Shannon Saves Series: ALDI

"I'd like a game show with millionaires on it, and they have to play with their own money, and they can't win money, they can only lose 'til one them goes completely broke, and the show's called 'Ha Ha, Now You're Poor.' I'd watch that show every day.  'What time is it?'  'It's Ha, Ha, Now You're Poor time'!"

--Daniel Tosh

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We are not poor.  To label ourselves as such would be an insult to people who actually are poor.  Poverty is all relative, and one person's poor is another person's filthy rich, especially when we consider the plight of those in other parts of the world.  But by almost every possible standard known to humankind, my family is incredibly lucky.

Still, like everyone, we are finding that our money just doesn't go as far as it used to.  You just can't get as much bang for your buck when it comes to gasoline, utilities, and clothing.  And you're definitely paying a lot more for food than you used to.

Which is why I recently started shopping at discount grocery store Aldi.  As an explanation for those who don't live in an Aldi region, Aldi is a grocery store owned by a German parent company, and it is somehow affiliated with Trader Joe's.  Rumor has it that some TJ's items are repackaged and sold under a different label for much cheaper at Aldi. 

The Daniel Tosh "Ha, Ha, Now You're Poor" joke came to my mind the first time I shopped at Aldi. Like, Hi there, you no longer deserve to shop in a nice grocery store, the kind with pretty displays and employees who bag your groceries for you. 

So, yeah, at Aldi you have to bag your own groceries.  Which, actually, I kind of like, because the bagging always holds up the line at regular grocery stores.  Oh, and if you don't bring your own grocery receptacles to Aldi, you have to pay for the bags.

Also at Aldi, you have to pay a quarter for your cart.  The carts are all lined up and locked together, and then when you put in a quarter, your cart is freed from the pack.  The quarter sits in the little holder on the cart until you return your cart after shopping, and then you get your quarter back.  The funny thing is, you wouldn't really think a quarter would be a deterrent to leaving your shopping cart rolling around the parking lot, but somehow everybody returns their carts.  It's an odd psychological phenomenon. 

My friend Dana describes Aldi as "like shopping in Communist Russia."  Aside from the no-frills bagging and the added cart security, the store itself has a very austere look.  Grocery items are piled in neat stacks and boxes.  No attempt is made to make the displays look fancy or inviting.  There are no choices to be made as to which brand you might buy, because they only have one kind of everything.

But damn if it isn't the best store ever.  Everything is so cheap.  Canned goods are like 55 cents!  Bread is a dollar!  Spaghetti sauce is 99 cents! 

I feel like a sucker for having ever shopped anywhere else! 

Also, it's really comical at Aldi, because all the products have silly off-brand names.  The product logos are designed to look like other national brands.  Let's take this seasonal example:

You might have thought this frosting was made by Betty Crocker.  But no:

It's Baker's Corner!  But look at that!  $1.29!  Such a deal! 

(Of course I don't need that particular item, so buying it would be a bad deal.  That's a potential problem with Aldi: the "I'll buy it because it's cheap" phenomenon.) 

Here are some more examples of Aldi's wannabe brands, taken from a diagram off the Aldi website:

(I'm glad the Tombstone pizza lookalike just has a generic-sounding Italian name, and not like "Gravesite" or something.)

And, you know, I kind of like the fact that you can pop in and out of Aldi so quickly.  There are no outside distractions like at the grocery store, and the line moves quickly.  I can say yes when Nathan begs for some random treat, because it's so cheap anyway.  (Unfortunately I end up eating that treat myself, but that's probably my shortcoming and not Aldi's.) 

It's not likely that you could do all your grocery shopping at Aldi, because they don't have everything, and I'm told the selection varies from visit to visit.  But I figure if I can make a sizable dent in my grocery costs by buying some things at Aldi, that's better than nothing. 

Oh, and am I the only one that finds "Special Meat Buy Days" incredibly awkward-sounding?