I am a picky eater, but if I like a food I will eat a ton.  My favorite is pizza. I could eat pizza every day without blinking an eye.  This would drive my wife insane and is partly to blame why I have needed to lose weight.  The point is I am not some skinny rail of a person who lives off of air.  I eat a good amount of food.  That is why when I tell people that my wife and I are able to eat well only spending $200 on groceries and $140 for dining out each month I get some looks of disbelief.  I will be honest, we are not organic food people.  If you are going to eat organic you are going to pay a premium.  If we had any organic stores in our area that were reasonable, like a Trader Joe’s, I would probably transition a portion of our spending that way, but we don’t so I stick to the traditional grocery store food.  So how do I keep costs so low?  Just a few simple principles

Shop at multiple stores
Not everyone can do this.  If you live in an area with only one grocery store you will have to forgo this principle.  However if there are multiple stores around you that means more sales from which to take advantage.

Know the price of things
When you shop at multiple stores the regular price of items is different at each store.  you need to know this so that when a % off deal comes along you know whether it is really a deal or not.  A good example was this last week two stores had Edy’s ice cream on sale buy one get one free.  One store sold it for $5.19 regular price the other $6.29.  That is a significant difference and I was able to catch it because I knew that $6.29 seemed high.  The only way to get used to this is to pay attention to the sales ads and to the items you purchase at regular price.  Of course you should…

Never purchase items at regular price
I purchase very few items at regular price. The only items that I can think of that I get frequently at regular price is dog food, because we feed our dogs one specific brand, and milk, since we get it directly from a creamery. For pretty much everything else I will adjust what we eat each week to the sales that are available. Now I know there are times that you have to do this, especially as you first start out.  However over time you should be able to pretty much eliminate the need to purchase regular price items. You can do this when you…

Stock up when there is a great deal
This piggy backs on knowing the price of the items you are purchasing.  By stocking up on these everyday items you will only have to purchase them when they are on sale.  This means the first few months you may have to spend  a little more on groceries as you start to stock pile everyday items like razors, cereal, meat, etc.  Right now I have enough razors to last for at least a year, eight pounds of ground beef and three pounds of chicken breasts in the freezer.  I got the razors for free after the rebate and coupons and the meat at 50% off the regular price.

Use Coupons
I am not a big fan of clipping coupons.  I just started using them at the end of February.  The savings that I have seen as a result of using coupons has been astounding.  I am now a firm believer in using coupons and buying the Sunday paper every week.  This has not changed my dislike of clipping coupons so I started to…

Use the Web
The Internet has so much out there to help with using coupons.  The two sites that I use are couponmom.com and The Grocery Game. Both websites work pretty much the same.  Each week they put out a list of deals at various grocery stores and match them with coupons for you.  The sites even go so far as to tell you what paper the coupons are in.  So if I were buying razors at CVS it would tell me the sale price, what circular to get the coupon out of, the final price and the percentage off.  You can sort the list for each store using the various categories.  I sort by percentage off and stock up on the best deals.  Coupon Mom is my primary site because it is free.  I has all major drug stores, wal-mart, target, and three grocery stores for each state.  For many people it will have all the info they need.  Unfortunately two of the stores for my state don’t do business in my area and Wal-Mart is not close enough to be used for every day shopping. So I purchased a Grocery Game subscription.  Grocery game does give you more info and lets you pick which stores you want to get lists.  It tells you when to stock up on an item using a color coded system.  It is a good product but may not be for everyone.  The cost is only $10 for 8 weeks on one store and $5 for each additional store.  I purchase two two stores and in one week make up the cost of the subscription in savings.  This also saves me the hassle of cutting out all the coupons.  I can go to a specific circular for each coupon and cut out the ones I need.  If you are interested in signing up for The Grocery Game they do give referral credits.  If you are so inclined then contact me and I will send you an invitation.

Because this section on groceries is so long I am going to hold off on how I save on eating out until Monday.  See you tomorrow for more free samples.


This entry was posted on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 at 10:05 am and is filed under Saving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.