Give Yourself a Week’s Vacation with Grocery Pickup

We’ve been trying grocery pickup the last couple months and I’m here to tell you it warrants serious consideration as a lifestyle optimization hack for everyone and those on the path to Financial Independence, especially.

Lifestyle Optimization is one of the most valuable skills to develop if you chose to pursue Financial Independence. At its essence this skill involves eliminating or minimizing activities in your life that don’t bring you happiness, while adding or maximizing those that do.

The power of lifestyle optimization is that you find ways to meet your needs while investing minimal resources (time and money), and (this is the most important), without depriving yourself. Experiencing the benefits without sacrifice, can make behavioral changes really stick.

Grocery shopping falls into the category of chores that most of us don’t like to do, but have to. I mean you gotta put food on the table somehow, right? Unless you are a farmer, or homesteader, you are destined to hit the grocery store sooner or later. Personally, I actually didn’t mind grocery shopping too much, but then we added two young kids to the mix and now we risk our sanity when we try to brave the grocery store with them.

How Grocery Pickup Works

We’ve been using the grocery pickup option available from Wal-Mart. This is a FREE service they offer. It’s worth noting that I don’t have an affiliate relationship with Wal-Mart, or have any ulterior motives here. I am just a big fan so far.

The process is easy. You simply go online (or app) reserve a pickup time (typically, an hour window as early as the next day) and add your groceries to your cart. You will get an email that your order is ready and you then arrive within the reserved time window and pull into a designated spot. An employee comes to your window and confirms your order and if any substitutions were required (more on this below). They then bring out your groceries and load them into your vehicle. You literally don’t have to lift a finger until you get home.

In our experience the whole operation takes on average 10 minutes or less from the time your arrive. It takes a couple minutes to add the items to your online cart the day before; however, it doesn’t take any longer than writing a grocery list out. The app will also keep your most frequently purchased items in a favorites list that make it even simpler to repurchase.

As for the previously mentioned substitutions. If they run out of a product they will substitute a similar product at the same… or lessor price.
You can also not allow substitutions if you are a stickler for exactly what you wanted or reject the substitution at pickup. We do allow substitutions and it has worked in our favor so far. We typically buy generic store brand as often as possible. So when a substitution occurs, it is often a name brand product in place of the generic one, at the generic product’s price. That’s a win!

I always seem to change my mind or forget to add items to the list. Does this present any issues? Nope. In our experience we have up until 1:45 am the day of pickup to update the order.

The Stats

According to Statista, Americans visit the grocery store on average 1.6 times per week and spend an average of 43 minutes there. Adding that up, the average American would make 83 trips to the store a year, totaling around 60 hours.

For the average American, as defined above, grocery pickup would save an average of 33 minutes per trip. At 83 trips per year, that frees up roughly 45 hours per year. Since grocery shopping is more like a job than a hobby, its like giving yourself an extra week of vacation a year!

Potential Added Benefits

By staying out of the store, we don’t have the option to go “off the list” and add whatever item catches our eye. In theory, eliminating this compulsive buying should save us money. In truth, it is much harder to be certain. This is because we often add household items (dish detergent, paper products, etc.) when we physically go into the store, and we haven’t done this yet with a pickup order.

What could you do with an extra hour a week? Depending on how you spend that time the overall benefits can be magnified. You could spend that time working on your side hustle. Better yet, you could add a good workout to improve your health. Best of all you could spend that time connecting with your family and friends.

The Cons

While the advantages of grocery pickup are enticing, there are some tradeoffs. Produce selection is out of your control. For most items this isn’t an issue, but when it comes to produce, you are trusting someone to pick ripe, high quality ingredients. We really haven’t had any quality issues; however, if I was planning a special meal, where the quality of ingredients is paramount, then I would forgo grocery pickup.

Proper planning is key. You need to know exactly what your needs are, as you can’t add any last minute items the day of the pickup without physically going in the store. But in reality, you should be thoroughly planning your purchases ahead of time anyways.

You still need to drive to the store. This is easy for us since we have a Wal-Mart that offers the service nearby. However, I appreciate that this may not be the case for everyone. There are grocery delivery services that can fill this need for an added fee. Depending on your situation you may find the time savings associated with the delivery may be well worth it.

Summary

We love grocery pickup so far. Anything that adds convenience and simplicity are more than welcome in our lives. The required planning helps reinforce the idea of spending money intentionally (i.e. reducing compulsive spending). Most importantly, for many of us with jam packed calendar, and particularly those of us with kids, the idea of getting an extra hour a week is hard to beat. Last time I checked, you couldn’t place an order for more time! I only wish we had discovered it sooner!