photo credit: sashafatcat

Once a month, The Boyfriend and I set a budget of around $180 and do our monthly grocery shopping.  We scour all the sales papers, clip coupons, and ad match our hearts out until our cupboards are stocked and our bellies are full.  Once you know what to do and where to go, eating for $3 a day is simple–and you usually have plenty left over for the next month!

Here is a look at the tips I have learned that will hopefully help you save money in a bad economy…and hopefully forever!

Get to know your grocery stores

So, you’re aware of where your grocery stores are,  but have you ever really familiarized yourself with each of them?  Do you know which place has the cheapest coffee, which place has the best buys on meat, which places sells day-old bread for next to nothing? Take a day and peruse the aisles and make notes. For instance, I know that Save-a-Lot has great deals on canned goods, ALDI has awesome healthy options, and Wal-Mart has good just about everything else.  Once you’ve familiarized yourself with what is where, you can keep an eye on it when sales are running and when it’s time to ad match.

Make a list, and check it twice

You don’t have to plan out an entire month’s worth of recipes or anything, but think about what you and your family like to eat all the time and make a note of which store has the best price for what you like.  It’s always good to stock up on staples, too.  The Boyfriend and I know we’re going to get our milk for $2.69, the awesome salad mix for $1.99, great deals on almonds, sandwich meat, whole-grain tortilla chips, and low-fat cheese at ALDI, so we pretty much get that every time.  We always get coffee creamer, bags of frozen boneless skinless chicken breast, canned soup, etc. from Wal-Mart because they have the best deals and best tastes on those items for us.  We make sure every month we have plenty of meat for whatever occasion, plenty of stuff for pasta dishes, cereal, soup, and sandwich stuff for hurried meals, and then we try to make sure we try something new.

Take advantage of close-out stores

We have several stores in my area that sell name-brand items at closeout prices because the packaging has changed.  In the South, we have Big Lots, ALDI, United Grocery, and Save-a-Lot who all carry things that other stores just didn’t want anymore or have discontinued.  Often times, these items will be marked way down.  ALDI is also one of my favorites because they cut costs by allowing you to carry your own bags, bag your own groceries, and return your own shopping carts.  Because they don’t have to hire people to do these tasks, you save!

Buy generics

I can almost guarantee that cereal inside the box of Cheery-Ohs was made in the same place that the actual Cheerios were.  And this is true with most generics.  The product is the EXACT same thing, the packaging just might not be as pretty.  There are a few exceptions: for instance, if you get the generic brand of frozen broccoli florets, you might get three florets in the whole bag and the rest are stalks.  With generic canned green beans, you might get mostly stems. But corn is corn, cereal is cereal, and potatoes are potatoes.

Make notes from your weekly sales papers

So, you love Maxwell House coffee, but Wal-Mart has “rolled up” its price to almost $8 a can?  If you look through the sales papers, maybe you’ll see that Publix or Kroger has it for $5.48.  Make a note of it, or hang onto your paper; you’re gonna need it!

Ad Match

Wal-Mart matches any competitor’s price, and I’m sure other stores do this, too.  Doing this saves you from having to go to every store in your area to take advantage of their sales prices.  Now personally, I have worked at Wal-Mart and would really rather not give them my business when I could give it to a smaller store instead.  However, it has been my luck that every time we go to Food Lion or Bi-Lo to take advantage of something on sale, it is never in stock.  So, I’ve kind of given up on that and once we’re finished at ALDI, we hit the Wal-Mart for the rest of our shopping needs.

Clip Coupons

If you’re careful, this can be your biggest money-saver.  If you already know what you like, browse the available coupons in your area and see what you will actually use.  Sometimes, it’s not always better to use a coupon on a name-brand item vs. buying the generic. However, sometimes it is.  For instance:  I drink Splenda in my coffee.  Every three months or so, I’ll buy a big bag of Altern, the Wal-Mart brand.  This month, I had a dollar-off coupon for Splenda, and it had rolled back to $6 at Wal-Mart, while Altern is $5.49.  So, I saved $0.50 by buying the name brand.  This month, we saved over $30 and got tons of name brand products to try by clipping coupons. Some places even double coupon values!  Don’t be embarrassed by taking the time to hand a big stack of coupons to your cashier.  The past three times The Boyfriend and I have gone to Wal-Mart with sales papers and coupons in hand to ad match and save money, the cashiers have conversed with us about how they do the same thing.  Our last cashier even printed out a copy of our receipt so that she could take advantage of the same ad matches!

Here are some good places to find grocery coupons:

• The Sunday paper
• couponmom.com:  There are tons of places you can go to when you Google “printable grocery coupons”, but many of them are scams or want you to fill out a gillion things before you join. Coupon Mom makes you download a coupon printer program, but it’s small in size and doesn’t put other useless crap on your computer.
• Box Tops for Education:  Enter the closest elementary school to you and fill out registration information.  They have great printable coupons.
• Betty Crocker:  Sign up and enjoy name brand deals.
• Thunderfap.com:  This is actually a free sample site, but I go here about once a week and sign up for all the free samples and get tons of coupons in the mail with them.  And it doesn’t hurt to try before you buy!  They often have samples from Walmart.com too, which is one of the best places for samples and great coupons.

Oh, and another tip: you find a coupon for $1 a stick of Velveeta cheese, but you would never use that in a million years; however, their 2% Milk Shells and Cheese sure sounds good?  Guess what? 99% of coupons aren”t actually specific to an item or size, only the brand.  My Splenda coupon was for Splenda with fiber, but I got the plain and it still worked. You don’t have to necessarily bend your tastes for the sake of saving money!

You are now equipped with the armor you need to take on the grocery stores in a recession.  Hopefully you’ve found this helpful and will be able to apply it to your everyday life!  next thing you know, you’ll be trying this out with cleaning supplies and toiletries and will be the ultimate Thrifty Thelma!

I’d love to hear your input; what do you do to save money?

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