What I saved when I decided to swap Tesco for Aldi 

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For a while the convenience of online shopping made us veer back to using Tesco on a weekly basis. Then I noticed that our spend was creeping up and up, despite not buying many more treats at shopping.

I love saving money, as you may already know! For me £1 saved is the same as £1 earned, even if it does take a little more time sometimes. I love getting the most out of my money but sometimes convenience outweighs the moneysaving for me.

As Daisy has FPIES we need some specialist food with our weekly shop and most of the items I wanted were available in Tesco. This made it even more convenient for us. Until one day I was spending £60-£70 on a weeks shopping, with not much to show for it…

This sent me back to Aldi and inspired me to write this post – what happened when I decided to swap Tesco for Aldi? Did I really save money? Did I use a lot more time? This is a post from 2017 that has been recently updated to answer some questions about Aldi that visitors often have.

What happened when I decided to swap Tesco for Aldi?

I saved money. The end.

Kidding. Well, I’m not kidding about the money saving! But imagine if the post just finished there? I said I made the Aldi switch and that was it! Bye.

Firstly, when I decided to swap Tesco for Aldi I had to get myself back in the mindset of visiting the supermarket. Online shopping is really convenient, as you can do it anytime, without leaving home. However, by switching up our routine a little it has been perfectly fine for either myself or Thomas to visit Aldi once a week. Sometimes even less! 

I’m still meal planning frequently and this definitely helps with the food shopping. I wanted to save money on my food shopping though so needs must!

I found that I have had to change my mindset when I decided to swap Tesco for Aldi. In recent months I had convinced myself that the saving at Aldi wasn’t worth the additional time.

However, as Aldi is small, and the tills run so efficiently, we can be in and out of the store and home again within 30 minutes. This is around the same time it takes me to complete an online shop now Tesco have improved their website…!

Also, I had told myself that Aldi didn’t have all of the items that we needed. I was wrong. They have almond milk and lots of other dairy free items for Daisy. Also, their own range of items are often dairy free too – with some really surprising finds.

This means that I’ve saving a small fortune compared to buying the branded items in Tesco. We have had to make a few changes and I’ve done a little more cooking from scratch but I find this is better for our weight and health anyway.

Before writing this post I decided to swap Tesco for Aldi for an entire month, although we had a holiday in the middle. On the basis of those shops I saved the following:

Week 1 Shop – 28%

Week 2 Shop – 33%

Post holiday Shop – 27%

Now as you can probably tell those are some significant savings. While each week I spent between £45 and £55 we got suitable items for Daisy, treats for ourselves and even more fresh fruit & vegetables than normal. I worked out our spend by looking at like for like items in Tesco.

The areas where we made the biggest savings when we decided to swap Tesco for Aldi were:

Baby products (wipes, snacks, pouches)

Fruit & vegetables (the super 6 helps with this)

Meat (same quality – 5% beef mince for example but either more for our money or cheaper items)

Toiletries (toilet rolls, bubble bath etc)

As you can see our decision to swap Tesco for Aldi was a good one. We are getting almost 1/4 of our monthly food for free compared to the previous shopping at Tesco in monetary terms.

This is fantastic and seeing it in percentage terms will definitely inspire me to keep shopping at Aldi – especially as Thomas is going to be doing most of the shopping!

The main downside to letting my husband do the shopping is sometimes he brings home a few too many treats… As you can see from the picture below! There are a few items pictured that didn’t come from Aldi (homemade jam, Cravendale milk, fruit shoots, chocolates from Centerparcs) but the rest of the items in the photograph were just part of a shop that cost £45!

I do find that the people in store can be a little snobby, which is unusual. I’m not sure if it is because of the price of the best quality items, or something else, but posh people seem to love my local Aldi.

If you want to see if you can save money then why not set yourself a week challenge? Just pop in store, for one week, and see how you get on. Last year we were using Aldi LOTS but since this post things have changed and we have gone back to Tesco quite a bit. This is the second time this has happened now.

I’m always on a bit of a save campaign but sometimes time is super important too. Also, Tesco seems to be advertising to me lots on social media. I’ve even seen adverts for the first time recently reminding me that I can still add items to my shop.

Why are products from Aldi so much cheaper than shops like Tesco?

I assume this is because Aldi has lower overheads, smaller stores, less land, lower fees etc. Also, I think a lot of the products are their own bread, rather than selling branded goods. Presumably, this makes for a better profit margin and thus bigger savings to pass on to customers.

Aldi commonly asked questions

Do Aldi sell Cravendale milk?

My local Aldi sell filtered milk, it is not Cravendale but we’ve not found much of a difference taste wise!

What day does the Aldi super 6 change?

Each two weeks Aldi off 6 fruit and vegetables that are on a special offer. Sometimes these offers are AMAZING, and other times less so, however, there are great savings to be made if you plan some of your weekly meals around these offers.

There are also special offers on meat and fish too.

At the time of writing this post the Aldi Super 6 offers change every two weeks, usually on a Thursday.

Does shopping at Aldi save money?

For us yes! I definitely think it helps that there aren’t so many brands to get lured in to buying, and the product range is much smaller than shopping at a larger supermarket.

How much cheaper is Aldi?

We save around 30%, on average, depending on whether we buy a lot of branded items or not.

Want some other ways to save money on groceries? Check out these posts:

Ridiculously easy ways to cut food waste

Meal planning with mince

If you’re looking to make some extra money online then be sure to check out my post of great ways to make and save money.

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