What do you never pay full price for?

Posted by louisa on Thursday 9 December 2010 in frugal | 6 comments

There are some things that I never, ever pay full price for.

Due to a lifetime of “this is what that tastes like”, I’m brand loyal in about five cases: orange squash has to be Robinsons, baked beans have to be Heinz, brown sauce as to be HP, chocolate digestives have to be McVities and my breakfast cereal has to be Mornflake Chocolate Squares because first thing in the morning, I’m a big kid who hates nutrients and fibre. Out of those, it’s only the cereal that I ever buy full price – all of the rest come up on offer regularly enough that I just stock up when it’s on offer and that’s enough to tide me over to the next time the offers come around.

With other things, I don’t care about the brand – I’ll just buy whatever is on offer. Canned tuna for example, or pasta or butter or toilet rolls. It’s rare that there isn’t one brand on some sort of offer and if there isn’t, and we don’t *really* need it (which we rarely do, as we tend to keep good stores), then we don’t buy it. Again, the offers come up regularly enough that it’s never really worth paying full price just to have it then. I don’t think I’ve ever bought tuna or toilet rolls at full price, *ever*.

There are other things we rarely pay full price for: sugar, cat food, sweet treats (like chocolate biscuits or cakes), cooking oil, cleaning products (particularly washing powder, soap and shampoo) and jam (when we have to buy it).

Away from food and groceries, it’s very rare that I pay full (new) price for clothes – they’re either on sale, I have a discount code or second-hand through a charity shop or eBay (although that’s not without its problems…). And books – I buy more books than I should but they’re mostly from Amazon‘s marketplace or Abebooks.

What do you never pay full price for? What do you only buy when it’s on offer? Do you have any offer-surfing tricks to share?