Mother-of-two, 44, has saved over £10,000 over the past two years through yellow sticker shopping

A mother-of-two has revealed how she’s saved £10,000 over the past two years due to exclusively shopping for yellow sticker items in supermarkets.

Jamie Tait, 44, from Aberdeen, has managed to save a whopping 50 percent on her weekly shopping for her family-of-four, opting for reduced ‘going out of date’ items instead of fresh full-price produce.

The hairdresser was prompted to change her shoppping habits after being shocked to discover that her weekly grocery bills were costing her family between £170 and £200.

But after having changed her spending habits, shops now cost as little as £70 a week, with Jamie able to feed her husband, and children, Bradley, nine and Naomi, six, for as little as £10 a day. 

Over the course of two years, her shopping has added up to £7,280 – a saving of more than £10,000 compared to the £17,680 she would have spent if she’d kept to her old way of spending. 

Jamie and her husband Alan, 50, a telecommunications technician, compiled their shocking spending habits and decided to put in the effort needed to lower their weekly food budget. 

Some of Jamie’s receipts for food show she spent £102.70 on just one transaction in Sainsbury’s in October.

In November she spent a total of £53.51 on takeaways in just two days, and for the whole month of December, spent £829.52 on groceries.

Even with the huge weekly expenditure, she often found that a lot of food went to waste after passing their sell-by dates. 

 

Jamie said: ‘I have two jobs, and I’m self employed in both areas.

‘When the pandemic hit, my husband and I both took a huge dent in our wages, but we were shocked at how much we were haemorrhaging through money.

‘Our weekly shopping would be £175 or more, and we found ourselves doing several shops each week so the cost could sometimes be a lot higher.

‘I started shopping for just yellow sticker items and bought a freezer off of Facebook Marketplace so I could store meats and baked goods and any other food I could find.

‘Throughout the pandemic, our spending was so little, that I was saving £100 a week by not spending it on food.

‘Once restrictions were lifted, I did end up going a bit mad with spending again. But I have since reverted to yellow sticker shops.

‘The difference in spending is crazy!’

Jamie now stocks up on weekly discounted bakery items, fish, and chicken, and lots of fruits and vegetables, shopping around various supermarkets for the cheapest deals.

She said: ‘Every time I buy a loaf of bread now, it costs 10p or less, 

‘I can’t bring myself to buy full price loaves anymore, especially when you can freeze the reduced ones.

‘I get a lot of my fruit items from the Co-Op, I can get blueberries, parsnips, raspberries and asparagus for £1.93 in total, reduced from £7.15.

‘Fresh fruit and vegetables last for ages as well; people are always so quick to throw things out by their “use by date” but I actually had some fruit on my porridge that is over a week old, and it tasted perfectly fine.

‘I’m a bit of a food snob, so I do like to get the best quality produce and try to avoid junk food.

‘I get a lot of my discounted items from M&S, like steak link sausages for £1.20 down from £3 or fillet steaks for £1.90 down from £4.78.

‘Just after New Years Day in 2021, I actually stocked up a whole freezer of reduced items for about £50.’

The mum-of-two also manages to pick up sweet treats like fresh doughnuts for 50p and hot cross buns for 10p.

Alongside her frugal yellow sticker shopping, Jamie has also cut back on takeaways and eating out.

Jamie added: ‘I’ve found that it is so much easier to buy reduced filling and loaves of bread than it is to get a meal deal sandwich.

‘I’ve found that since I started yellow sticker shopping, we’ve all eaten much healthier, and I’ve even managed to lose 7lbs.

‘Yellow sticker shopping has completely eliminated us constantly buying junk food, as we focus on healthier produce to cook big meals with instead, especially when it comes to batch cooking meals to eat the day after.

‘A lot of our spending went to takeaways, and we’d be spending £50 or more for each takeaway, and we’d be having two a week.

‘It’s my goal this year to finally have our house renovated with much needed upgrades, something I wouldn’t have been able to do if our shopping spend was still through the roof.’