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Manchester Evening News

Business

Hana Kelly

'I spent £25 on essentials at Savers and realised how much cash I've wasted'

Savers Tesco Boots Garnier (Organization) NIVEA Aldi BM (Organization) Poundland

It used to be common to shop around for your weekly shop, getting your bread from the bakery, sausages from the butchers, and fruit and veg from the greengrocers. But the relentless growth of supermarkets - offering everything from carrots to toothpaste at reliable prices - has weakened this tradition.

While my nana still heads to Aldi for half of her groceries and the big Tesco for the rest, perhaps stopping in on the butchers, it's not something I've been doing routinely.

However, as we all know, the average supermarket shop has increased significantly over the last six months. Research by Which? suggests that some products have gone up by around 20 percent, while, due to the inflation increase, the weekly shop could be costing around £400 extra across the year.

With that in mind, I decided to do some shopping around. While I'd normally add household items and toiletries onto my food shop at the supermarket without thinking too much about it, this week I headed to Savers.

Savers doesn't get talked about as much as the likes of B&M, Home Bargain, Poundland and Quality Save, who each have a strong presence in Greater Manchester.

But with health and beauty stores in places including Manchester city centre, Bury, Oldham, Openshaw, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Stalybridge and Walkden, the chain, which belongs to the same parent company as Superdrug and the Perfume Shop, is worth checking out.

I bought a variety of everyday products, from hayfever tablets to my favourite shampoo and some laundry tabs, at Savers in Fallowfield.

I found they had a wide variety of products and while, arguably, the best savings can be made by buying in bulk, I don’t have the kind of budget that allows for it.

I purchased branded products, which, more often than not, are dearer than supermarket own brands, sticking to what I'd normally buy, and saw a price difference of £13.11.

That said, some products available in Savers come in different sizes, so I did the maths and worked out these products priced per unit to work out the actual price difference. However, with different sizing taken into account, the difference in the shop was still around £13.

I saved £9 alone on buying these products at Savers (Hana Kelly)

The biggest price differences I noted were in self-care items, more so than homecare. My favourite shampoo and conditioner bottles, from the Garnier Aloe Vera Hair Food line, each cost only £2.99 at Savers, but £6 at supermarkets and at Boots.

Nivea micellar water, a great alternative to using face wipes, was priced at £2.99 at Savers but was £5 at both Tesco and Asda. Between these three products, I saved £9.

Another place where I saw a great saving was on hayfever tablets. As a true sufferer of hayfever, I take hayfever tablets every day for what feels like half of the year. If caught without them, local shops are happy to charge anywhere between £3 and £5 to stop me sneezing and my eyes swelling.

But, at Savers, a whole month’s supply of tablets was only £1. At Boots, you can get 14 days worth for a quid, at Tesco a month’s supply costs £2.75. As anyone who suffers from hay fever knows, a handy packet of Kleenex can be a lifesaver. It cost just a £1 for a pack of eight at Savers - half of what I would have paid at Tesco.

A hayfever sufferer's dream combo (Hana Kelly)

The prices started to plateau, however, when I compared my household items prices. While there were miniscule differences per millilitre of washing up liquid, we’re talking points of a penny difference, a lot of the prices remained consistent across shops.

The only, perhaps slightly odd, difference I noticed was the price of dishwasher tablets. I bought a pack of 10 for £1. This same box of 10 costs £2.99 elsewhere and if you buy in bulk, say 220 for £45.50 direct from Finish’s website, the price per tablet is more than double what you’d pay at Savers: 21p per tablet over 10p per tablet.

Interested in saving on shopping? Read more experiences of discounters in Greater Manchester here:

Buying household and self-care products is always a tricky one because they aren’t products you necessarily need to buy weekly - at least they aren’t for me. However, the price differences I have seen in buying self-care products from Savers, rather than from the supermarket, has made me realise that there is a saving to be made from shopping around.

While I’ll still be adding laundry tabs and washing up liquid onto my weekly shop, if and when needed, my shampoo, makeup remover and other bits and bobs for self care will be bought separately. - probably at Savers.