The Case for Local Grocery Stores: How Super Centers Are Making Us Poor

(An original article from Money Is Not Important)

Ah, the super center. The mecca of consumerism. I, like many people, love the convenience of a super center. Whether it’s Walmart or Target, you can’t beat it for one stop shopping. You also can’t beat it for fantastic people-watching, but that’s a whole different topic.

The first Walmart Supercenter opened its doors in 1988 in America’s heartland. Target was eager to follow suit, and opened their version of the hyper market in 1995 in Omaha, Nebraska. Americans have been in love ever since. Why wouldn’t they be? Where else can you buy groceries, a plunger, a weed whacker, a bucket of paint, patio furniture, a bicycle, a computer, an above-ground pool, and drop off your prescription while they rotate your tires? Now that’s AMERICAN.

But that’s exactly the problem. Every time I go to a super center, I end up spending so much more than I had anticipated. I might be going to buy some bread and milk, but then I realize that I really needed a new garden hose, too. Lucky for me, that garden hose is located so close to the electronics department, and I can go ahead and pick up that flat screen TV that is on sale. My cart is pretty full, but not so full that I can’t throw in a couple of cool t-shirts that I see on the way out.

Are you starting to see a trend here?

Before I walked into that gigantic store, all I needed to keep me happy was bread and milk. Now I’ve got all sorts of junk I have to figure out how to pay for.

These discount super stores are making us poor.

Recently, my wife and I had this epiphany. Ever since, we have made the decision to no longer grocery shop at super centers. We only shop at our local grocery store. To most money literalists, this may seem crazy. ”Local grocery stores simply cannot beat the super center prices. You have to shop at a super center if you want to spend less money.” Whatever. We have taken into account our personal tendencies (more to follow on that subject), and have actually started spending less money on “grocery trips”. Sure, a carton of milk may be more expensive, and a loaf of bread may be a few cents more, but we aren’t finding ourselves tempted to buy things that had flashed across our subconscious a week prior. Maybe I will need that garden hose eventually, or maybe I will end up buying a new TV, but I’ll do so because I thought about it and budgeted for it. Not because some fancy store display and rolled back price caught my attention.

When it comes to changing habits, we need to place roadblocks between ourselves and the action. If the bad habit is buying things we don’t need, we need to make sure that it’s slightly difficult to buy several different items. I’m far less likely to make a second trip for something that I might want to purchase. So, the next time you find yourself with a cart full of frozen pizzas and gym shorts, consider giving the local grocery store your business instead.