Comments on: $15 for your BEST grocery money saving tips

By: Susy

Susy — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 07:49:23 +0000

Whenever I feel the need to save money on groceries we eat beans! Have you ever looked at the price of dry beans? Usually under a dollar a bag! A bag of beans can feed my husband and I for almost a week. Not to mention they’re one of the healthiest foods you can eat. So I’m saving money on groceries and potential health problems down the road. And there’s no need to clip coupons or keep a list. Just buy whatever kind of beans you’d like to eat this week. We often have a “bean week” once a month. In the winter its various bean soups, in the summer it’s beans & rice. Give beans a try!

By: Tricia

Tricia — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 07:26:06 +0000

There’s a simple thing I do that saves me money every time I shop, and helps curb those impulse purchases.

Before I check out, I look in my cart. This is the time to rethink what I am purchasing and ask myself on whether we really need it. The Little Debbie snack cakes (which looked really good when I went down the aisle), don’t always look so good by the end of the trip.

By: Mommy Musings

Mommy Musings — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:50:19 +0000

My grocery tip is pretty basic, but it is effective.

Start getting your local Sunday paper and save all the coupons (I usually buy 2). I prefer not to cut them out until I know I will actually use them, so put them in a folder and organize them by date.

Get all your local grocery flyer’s (you can also look them up online) and mark down everything on sale that week that interests you by location and price.

Refer back to your coupons and cut out the ones that apply to your shopping list.

I will hit several grocery store on the same day to get all the sale items. In my case, the store are all next to one another so this is no big deal.

Pay special attention to stores with buy 1 get 1 free items, and try to get more coupons for these items as you can use 2 coupons for the B1G1 items, even though you are only really buying one. These are the best savings I find.

I also have purchased coupons on ebay for items that I buy weekly.

Also take the coupons in the little machines and store them in your folder. These items almost always go on sale after they remove those dispensers.

By: Jackie

Jackie — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:03:55 +0000

Call or visit all of the grocery stores in your area to learn their policies regarding coupons and price matching. Some stores will match advertised prices from competitors. Some stores will double (or even triple coupons. Some stores will accept competitor’s coupons or expired coupons.

If you can find a store that will price match and at least doubles coupons (make sure you know what amount they double up to), then you’ve hit the jackpot because you can get the “sale” prices of all the local stores at one store using the price matching.

Save up your coupons and try to only use the coupons when an item is on sale to maximize your savings. If there are items that you buy regularly, especially if they are non-perishable, use a servce such as thecouponclippers.com or thegrocerygame.com to order more coupons by mail for your favorite items.

Last, but not lease, there are lots of great resources on the web for low-cost/frugal recipes. One great one is hillbillyhousewife.com Learn to cook more items from scratch that packaged to reap more savings.

By: Carina

Carina — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 03:18:01 +0000

Oh yes…and I should have mentioned…before I used grocery list generator, I just had an Excel spreadsheet. One list of recipes and ingredients, and one standard shopping list with everything that we ever buy on it. I would just put the list up on the bulletin board and highlight things as we ran out. When shopping time came around, I took it down, went through the recipes, added the items that we needed for those recipes, and off I went!

By: Carina

Carina — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:53:03 +0000

I am overly organized (it helps with two small children!). I use grocery list generator (you can find it online as a plug in for Mozilla), and have put all my most common recipes along with the ingredients that they require into it. Once every two weeks, I choose the number of meals that I need (for me, it’s eight…we do leftovers and eat at the in-laws a few times a week, plus one guilty take away night). I generate a list based on those meals, plus the staples that we’re out of (toilet paper, milk, etc), and only buy those items at the grocery store. If I have extra time (Ha!), I use the sale fliers from the grocery store to plan the meals (chicken breasts are on sale, so we have a few meals based on those). This has saved me huge amounts of time and money! No more wandering up and down the aisles, looking for inspiration from the god of recipes. You have to be a bit organized to begin with, but after that it makes life way easier. No more wondering what is for dinner. I stick a list of the meals that I have purchased ingredients for up on the fridge, and when it’s time to think about dinner, I go and see what the choices are.

By: Melody

Melody — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 14:24:04 +0000

I like to shop less often and buy in bulk! I’ve found that when you shop less often, you’ll end up buying less spur of the moment items that you really didn’t need and you’ll also save time. I make a master shopping list of all the things I normally purchase, grouping like products together as to their isle in the store, then use a highlighter to mark the items I’m running low on. This makes it easy to spot at a glance what I need as I shop. I buy the larger sizes of anything that keeps well, staples like flour, sugar, pasta, rice, etc it’s usually less expensive. Plus I stock up on canned goods when they are on sale. I like to keep my pantry and freezer well stocked

By: Christina

Christina — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 13:51:53 +0000

Don’t buy prepackaged kids snacks in the cute little bags. It’s much less expensive to buy one box of crackers and divide them into smaller snack bags.

By: Shel

Shel — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:18:14 +0000

I use grocerygame.com for all my grocery shopping each week. A very inexpensive membership at grocerygame has saved me over $400 in the last 6 weeks alone in groceries.

It’s simple. Grocerygame provides you with a list of advertised and unadvertised sales in your area, then compares them to the local coupons in the paper, and tells you how to get the best deal! It’s so easy.

By: Tanya

Tanya — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:35:43 +0000

I don’t know if this will help you because I cook for 2, not 8, but my biggest saving has been to join a CSA– they deliver vegetables and fruit to a pickup point every week (some others do it to your door). The produce itself isn’t *that* cheap, but it’s amazing how, when the “must be fresh” stuff replenishes itself, you can be creative and use everything else in your pantry to go with it. Fewer trips= fewer impulsive buys= less waste.