How to Shop at Trader Joe’s at No Extra Cost
Trader Joe’s is one of those retailers who try to be less of a store than an experience , which means it’s hard to get through TJ’s trip without the experience of spending more than you planned.
Even reading Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer can trigger your fantasies of relaxing under a pumpkin spice face mask or taking a dip in a baked ricotta tub with blood orange chocolate chips that TJ’s sells for an “amazing 10. $ 99 a pound “and recommends that you serve food on a cheese board or eat with the refrigerator door open, with a fork.”
Wait, I’m doing it wrong. I have to help you spend less at Trader Joe, not more. Let’s stop dreaming of chocolate cheese and see how you can avoid buying everything from Trader Joe’s.
Set a budget
As a personal finance writer, it is my responsibility to remind you that you can visit Trader Joe’s with a predetermined dollar amount and only buy items that fall within that budget.
However, I’m pretty sure you’re reading this because that strategy didn’t work for you.
Moving on!
Allow yourself one off-list purchase
I won’t advise you to make a shopping list because you’ve probably already thought about it. You might even have used the Trader Joe Fearless Flyer shopping list , which just has so many delectable Trader Joe products like Everything But Greek Yogurt Sauce and seasonal offers like plant-filled ceramic skulls. (Ideal for Halloween, potentially injuring plants that you will either have to discard or replant after skull season ends.)
The point is, for some people, shopping lists are a starting point, not a stopping point. If you log into Trader Joe’s with a 10-item shopping list and exit with a full item in your cart, it’s time to set a new rule: you get one impulse buy . One off-the-list purchase, which means you can spend your entire shopping trip evaluating your options and deciding what you want the most.
In theory, this strategy makes shopping more fun – or at least that’s what our parents told us when they dragged us through the grocery store and told us we could choose one treat at the end.
Order online
Yes, I know Trader Joe’s doesn’t place online orders – and it ended its limited grocery delivery service earlier this year. As store president (great name) John Bazalon explains in the Inside Trader Joe podcast :
People cannot understand, “Why aren’t you selling products on the Internet? Why don’t you only wholesale to China? They need a bunch of your products. Why don’t you just send trucks and food shipments to other countries and make tons of money? “It’s like it’s not what Trader Joe’s is, you know, for us, the store is our brand and our products work best when sold as part of the store’s overall customer service.
However, there are still ways to order your favorite Trader Joe products online. Amazon has an entire section dedicated to selling third party trader Joe . As Takeout reports, one family made $ 30,000 reselling Trader Joe’s condiments over the Internet – so perhaps your solution to Trader Joe’s overspending is to turn excess groceries into some sort of retail arbitrage.
You can also use online grocery delivery services like Postmates and Instacart to get your Trader Joe’s fix. Make sure you tip your carrier, and make sure you choose a service that really treats your tip as a tip and not “part of your carrier’s minimum payment.” (At the time of this writing, both Postmates and Instacart are giving workers earned tips.)
When you order products online, you can see how much you are spending when you add items to your cart (and remove items as needed to stay within your budget). Plus, you’ll be less tempted by bezel displays, eye-level merchandise, and all the other tricks that mainstream retailers use to convince you to make an impulse purchase.
Of course, you still have to deal with recommended products, add-ons and all the gimmicks that online stores use, but there is no way to shop without dealing with such things, so get used to it.
Refrain
If you’ve already tried some of the tips on this list and still can’t stop spending money at Trader Joe’s, one tip remains: just stop shopping there.
In Money , Nina Semchuk explains why she decided to stop shopping at Marshall’s and Trader Joe’s:
These are the places of my money pit. As I walk through the door, my tiny “buy” list flies out the window as discounted prices — for things I don’t even need — mesmerize me. Piles of things materialize in my cart, and I am spending three times my planned budget.
This is because I belong to what the writer Gretchen Rubin calls a “teetotaler.” Her theory is that some of us are better off stopping something cold than allowing ourselves to be pampered infrequently. It is easier for teetotalers to give up something completely than to try to soften the behavior, because then we are trapped in thinking, “So, when can I do this next time?”
If your Trader Joe’s trips make you feel less “worried about all of Trader Joe’s food you’re about to eat” and more “I can’t believe how much money I spent, I swore I wouldn’t do this anymore,” you can choose another grocery store.
Plus, in some cases, the products come from the same suppliers and / or contain the same ingredients! As Eater reports:
The ingredients in Stacy’s Simply Naked Pita Chips, for example, are exactly the same as in Trader’s Joe Pita Chips with Sea Salt. Stacy’s is actually owned by Frito-Lay Inc, another subsidiary of PepsiCo. Likewise, PepsiCo’s Mighty Mango. Naked Juice contains the same ingredients as the Trader Joe version, and the Naked Juice Green Machine drink is almost the same as Trader Joe’s Very Green Juice, with less banana puree and no chlorella or cabbage.
If you continue to overspend on Trader Joe’s despite your best efforts to create budgets, lists, and rules, it might be time to give TJ a little break. Everything will be fine. Unsubscribe from the Fearless newsletter and / or printed brochure , stop imagining what it would be like to have baked chocolate chip orange ricotta cooked in front of your refrigerator with a fork, and start fantasizing about how much money you will save instead.
If you have any other suggestions on how to avoid overspending on Trader Joe’s – or want to share your biggest and most extravagant TJ catch – let us know!