As I out of the supermarket with a full cart of groceries for just 400 shekels this morning, I was thinking about sharing the different ways I saved on this purchase with you.
Then I realized that it might be more helpful for you if I detail each strategy separately.
The first thing that would surprise people is the store I was shopping at: Shufersal. This is one of Israel’s more expensive supermarket chains, so why am I shopping there?
A common perk that companies give to workers in Israel are vouchers towards lunch for the days they work; ours is called Ten Bis.
For years we didn’t get much use out of this perk, since the daily sum wasn’t enough to cover whatever my husband would have wanted to eat at the providers that accepted them. It was cheaper for him to take lunch from home than to pay out of pocket to subsidize the restaurant meal.
At some point the policy changed, and the Ten Bis credits could be used toward food purchases at specific supermarkets (naturally, only the expensive ones like Shufersal); the money for the month was loaded for each employee at the beginning of the month. This was good news, as finally this perk could benefit our family food budget.
For a few years, my husband would load the sum onto paper coupons loaded for 100 or 200 shekels each. Once printed, they were able to be used for months. I had to keep a running balance in my mind as I shopped, since I wanted to stay very close to the voucher amounts.
However, I began having problems with the printed vouchers occasionally not scanning properly. It was unpredictable and very frustrating to get up to the register only to find out that the coupons weren’t usable. (One time someone behind me in line saw this and offered to pay for my purchases for me; after thanking him for his thoughtfulness, I reassured him I had enough money, it was just a technical issue.) I began dreading paying with them, not knowing if they would go through at the checkout or not.
We applied for refunds for these unused coupons that showed error codes when scanned, but never got money back for any of them, so those were a complete loss of hundreds of shekels.
Also, if the coupons were lost, damaged or you didn’t use them in time, you would lose the value of them.
One day I was complaining to my husband about the coupons not predictably scanning, and he told me there is an option to load the lunch credits onto a supermarket card, and asked me if I wanted him to do that. I did, and I’ve been really happy with this option. It allows me to pay exactly for what I’ve bought, and not have to add on items to round off to the coupon amount.
The only caveat that I was unaware of for the first couple of months, is that when there’s a balance remaining at the end of the month, it disappears on the first of the new month. I purposely didn’t use my full balance since I didn’t need it at that time, planning to save it for the following month. The first time teh money from the previous month disappeared I thought I must not have remembered my balance correctly, but the second month I had left several hundred shekels on my card so I was positive it was gone. I was disappointed that I hadn’t realized this from the beginning, but that was my own lack of awareness of the parameters of using the card. Now I’m careful to spend the balance before the end of the month.
Overall, shopping with the Ten Bis card has been easy and drama free. No more technical payment refusals, and the money loads onto the card without having to do anything extra like print them out.
You have to register at the supermarket from the list of available stores before you can use this. Sign up! You can buy a lot more in groceries than the prepared food you would otherwise get.
In my next posts, I’ll share about shopping strategies that work even in an expensive supermarket.
Avivah
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