Are you trying to save some money by depositing in savings account? If so, good! Putting spare money in deposit is good way to fight inflation and even make some money. Currently, the inflation in Bulgaria is 4-5%, where deposit interests are 5-7% depending on the bank, so deposits are the best safe way to save money. Or are they? What if I tell you there is MUCH better way to save small amounts of money? Yes there is - it's food. That's right food can give you way better interest that every bank. How you may ask? It's actually really simple - with the whole global economics problems the prices of daily groceries rise constantly. If you buy something today, in 2-3 months it's price will be higher and usually it'll be more than the 7% your bank is giving you! For an example, 3 months ago a jar of beans cost 2.79 BGN (1.43 EUR) where now it costs 2.99 BGN (1.53 EUR) which is just above 7% rise. Another example is a bottle of spaghetti sauce - 3 months before was 1.59 BGN (0.81 EUR), now it's 1.99 BGN (1.02 EUR) or a massive 25% increase! Also, for the latest example, the quality of the sauce is now worse than before! So if you bought it before, not only you saved 25% + inflation, but you got a better quality too! Of course you have to buy a lot of bottles to really worth it. Here it comes the time saving too - buy bulk! Buy packages of 10 or 20, but first check the expiration date of course (most products have 1-2 years). That way you'll go only 1 time (loose time for one purchase), but you'll buy as for 10 times :) Time is money ;) Ok, some calculations:
Let's say you buy 20 jars of beans:
20 x 2.79 = 55.8 (before)
20 x 2.99 = 59.8 (now)
This is 7% saved in just 3 months or 2 "free" jars of beans! Considering you eat from those jars and the price rises again through the year, we can estimate around 10-14% APY! Not bad :)
Let's say you buy 20 bottles of spaghetti sauce:
20 x 1.59 = 31.8
20 x 1.99 = 39.8
Again, here we got 4 "free" bottles and an estimation of 50% APY!!! Get that! Not to mention the quality and time.
Now, here it comes the fun part - promotions! It's another way to save even more money and combined with bulk buying it saves A LOT! Yesterday I saw those jars of beans discounted to 2.19 from 2.99! That's 36%!!! Let's do the calculation again:
20 x 2.19 = 43.8
20 x 2.99 = 59.8
That are more that 5 "free" jars! Estimation of more that 50% APY if you buy only when a promotion is active! And there always will be a promotion when buying bulk - don't start searching for a promotion when you run out of food! When your reserve is less than 40% it's good to start looking for promotions to refill it ;) Also promotions can be used to save money and time even when the prices are not going up constantly. Right now there is a promotion for my favorite rice - 1.99 BGN (1.02 EUR) for 1 kg package, where it's normal price is (for a loooong time) 2.45 BGN (1.25 EUR). Calculation:
20 x 1.99 = 39.8
20 x 2.45 = 49.0
Around 4 "free" packages of rice or estimated 15% APY!
Only one golden rule when buying bulk - buy one to test it before buying a lot, because the quality may got worse and you'll end up with a lot low quality food!
In the end, you can get over 20% APY when combining different foods. Let's say you gave 1000 BGN (511 EUR) for bulk buying this year at 20% APY average:
1000 x 20% = 200 BGN saved through food for 1 year
1000 x 7% = 70 BGN max saved through deposit for 1 year
As you can see you can easily get over 3 times better interest from food than from your bank. The more food you buy, the more savings you have :) It's up to how much you eat and how many people are there in your house. Of course bank deposits will still remain the best safe way to save money, as you can't spend 100 000 for food, but you can put them in deposit. So next time you see a promotion of a food you regularly eat, don't hesitate - buy! If you don't have the money - find it and buy! Presuming you have a deposit account, you'll be able to repay the debt when next salary comes, so get money and buy the food, as it'll give you better interest than your bank will!
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