Use Store Cards: Many stores offer customer cards similar to that seen in grocery stores that offer rewards for frequently shopping with them. Some offer a certain percentage off of your purchase, and others offer points or gift certificates at certain benchmark spending levels. Try and take advantage of store cards at stores that offer you cheap rates to begin with so that you can really kick the saving up a notch.
Look for Sales: Just like a grocery store, most vitamin stores offer periodic sales on certain vitamins and supplements. Keep an eye out and when you see a vitamin that’s already on your shopping list and go grab it! Also, usually when a new shipment of vitamins comes in, or the store decides to discontinue selling a particular brand, many will mark what’s left as “clearance” and sell the item at a greatly reduced price. Keep those eyes open!
Look for combinations: Take a look at the ingredient list of a multi-vitamin. If you look closely, you’ll see a bunch of vitamins and nutrients that are being sold individually in the store. As an academic exercise, if you have some free time, take a few ingredients off that list and find them being sold individually in the store. Just add up the prices and you’ll see very quickly how much money you’re saving by buying combination packages of vitamins. Keep in mind that not only multi-vitamins come packaged in combinations, there are many targeted combinations out there – just look around!
Get vitamins from natural sources: I’m sure you’ve heard this before but as you know vitamins are great, but they’re not better than the real thing. Keep in mind that the foods you eat like vegetables, orange juice and milk, contain vitamins. If you drink enough orange juice, you may not need an extra Vitamin-C tablet each day. This will require some work, but you may find out that you’re getting too much of a good thing! Which leads me to . . .
See if you really need the vitamin: As mentioned above, one trip to your local GNC and you’re convinced you need almost every vitamin they offer. Why wouldn’t you – each seems to offer some great benefit, right? Wrong! Think about it, if I already have a great immune system, how many immune system boosting vitamins do I really need? There’s a huge risk of waste when you take so many vitamins that your body can’t even process or adequately use at a given time. Many of the vitamins you consume in excess will just be excreted from your body in the form of urine anyway. As a side note, I’ve heard many Doctor’s say that American’s have the most expensive urine in the world!
