to buying in individual quantities. 

For example, a 25kg Big Bull rice costs about N42,999 (forty-two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine naira)  and it contains about 32 derica cups of rice. A derica as of March 23, 2024, in Nigeria costs about N1500. If you buy per derica, you would have paid N48,000 (forty eight thousand Naira) for the same 25kg of rice instead of N42,999 (forty-two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine naira).

Will you buy your next 25kg Big Bull rice in bulk or in individual derica cups?

3. Get More Grocery at Your Budget With Grouby

With the ever increasing cost of foodstuffs, getting the essentials you need for your groceries is getting even more costly. But what if I told you with Grouby, you can still get all the essentials you need, within your budget using our group buying feature?

How Grouby - Group Buying Feature Works

As the cost of things keeps increasing, and our income is not equivalently increasing, you are not able to increase your foodstuff budget as you have more important things to spend money on. Grouby makes it possible to pull resources together with your friends, and get all the essential foodstuffs you need and split them with your friends. 

We’ve created the platform to make group buying possible with your friends and even a stranger you don’t even know, we handle all the operations that go into making your foodstuff bought, split, and ready to be delivered to your doorstep the next day after your group closes. 

Buy in group with Grouby to get more foodstuff within your budget. Start here

4. Use a timetable for your cooking

When you are trying to shop for food with little money, it is not the time to eat junk and snacks in between, you need all the money you can save and you might need to cut down on all unnecessary spending. To do this successfully, create a simple timetable for your weekly feeding and follow it religiously. 

5. Pack Your Lunch to Work.

Have you tried to calculate how much you spend on “fast foods’ every week at work? Don’t forget - this is the time to cut down on all unnecessary spending, and save more money, and to do that, we can’t keep “eating out”

Working with your simple cooking meal timetable, you can ensure your lunch is ready before you leave for work in the morning, pack them up, and have them at work.

If you are bothered about the time to cook?

1. Wake up an hour earlier.

2. Don’t try to make some heavy meals, go for something light.

With this, you can cut down on your spending and have more money to shop for quality foodstuffs.

6. Keep Your Meal Simple

Eating a balanced diet is not having fish, meat, egg, plantain, and ponmo all in one meal. You don’t need that much for a balanced diet. So when shopping for food think about, what I need to have a healthy meal. E.g. You can switch options for your proteins. e.g. egg or fish, not egg and fish. Cook a simple meal, Eat a simple meal and your finances will be fine.

7. Buy in Season.

Every foodstuff product as you know has its best seasons, and it is important you know those seasons so you get the best deals on them

That’s a wrap, those are our best tips for you to make the best buying decisions in great seasons like this in Nigeria