It seems as if the cost of living goes up on an almost daily basis. In these tough economic times, with so many South Africans struggling to make ends meet every month, it’s crucial to get into the budgeting headspace so as to stretch your money as far as it can possibly go.
One simple, yet extremely effective budgeting technique is always to do your own price comparisons.
When trying to get the most bang for your buck, a price comparison, comparing the costs from as many providers as possible will help to ensure you always get the best deal.
Doing your own price comparison might take a little bit of time, but the effort will be well worth it.
To help out, moneysmart decided to do a supermarket price comparison to investigate which of the 5 major supermarket retailers in South Africa offers the cheapest prices across the board.
[tip title=”moneysmart note”]When performing this basket of groceries price comparison, we compared– where possible– the same brand of each product. When a particular store didn’t stock that same brand, we looked at the cheapest available option, which was generally the store’s house brand.[/tip]
For the purposes of this price comparison we looked at the following basket of staple food items that pretty much any and every family will buy every month:
- Loaf of Brown Sliced Sandwich Bread (Sasko)
- 2 Litre Milk (Clover)
- 1 Litre Long Life Milk (House Brand)
- 18-Pack Tray of Large Eggs*
- 2.5kg Sugar (Huletts)
- 500g Butter (House Brand)
- Tea (Five Roses 100 pack)
- 2kg Pocket of Potatoes
- Bulk Packet of Bananas (1.2kg – 1.5kg)
* Woolworths only stocked free range eggs.
Supermarket Price Comparison
ITEM |
CHECKERS |
PICK N PAY |
SHOPRITE |
SPAR |
WOOLWORTHS |
| Brown Bread |
R7.99 |
R8.99 |
R7.99 |
R8.99 |
R9.45 |
| 2L Milk |
R18.99 |
R19.49 |
R18.99 |
R19.99 |
R22.95 |
| 1L Long Life Milk |
R9.99 |
R9.79 |
R9.99 |
R8.39 |
R10.95 |
| Large Eggs (18s) |
R24.95 |
R25.99 |
R21.99 |
R27.99 |
R44.95 |
| 2.5kg Sugar |
R25.95 |
R24.89 |
R25.95 |
R27.99 |
R25.95 |
| 500g Butter |
R27.99 |
R25.79 |
R27.99 |
R29.99 |
R32.95 |
| 5 Roses Tea (100s) |
R24.89 |
R24.89 |
R24.99 |
R24.99 |
R24.95 |
| 2kg Potatoes |
R19.99 |
R18.99 |
R17.99 |
R18.99 |
R22.99 |
| Bananas |
R19.99 |
R18.99 |
R19.99 |
R12.99 |
R19.99 |
TOTAL |
180.73 |
177.81 |
175.87 |
180.31 |
215.13 |
PLEASE NOTE: The prices in the above comparison were taken from the supermarkets in August 2013. Prices are, of course, subject to change. This exercise is not intended to be a definitive guide to choosing the right supermarket for your personal requirements, but merely an indication of how the supermarket prices compare to each other. moneysmart cannot be held liable for the outcomes based on any decision made based on the information above.
