If you hadn’t noticed there’s been a VAT rise in the UK. Actually, you can’t fail to miss it. Even if you haven’t noticed it while out shopping, the VAT rise has spent so much time in the news that you’d have to be in an advanced vegetative state to miss it. For a lot of us who are faced with the �Big’ household shop, the VAT rise won’t have hit yet. A lot of stores have absorbed the price rises, allowing us to wade through the post-Christmas flurry of bills which are now falling faster than the snow did in December. However, the supermarkets and high street stores can’t or won’t continue to �absorb’ the VAT rise. In a few months time, we might all get a nasty shock at the supermarket checkout � and that doesn’t mean the assistant is going to be smiling for once.
If you are facing a Saturday afternoon braving the supermarket to complete the �Big Shop’, that feeling will be a sinking one. This weekly, monthly or twice monthly shop is a chore. However much you love shopping, the big shop is one outing most of us could do without. Try explaining that to a household full of husbands and children who apparently could work their way through the European food surplus without a second thought. In between those big shops we’re constantly plagued with little ones which not only add to our expenditure, but add to our busy days. The seemingly constant re-stocking with bread, milk, cat food or �something quick for dinner’, all add up - and not just financially.
If the demands on your time and household budget are already tight, the chances are that you are already looking for ways to make some cost and time savings. Online grocery shopping is an option that a lot of people trying to juggle work, school runs, after school runs and �out-after-curfew-teenage-taxi-runs’ have found useful. There is no denying that the home food delivery services have great benefits - for the big shop at least. The problem is that they are hopelessly un-economical for the un-planned little shopping trips that really eat into our valuable, scarce time and our budgets. Thankfully, the humble milk man (or woman) can provide a fantastic solution. Traditional milk deliveries have been under threat for a long time; in order to compete dairies have developed their services to offer grocery essentials. With product ranges growing all the time, some offer up to 250 products available to order online. From cat food to kitchen foil, bread, milk, juice and cereal, it’s surprising just what you can order and have delivered promptly by your local milkman. These delivery services have a number of advantages over nearly every other home delivery service. You can order as late as nine pm for next day delivery and there is no delivery charge! For anyone looking to save time and money in 2011, these small but cost effective deliveries have to be an option.
