Mates' rates when you buy in bulk

Shopping with friends used to mean a Saturday afternoon in the high street with the girls buying a top for your evening out. Nowadays, Saturday afternoon is more likely to be spent buying a multipack of household goods and dividing it up among friends keen to save money.

Soaring food costs, squeezed wage packets and rising energy bills are taking a bigger chunk out of the family household budget so it’s time to get imaginative.

Buying in bulk saves money

Go online first to work out the best strategy and to choose your supermarket. Visit mysupermarket.co.uk, a grocery comparison site, where you can create your shopping list on the site once. It will tell you the price of your trolley at Ocada, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Asda. You can tweak the list each week and either send the order to the supermarket you choose or visit it.

Next check out fixtureferrets.co.uk, which lists the best deals in supermarkets, like the buy-one-get-one-frees that are worth stocking up on. Anyone who likes a glass of red or white of an evening can cut the cost by checking out Quaffersoffers.co.uk - it lists the best wine prices at both supermarkets and individual stores.

Lastly, keep another site, hotukdeals.com, in your favourites. It’s a forum with top offers that often run out very fast; many focus on groceries. It was recently spreading the news of a glitch at the tills in Tesco which meant shoppers could buy Terry’s Chocolate Oranges for 29p, rather than the usual £2.75.

One chocoholic bought 192 chocolate oranges for £56. Saving £472 in sterling, but perhaps putting on more in pounds...

Remember the golden rule of buying in bulk is it’s only cheap if you actually need it , are certain to use it and have somewhere to store it. Otherwise, it’s just a waste of money.