There was a government study a while back that showed that less than half of American adults can correctly calculate the most economical size of packaged rice to buy at their local grocery store. How scary is that? The majority assumed the biggest bag of rice was the best buy. In the same study only 20% of adults could calculate a taxi fare trip correctly.

Lets do a little math test. Lets make a margarita. It calls for varying amounts of lime juice, grand marnier, and tequila. You need twice as much tequila as grand marnier lime juice. The ratio is 2:1:1

Now, how many pints of each do you need to make a gallon of this margarita?

Measures:

8 ounces (oz.) = 1 cup
2 cups = 1 pint
2 pints = 1 quart
4 quarts = 1 gallon

So whats the answer?

I will tell you at the end of the article.

So I want you to stop for a minute and think about how much money could possibly be going down the drain by not really paying close attention to economics at the grocery store. Here is a great example that I can think of. When I was in college I lived in a house with 5 guys. Yeah, 5 guys. We had a pool of house money for things like milk, bread, and toilet paper. When there are 5 guys living in a house, they go through a lot of toilet paper. One of the roommates downstairs’ girlfriend basically lived at our house and so we essentially had 6 people in the house. One day my roommate who normally did the shopping and I went to king soopers and in the TP aisle he grabbed the huge pack of the TP we normally bought. It was 16 rolls for $6.50 ish. Well as it turns out for this particular brand of toilet paper King’s has a special on their 4 packs that makes them almost perpetually $1.00 per 4 pack with soopercard. I of course smacked him and so we started throwing packs of toilet paper at each other back and forth in the aisle. Im sure KS management appreciated that.

The moral of the story is that is $2.50 that we could have been wasting every week for a year (I honestly can’t remember, nor would I expect to remember the specifics of what TP package we had at any given time). Thats $130/year. Assuming you make similar mistakes with milk and other products even with smaller margins and you are talking hundreds(thousands even if you’re a name brand buyer) of dollars every year.

There is some good news

Most supermarkets have a “price per ounce” little marker in super small print on their tags. Voila, they do the hard work for you! Failure to look at these crosses the line over into lazy. So what excuse do you have now?

…But Jesse, Im in a hurry
Seeing as you could save $2 by spending 30 seconds looking at prices that comes out to $240/hr return on your time. That good enough for you?

…But Jesse you said yourself that you don’t buy cheap toilet paper
I didnt say buy the cheapest toilet paper, I said buy the most economical size for whatever you like.

…But Jesse, Name brands are better
When it comes to most things, check the ingredients. Are the ingredients the same? Ok then its not better.

…But Jesse, bulk is just easier to deal with than a bunch of individual packages
Terrible excuse

And now for the answer you’ve all been looking for:
4 Pints tequila, 2 pints grand marnier, 2 pints lime juice

You got it right, right?

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