Ways to Save Money in Cambridge on Study Abroad

As many of you know, my highlight of every week at MIT is going grocery shopping – and finding ways to somehow take advantage of every sale possible (i.e. reduced price produce, milk at the gas station, showing up to the store at 7 AM on a Friday because I read their new weekly ads posted at 6AM, bargaining with MacGregor Convenience to get a gallon of milk for 25 cents, etc.) Yeah, you know what I mean. This is serious shopping.

So now that I’m in the other Cambridge (where things tend to cost more $$$), I’ve found it an extra challenge to really enjoy my hobby, but I’m working hard to take advantage of every opportunity I get. So I’ll start with some general advice and then expand the last bits in more detail.

Step 1) Bring money (already converted!).  It’s free to convert it at Harvard’s Bank of America, but then they charge arms and legs to convert it once you get here. Okay it’s somewhere between 1 to 3%, but still.

Step 2) Bring lots of clothing because the prices are way too expensive to buy anything clothing related. Hats and socks. Lots of hats and socks. And two jackets. I wore both today. Also, do anything to get a free shirt. Anything. (Save-energy groups tend to be good in this area).

Step 3) Shop exclusively and selectively at Sainsbury’s for food! Sainsbury’s is like Shaws, but really interesting (more to come).

Step 4) And get just some items from Caff, the college cafeteria.

Alright, about Sainsbury’s. So Sainsbury’s is amazing because of 1) its selectively good prices and 2) it has the most amazing self-checkout system. Let’s start with 2: the self-checkout system.

This isn’t even half the self-checkout stations.

So Cambridge is tiny, and so that means the stores have to be extra tiny – even the rather big stores. So imagine Sainsbury’s (a “big” store) like a Shaws that gets crushed and squeezed so much that it fits in a quarter of the size. Now imagine like 4 times more people in and out and in and out. Now consider how little space there is for checkout. Problem? Not really. Because Sainsbury’s has the coolest checkout ever: self-checkout. Sure, Shaws has a self-checkout that nobody almost every uses. We Americans are generally far too lazy to actually check out food ourselves, but here – let’s face it – you can wait and wait in line or do the self-checkout.

Now, I wouldn’t consider myself extremely lazy because I have tried to use the self-checkout at Shaws, but it doesn’t work for me. You see every time that I try to swipe “reduced price produce” at Shaws (about half my items…) a manager guy (whom I usually have to find) has to come over, type in a password, enter in the price, and then stand there to repeat the process for all my other items. It’s more like “assisted self-checkout” – a complete paradox and failure of Shaws.

But Sainsbury’s has it right. With the huge flux of people they always have somebody close on duty and with economies of self-checkout (and unfortunately no reduced price produce as their produce turnover averages just a couple of hours) the self-checkout really works. Of course, it still gets backed up because they close at 5 on Sundays and I went last week at 4:50. I think the town flash-mobbed Sainsbury’s. I have never seen so many people buying booze and groceries at the same time in my life.

Alright, so that’s the self-checkout line, so I’ll go back and try to explain how to shop at Sainsbury’s. First though, you should know that 1 US dollar is right now about .64 pounds = 64 pence. So I’ll try to quote the prices in British units so you can appreciate the vicarious feeling I get shopping pretending I’m in America.

So for starters, the bananas are almost Trader Joes prices. I get 7 bananas for 80 pence. (About 15% more). The rest of the fruit is expensive, and I only get clementines because I need the vitamin C, and they pack well, saving lunch money.

The bread is super cheap. You want to go for the Sainsbury’s Basics bread for which it costs 50 pence a loaf, whole grain. And this isn’t Shaw’s polluted modified bread; this is actual bread. Good thing I freeze bread and then toast it because it only is supposed to last for like 5 days at max, but I can almost finish it in that time. Note: the loaves are cut into super thin slices, so you really get more slices per loaf. This also means you get a better ratio of peanut butter/ jam/honey to toast. And since the slices are thinner, it toasts faster! (Somebody keeps turning the toaster to 7, so I keep burning it – it kind of smokes, but smells nice I guess. I’m working on remembering to check the toaster…).

The milk is unfortunately more expensive. In fact, they charge more for skim milk than anything else, so that’s a downside. And they don’t understand how I like milk. In America I’ve often downed 2 gallons a week, but that’s hard to do here because skim milk comes only in 4 pint sizes. So I’ve cut back on the milk – and thus the cereal (which isn’t priced great but at least doesn’t waste cardboard packaging on boxes of 50%+ air).

They must have skinny cows!

Instead of milk, I have fulfilled my endless demand for dairy by switching to Sainsbury’s yogurt. For 1 pound, I get a variety six pack of yogurt, which tends to disappear pretty quickly. Not as cheap as Shaw’s low fat tub size of yogurt, but decent.

I have also found Sainsbury’s to have a couple other good deals compared to America: can of rice pudding 13 pence, pack of 30 cookies (to share!) 40 pence, and soups 30-60 pence. The meat is way too expensive, so I usually resort to Caff – the next subject to talk about.

So Caff is outright goofy when it goes to prices. The weekday vegetable dish is always 1.89. The weekday meat dishes are always 2 to 2.25. And these prices have nothing to do with quality, quantity, or cost to make. As such there are subtle tricks to making the most out of Caff…

First of all, don’t eat any other meal on Saturdays except brunch. Brunch is exceptionally cheap. With eggs, toast (literally fried toast), mushrooms (so delicious), sausage, vegetable sausage (actually good), and a waffle (more like a desert here) it runs about 2.75 pounds. So again, don’t eat anything else besides brunch on Saturday.

The next tip is to try to avoid Caff as much as possible all other times, especially Sundays where they charge the same price for about two slices of turkey. You’ll leave hungry.

Sometimes though, you can win. You see, I’ve learned that you can get the “filling” (occasionally beef curry) for 75 pence that’s pretty much has more food than the whole meat meal for 2.25. Unfortunately, the filling is only available for lunch – and be careful. You don’t want to get a filling that you don’t like. I don’t eat sweet potatoes. They put sweet potatoes is soooo many things. Eating discretion is advised.

And sometimes the dishes give big enough portions. A good trick to “be kind” and let other people pass you and line to watch what the portion sizes are and then use this to your advantage. I’ve also learned that you can well strain the 76 pence soup that you can heap over in your bowl and get at least a “pound” of meat.

Also, bring your own ketchup to Caff. They charge 30 pence for ketchup regardless of how much you put on the potatoes.

So in conclusion, I’m still working and enjoying being frugal. I win some and lose some (took some big risks on the vegetable surprise) but in generally I’m learning the system and improving. Be well.