Living through Covid restrictions was bad enough. Now, inflation has made everything very expensive which can create big difficulties if you live in poverty or a fixed income.
Time to start coming up with strategies to save and conserve our money.
Today, we're talking about getting everything done in one trip...combining errands to save on gas. Getting 4-5 stops in on one trip certainly makes better financial sense that going somewhere just for one thing.
Where we live, it's a good 25 miles to the nearest Costco, Target, Trader Joe's, Marshalls, etc...all stores we like to shop at for their prices and quality. We also need to go that far if we need a medical specialist, such as an ophthalmoligist or dermatologist, that we can't get in our neighborhood.
That just means we need to plan on our calendar for a day out to do it all.
For example, let's say my wife has an appointment with her dermatologist in Elk Grove (a city just south of Sacramento about 30 miles from home). I may need a new pair of shoes so I'll drop her off and go to the nearby Famous Footwear to pick up a pair.
After picking her back up, we'll get a cheap lunch of Asian take out, In-n-Out, or something similar.
We'll head over to the Trader Joe's nearby where my wife and Tim will wait in the car while I run in to get coffee (our favorite is their tasty and inexpensive French roast) to stock our freezer - 8 bags of coffee will easily fit there and keep us caffeinated for a couple of months at 25 cents per pot.
We'll then head across the street to Costco and pick up another load of groceries (usually, enough for a couple of months) and make our last stop the gas station in the parking lot where we fill up on the cheapest gas around before heading home.
Yes, it takes a bit of gas to go those 30 miles each way but we'll save big in the long run if we can combine several errands while we're there...plus the gas is significanltly less "down the hill" than it is in our home up in the Sierra Foothills...so we'll come out well ahead when we're done.
Darryl Musick
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