The cost of living in South Africa has risen dramatically over the past few years to the point that taking yourself out on a date may seem as wasteful expenditure.
In the past, and speaking for myself, I was not the one to mind where I shopped for my groceries.
I would rock-up at a store and start piling up the trolley with whatever merchandise I desired, and often times I didn’t even need some of the items on my shopping list.
Because I had money in my account, I would spend away without any care in the world. But hey, in recent months I have had to have a rethink and to cut on a lot of things by learning to live within my means.
I have even adopted my mother’s way of shopping: to be a miser, and to save every cent which in the past I would have thought to be a ridiculous thing to do. I hope she never reads this statement of confession.
You see if we had those excessive coupon shopper television programmes as they have in America, my mother would probably be crowned as SA queen of couponing.
I often dread going shopping with her because we would be at a butchery isle in and she would start counting and comparing the number of chicken pieces inside every braaipack.
When we reach home, and before we put the meat in the freezer, we are directed to count and cut bigger pieces into smaller pieces, and to store them in different containers.
This helps her know how long the meat would stretch until she has to go shopping again.
But the problem comes when we have visitors and we have to mess up with her plans by cooking extra meat – not budgeted for.
Another way of forcing the meat to stretch longer, she also adds vegetables to each meal to ensure we have enough food to fill our stomachs without having to complain about small pieces of meat served.
Her favourite serving is stew. We grew-up eating all kinds of stew you can think of.
Did I mention this? Before we leave home for grocery shopping, she has a compiled list of all the things she needs and where to buy them?
We would buy sugar from one store and then move to yet another store to buy mealie meal and tea bags because she gets to save a few rands.
I won’t say this to her face, but I have since adopted her saving methods since everything has become expensive.
I jumped with joy the other day when economic analysts announced petrol price might go down next month.
I don’t care by how much it will decrease, as long as it doesn’t go up again. This is music to my ears.
We all feel the pinch. I read an article the other day about a group of pensioners from KZN who wrote a memorandum to parliament demanding their pension payout this year to include a 13th cheque.
In the memorandum, they plead with the government to increase their pension grant of R1 700 to R8 000 a month.
Someone might think this is absurd, but hey it is worth a try. We could all do with an extra buck.
Let me tell you this, my mother’s ways of saving are the best.
