January 26, 2012
Some folks think I’m certifiably crazy. I announced at the first of the year I was going to do a year’s worth of menus all three meals a day and in doing so I would save hundreds if not thousands of dollars out of our grocery budget doing so. The idea grew out of my success with going without a freezer in December.
Learning to plan my menu without depending on a free standing freezer has made it where I can see the big picture of the value of long term menu planning not only for money savings, but for nutrition and food storage.
I’ve been doing it since the first of the year and it is really working out nicely for us. It has pretty well done away with the annoying nightly “What’s for dinner” discussion. A huge plus.
I’ve mentioned on various yahoogroups I’m on that I am doing this and there have naturally been a lot of questions about how to do it. I’ve also been asked to post my year’s worth of menus. After much thinking I’ve decided rather than clog those lists up to post the journey through the year here, along with the how to’s and recipes to do it.
So this first post is about the “HOW TO”, “HOW IT WILL SAVE YOU MONEY” and. “HOW ABOUT WHEN LIFE HAPPENS?”
HOW TO
I have to admit that when I first decided to do a year’s worth of weekly menus for three meals a day, plus snacks I thought it was a huge mountain to try to climb. Then I remembered the old joke “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer of course is “One bite at a time.” So that’s the way I moved forward.
I started with planning my dinner menu for the first week of the year. I did this because then I could schedule leftovers for breakfasts and lunches for the same week.
I also decided with our grocery budget I could only afford to purchase one meat a week. That was a scary realization. As the regular readers of my blog and list posts know we are on the Dave Ramsey Financial Freedom plan and that means we have a zero dollar based budget with a set in stone amount for groceries each week.
Unfortunately we’d got away from our established $100 a week for our family of three over the last few months of the year and in November I spent over $1,000 rather than the scheduled $400. This was a serious lack of control on my part. A mistake that slowed our gazelle way down on its race to avoid the debt cheetahs.
So with the beginning of the new year I was determined to stay at or below that $100. This meant one bulk meat purchase a week, and a lot of planning to keep variety in our meals, especially as grocery prices are escalating.
The idea was a follow up on my previous post of living without a freezer. Buy one meat, use it for 2-3 meals during the week and then can the rest for future menus. This would build up my food storage, while feeding us well on a small budget.
We eat a LOT of ground beef, so I determined that doing a ground beef menu every other week would be the best pattern for us, at least in the beginning. That first week we started with ground beef and our favorite Many Way Meatballs Master Mix.
I put the menu together for dinners first. Then in my Master Cook program I entered the recipes for EVERYTHING we’d need to eat that menu for the week. This gave me the exact measurements I’d need of each ingredient.
I then constructed my grocery list, including the exact measurements needed, from those menus. From that grocery list I then put the same measurements in a spread sheet to be totaled to show how much I will need for the entire year for each ingredient. This is important for the “How It will save you money” segment.
I then repeated these steps with the breakfast and lunch menus. I now had a complete grocery list for the week and it was time to “shop”. I started with my food storage. I checked every single item, not trusting my memory for anything. I verified that I had the required amounts for the week on hand. If not then it went on the “to buy” list.
Once the “to buy” list was built I checked the sales ads and my price book to find where it would be best to purchase those items AND anything that was a true loss leader that I would need for future menus that I could afford in my weekly budget. (more on this later.)
Next stop was my coupon box. Where I pulled the coupons I needed for those purchases.
Armed with the list and my coupons I did all my grocery shopping for the week, my ONLY visit to the grocery store for the week.
Once home things were prepped and stored properly. It was nice to know I had everything I needed on hand for well planned out meals for a week.
HOW IT WILL SAVE YOU MONEY
First of all if you have a menu plan you KNOW what is for dinner and there is no rushing out for fast foods. You can cook far better burgers and pizza at home for less than half the price and with pre-planning you can actually get the meal faster than loading the family up, driving to the restaurant, waiting for them to cook it, listening to other people’s kids screaming and then driving home. Oh and you aren’t tempted to stop and shop somewhere along the way. This can add up to huge savings right there.
By hitting the grocery store only once a week you save fuel, time and money. Yes money because you aren’t tempted to do impulse buying if you aren’t in the store.
Because the meal plan is there for the entire week you can also “bulk cook” a lot and save money and time. Because if you need browned ground beef for three meals, or for canning, you can brown it in one pan all at once. It will take the same amount of energy to do it all at once as it would to do a single meal of it. So you save by not having to heat the stove up for that browning the rest of the time.
You also only have to clean up once, thus you save on water, energy to heat the water, wear and tear on your dishwasher, dish soap, and your time. And we all need more time.
With creating your annual grocery list you can clearly see how many of non-perishable foods you need for the year. So if there is a great sale on that item and your food budget has room in it, grab your coupons and stock up at the lower price, so your overall grocery expenditure for the year goes down and your food storage goes up.
A friend gave a good example of this with a purchase she recently made. She serves Hamburger Helper one day a month to her family of nine. She recently found a loss leader sale that when combined with her coupons made it $.49 a box. This is versus the normal $1.50 to $2.00 per box. She verified the “best if used by date” and then picked up enough boxes for the year. This made her savings huge.
At this point there is usually someone that says “but I don’t have room for food storage.” Having lived in a one room efficiency apartment for a long period of time I can tell you there is ALWAYS storage room, you just need to know where to find it. I’ll do another post later on about where to find the room to store and tips on making sure nothing gets forgotten.
A side note on nutrition. I have found that by writing down a complete daily menu for a week at a time it has allowed me to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into our daily diet. This is a very good thing.
Let’s be truthful, when you eat out a lot, be it fast food or a sit down restaurant or you slap something together at the last minute you tend to eat less than healthy. By taking the few extra steps at first to plan your meals you will find that good for you foods will filter more and more into your diet.
This can lead to future savings on medical and clothing bills.
The same friend who purchased the Hamburger Helper decided it was best for her to do a month’s worth of menu plans for her family and then multiply that times 12 to get her annual menu. This works well for her. We like trying different foods too much to be this limited, but for many families this is the best way for them to plan their menus.
She then followed the steps to figure her grocery lists and when consulting her price book for the best sale prices (which generally rotate about every six weeks) she discovered that by doing the annual grocery list and shopping accordingly she would save 75% on her annual grocery bill based on current grocery prices. That folks is a HUGE savings. What could you do with that 75% savings? How many debts could you pay off? She’s using the savings to pay her house off early. Who wouldn’t want to own their home?
HOW ABOUT WHEN LIFE HAPPENS?
One of the most popular questions is “Do you allow for diverting from the menu plan?” The answer is a resounding YES!
Life happens, Suzy has a school play, it’s Joey’s birthday, Mama is sick, Great Aunt Ethel dies, Dad is going out of town on business for a week, the garden produced a million more zucchini this week than planned on or the loss leader of the week is a great buy for a meat that is not on that week’s menu. These and many other things happen, including your hubby just flat does NOT want turkey this week.
In fact I’m not dead on schedule with my menus right now because I sometimes re-arrange the meals to fit what is going on in our life on any given day. The menu is a guide not a dictate. All meals from the menu eventually get eaten, they just might be done in a different order or on a different week. But they all get used as close to the schedule as possible to help keep the domino action of the pre-planning going.
An example: On a recent week we had a ground beef week scheduled and the next week was scheduled to be whole chicken. Only my husband, who really doesn’t care for chicken, was going to be gone for a week for work on the ground beef week. My son and I love chicken, so I moved the chicken forward a week and we’ll have two ground beef weeks in a row. It took moving leftovers around a bit, and doing a little extra canning to keep meats fresh from the previous week, but it worked out well. We stayed on budget and all were happy with their meals.
Speaking of leftovers, this is another way you can save big. There is currently a series of commercials running where it shows the people throwing away half of the foods they purchase because the leftovers go bad, or the meat isn’t stored properly.
With the menu planning you incorporate the leftovers into your meal plan each week, or you can/dry/freeze them for future meals. By cutting that 50% waste from your grocery budget you save big time. Unfortunately little Suzy won’t have science experiments in your fridge for the annual science fair as a result. But then is food mold REALLY that good of a science fair project?
So that is the plan. Posts on the implementing of it, including recipes, storage tips and much more will follow.
Jan who thinks this is going to be a challenge for her family but can really see the long term benefits in OK
Showing posts with label Couponing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Couponing. Show all posts
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
WHERE DO I BEGIN?
October 5, 2011
Once I finally decided I do this last week I started searching for information on modern couponing. The very first thing I did was set up an email address that would be used strictly for couponing, rebates, freebies and sweepstakes(yes I do sweepstakes too, and when I was doing them on a regular basis I won a lot of small prizes). Very little personal information was listed on this email and the subsequent facebook and other websites I signed up for.
I’ll write another time about the freebie lists and doing sweepstakes, for right now couponing and rebates are my main theme.
My reasoning for this was that this project had the potential to create a lot of junk mail. I did not want my personal email account to be flooded with such junk mail. But then I tend to have separate emails for all my different activities (genealogy, mystery shopping, chat groups, bill payment etc). I find keeping the different activities in separate emails with sub folders in each email address for automatic filtering makes my email reading a LOT easier. I can do a bulk delete on themes I’m not interested in very quickly that way. Gmail is great for creating various email accounts.
Once that email account was set up I started to do my research for help in getting into modern couponing.
First I went to the ever trusty yahoogroups looking for a “how to” group. For the first time yahoo failed me. Oh there were lots of groups, with 1-5 members and little to no activity. I joined one, posted my intro as requested and was never even acknowledged.
Next stop facebook. JACKPOT, the very first one I found was Couponingtodisney.com . Boy did this one strike a cord with me. After all part of my need to coupon is to get back to Walt Disney World as soon as possible. I signed up for this group and found their website to contain everything I needed to know to get started couponing.
Another great site I found was coupondivas.com . They too had a lot of great info. Between these two I found so much info I stopped my search right there and started studying all the steps to be a successful extreme couponer.
Before I had a chance to study both sites as much as I should it was time to purchase a Sunday paper and an All You magazine, which I did. I read later I should have purchased the paper in multiples of two and on my first trip saw why they said to. But last Sunday I only purchased one. It was a jackpot of a coupon mother lode. Between that single paper and the one magazine I acquired over $300 worth of coupons. I know from my past experiences that it won’t always be so, but for me it was the perfect Sunday to buy my first paper.
I spent much of Sunday on the sofa reading the newspaper and magazine so they could be cut up. The paper then went down for my “no-no” kitty who misses the litter box all too often, but always hits the paper or feed sack if we have a clean one down by the box. From what I saw in news content for the paper that was a very appropriate use for it.
The magazine, once butchered, went into the recycling sack. By the way this magazine was also an excellent source of how to information, complete with recommended websites and a $1 coupon for a truly how to magazine by them that I plan to pick up as soon as I locate a copy.
Then I filed the coupons I had cut from the two to familiarize myself with what ones I had.
Once that was done I started on reading the various sale ads and trying to decipher what would be my best purchases for my $100 budget allowance for the week.
I slowly made out a list of what I thought would be my best buys for the week, but I wasn’t pleased with how little I was going to save at first. Remember my long term goal is to have a decent, but not extreme, food storage system, paid for with as little money as possible and to be debt free in as short of time as possible. I am very impatient about those goals, I’m not getting any younger.
Back to the web and more studying. The girls on both of the afore mentioned websites had match ups listed and explained how certain stores allowed a stacking of coupons of sorts. This lead me to internet coupons, which I consider to be my most likely source since I cannot subscribe to just the Sunday paper in my area and I have no desire to have newspapers stacking up daily in my corner. That just might be too tempting to Amy Jo, the no-no kitty.
So next I went to my mypoints account to print coupons. This is a bonus place to print internet coupons. If you aren’t familiar with mypoints it basically is an online company that you get points for clicking on ads, doing internet searches, answering surveys, doing purchases on line, and printing and using internet coupons to get points to redeem for gift cards.
My personal favorite gift card is a $50 Wal-Mart gift card, which we in turn use to get $.03 off per gallon (sometimes up to $.05 off) to purchase fuel for my truck. Mypoints is free to use, if you would like more info please leave me a message and I’ll send you a referral (you really don’t need one to join, but I get bonus points if I refer you). I like saving $50 out of my fuel budget!
Back on facebook I have started “liking” various companies, restaurants, and product webpages of places we normally visit or items we normally use. These will often net you money off or free item coupons. Again I use the coupon only email address for all of this.
Not all the stores I was considering using had inserts in the Sunday paper. So using my mypoints tool bar I google searched for the webpages of the various stores I was considering for shopping. This helps get me toward my goal of x amount of searches per month for more points. The number of searches required for the varied amounts of bonus points vary from month to month.
I discovered some of the online ads had where you could click a box and create a grocery list of the items you wanted, then click “print” and a nice neat list prints out for you for that store. Talk about convenient. Wal-Mart was one such store, just make sure you have plenty of ink in your printer when you do it. I later got to a store and discovered I had ran out of ink in the middle of my list. LOL! I had to grab a sales ad at the store and wing it as a result.
As I read each sale ad online I also looked up that store’s coupon policy and printed a copy for my files. This can be an important step for everyone. I once had a store refuse my, really good one time one use only for an item I went there specifically to purchase with that internet coupon. I found out via their website the store was suppose to honor it. So now I will have the corporate policy with me in case there is ever another discussion.
I also found out that the 3 shoe boxes of “no expiration date” coupons I own may or may not be honored at various stores—ones with bar codes, no problem, ones with no bar code it is up to the individual store.
With all this basic research completed I felt I was ready to go on my maiden shopping trip.
Jan who says “next entry please” in OK
Once I finally decided I do this last week I started searching for information on modern couponing. The very first thing I did was set up an email address that would be used strictly for couponing, rebates, freebies and sweepstakes(yes I do sweepstakes too, and when I was doing them on a regular basis I won a lot of small prizes). Very little personal information was listed on this email and the subsequent facebook and other websites I signed up for.
I’ll write another time about the freebie lists and doing sweepstakes, for right now couponing and rebates are my main theme.
My reasoning for this was that this project had the potential to create a lot of junk mail. I did not want my personal email account to be flooded with such junk mail. But then I tend to have separate emails for all my different activities (genealogy, mystery shopping, chat groups, bill payment etc). I find keeping the different activities in separate emails with sub folders in each email address for automatic filtering makes my email reading a LOT easier. I can do a bulk delete on themes I’m not interested in very quickly that way. Gmail is great for creating various email accounts.
Once that email account was set up I started to do my research for help in getting into modern couponing.
First I went to the ever trusty yahoogroups looking for a “how to” group. For the first time yahoo failed me. Oh there were lots of groups, with 1-5 members and little to no activity. I joined one, posted my intro as requested and was never even acknowledged.
Next stop facebook. JACKPOT, the very first one I found was Couponingtodisney.com . Boy did this one strike a cord with me. After all part of my need to coupon is to get back to Walt Disney World as soon as possible. I signed up for this group and found their website to contain everything I needed to know to get started couponing.
Another great site I found was coupondivas.com . They too had a lot of great info. Between these two I found so much info I stopped my search right there and started studying all the steps to be a successful extreme couponer.
Before I had a chance to study both sites as much as I should it was time to purchase a Sunday paper and an All You magazine, which I did. I read later I should have purchased the paper in multiples of two and on my first trip saw why they said to. But last Sunday I only purchased one. It was a jackpot of a coupon mother lode. Between that single paper and the one magazine I acquired over $300 worth of coupons. I know from my past experiences that it won’t always be so, but for me it was the perfect Sunday to buy my first paper.
I spent much of Sunday on the sofa reading the newspaper and magazine so they could be cut up. The paper then went down for my “no-no” kitty who misses the litter box all too often, but always hits the paper or feed sack if we have a clean one down by the box. From what I saw in news content for the paper that was a very appropriate use for it.
The magazine, once butchered, went into the recycling sack. By the way this magazine was also an excellent source of how to information, complete with recommended websites and a $1 coupon for a truly how to magazine by them that I plan to pick up as soon as I locate a copy.
Then I filed the coupons I had cut from the two to familiarize myself with what ones I had.
Once that was done I started on reading the various sale ads and trying to decipher what would be my best purchases for my $100 budget allowance for the week.
I slowly made out a list of what I thought would be my best buys for the week, but I wasn’t pleased with how little I was going to save at first. Remember my long term goal is to have a decent, but not extreme, food storage system, paid for with as little money as possible and to be debt free in as short of time as possible. I am very impatient about those goals, I’m not getting any younger.
Back to the web and more studying. The girls on both of the afore mentioned websites had match ups listed and explained how certain stores allowed a stacking of coupons of sorts. This lead me to internet coupons, which I consider to be my most likely source since I cannot subscribe to just the Sunday paper in my area and I have no desire to have newspapers stacking up daily in my corner. That just might be too tempting to Amy Jo, the no-no kitty.
So next I went to my mypoints account to print coupons. This is a bonus place to print internet coupons. If you aren’t familiar with mypoints it basically is an online company that you get points for clicking on ads, doing internet searches, answering surveys, doing purchases on line, and printing and using internet coupons to get points to redeem for gift cards.
My personal favorite gift card is a $50 Wal-Mart gift card, which we in turn use to get $.03 off per gallon (sometimes up to $.05 off) to purchase fuel for my truck. Mypoints is free to use, if you would like more info please leave me a message and I’ll send you a referral (you really don’t need one to join, but I get bonus points if I refer you). I like saving $50 out of my fuel budget!
Back on facebook I have started “liking” various companies, restaurants, and product webpages of places we normally visit or items we normally use. These will often net you money off or free item coupons. Again I use the coupon only email address for all of this.
Not all the stores I was considering using had inserts in the Sunday paper. So using my mypoints tool bar I google searched for the webpages of the various stores I was considering for shopping. This helps get me toward my goal of x amount of searches per month for more points. The number of searches required for the varied amounts of bonus points vary from month to month.
I discovered some of the online ads had where you could click a box and create a grocery list of the items you wanted, then click “print” and a nice neat list prints out for you for that store. Talk about convenient. Wal-Mart was one such store, just make sure you have plenty of ink in your printer when you do it. I later got to a store and discovered I had ran out of ink in the middle of my list. LOL! I had to grab a sales ad at the store and wing it as a result.
As I read each sale ad online I also looked up that store’s coupon policy and printed a copy for my files. This can be an important step for everyone. I once had a store refuse my, really good one time one use only for an item I went there specifically to purchase with that internet coupon. I found out via their website the store was suppose to honor it. So now I will have the corporate policy with me in case there is ever another discussion.
I also found out that the 3 shoe boxes of “no expiration date” coupons I own may or may not be honored at various stores—ones with bar codes, no problem, ones with no bar code it is up to the individual store.
With all this basic research completed I felt I was ready to go on my maiden shopping trip.
Jan who says “next entry please” in OK
RETURN OF THE COUPON QUEEN
October 4, 2011
As fuel costs have soared the amount of mystery shopping I do has been curtailed severely. Since we live so far from town I need a minimum of $25 worth of payout to even leave the driveway to cover the cost of the fuel and to make it worth an hour or so of my time to do a mystery shop.
OR I need to combine it with already scheduled errands. So I’ve gone from several shops a week to maybe 4 or so a month. This has slowed down our gazelle for being totally debt free greatly too. This has bothered me hugely.
I want Gary retired as soon as possible. I do not want to end up like my parents, always waiting to do something some day. My parents always said they would “go to such and such and do such and such some day”, but they both died young, without ever doing it.
Gary and I have big travel plans and we don’t want to wait for some day. Right now if all goes according to schedule we should be totally debt free in 2 years 9 months and 3 weeks—that is too long to wait as far as I am concerned. So having extra “gazelle feed” to get debt free is very important to us. I needed a way to stretch more money out of our budget or make more money, but what?
I had been mulling that over for weeks.
For a while Gary was traveling for work, so I ended up watching a lot of late night tv. I guess I watched 20 “Extreme Couponing” shows before a light went on in my dim little head. I could go BACK to couponing.
Yes “back to”. You see in the late ‘70’s through the mid ‘90’s I was what was called back then a “Coupon Queen”, now called an “Extreme Couponer”. The best I ever did in a grocery store was $650 and they paid me around $9.50 to exit the store. I then went home and did rebates on almost everything I had purchased. For years we seldom paid for groceries, but it was a lot of work.
Our first trip to Walt Disney World was paid for by couponing in 1981. We really want to make another major trip to Walt Disney World within the next year, as well as speed up our getting debt free.
Then I closed down my baby sitting service, and both kids moved out. With just Gary and I and me being a scratch cook I slowly drifted away from couponing. When we moved I pretty much stopped completely.
Life got busy and I just never got back into it, until now.
It’s been 14 years since I was the coupon queen and things have changed tremendously. 14 years ago there were no internet coupons, rebates were the order of the day, and grocery stores had coupon/rebate boards readily available. Plus stores doubled and sometimes tripled my coupons.
Now there are store loyalty cards, register rewards, each store chain has a different set of rules, no doubling/tripling of coupons in our area and we no longer subscribe to a paper.
I had no idea where to start.
I do know from my past experience that doing this is a LOT of work. I also know it can get out of control very easily. I do not want or need to end up with storage closets full of items we never use, or could never use up. I want to continue to do scratch cooking for health reasons. Nor do I want to spend all my time clipping coupons and searching ads. Therefore, I need a happy balance.
The next few posts on my blog will be my journey back to being a coupon queen, but not an extreme queen. I’d like to invite you along for the ride.
Jan who hopes her following posts will help others get started into couponing as well in OK
As fuel costs have soared the amount of mystery shopping I do has been curtailed severely. Since we live so far from town I need a minimum of $25 worth of payout to even leave the driveway to cover the cost of the fuel and to make it worth an hour or so of my time to do a mystery shop.
OR I need to combine it with already scheduled errands. So I’ve gone from several shops a week to maybe 4 or so a month. This has slowed down our gazelle for being totally debt free greatly too. This has bothered me hugely.
I want Gary retired as soon as possible. I do not want to end up like my parents, always waiting to do something some day. My parents always said they would “go to such and such and do such and such some day”, but they both died young, without ever doing it.
Gary and I have big travel plans and we don’t want to wait for some day. Right now if all goes according to schedule we should be totally debt free in 2 years 9 months and 3 weeks—that is too long to wait as far as I am concerned. So having extra “gazelle feed” to get debt free is very important to us. I needed a way to stretch more money out of our budget or make more money, but what?
I had been mulling that over for weeks.
For a while Gary was traveling for work, so I ended up watching a lot of late night tv. I guess I watched 20 “Extreme Couponing” shows before a light went on in my dim little head. I could go BACK to couponing.
Yes “back to”. You see in the late ‘70’s through the mid ‘90’s I was what was called back then a “Coupon Queen”, now called an “Extreme Couponer”. The best I ever did in a grocery store was $650 and they paid me around $9.50 to exit the store. I then went home and did rebates on almost everything I had purchased. For years we seldom paid for groceries, but it was a lot of work.
Our first trip to Walt Disney World was paid for by couponing in 1981. We really want to make another major trip to Walt Disney World within the next year, as well as speed up our getting debt free.
Then I closed down my baby sitting service, and both kids moved out. With just Gary and I and me being a scratch cook I slowly drifted away from couponing. When we moved I pretty much stopped completely.
Life got busy and I just never got back into it, until now.
It’s been 14 years since I was the coupon queen and things have changed tremendously. 14 years ago there were no internet coupons, rebates were the order of the day, and grocery stores had coupon/rebate boards readily available. Plus stores doubled and sometimes tripled my coupons.
Now there are store loyalty cards, register rewards, each store chain has a different set of rules, no doubling/tripling of coupons in our area and we no longer subscribe to a paper.
I had no idea where to start.
I do know from my past experience that doing this is a LOT of work. I also know it can get out of control very easily. I do not want or need to end up with storage closets full of items we never use, or could never use up. I want to continue to do scratch cooking for health reasons. Nor do I want to spend all my time clipping coupons and searching ads. Therefore, I need a happy balance.
The next few posts on my blog will be my journey back to being a coupon queen, but not an extreme queen. I’d like to invite you along for the ride.
Jan who hopes her following posts will help others get started into couponing as well in OK
Sunday, December 26, 2010
BRINGING THE COST OF GROCERIES DOWN
December 26, 2010
As a roast simmers on the stove and the air fills with the delightful smell of bread in the bread machine my thoughts turn to what I consider “the cooking season”. The weather outside is below freezing, so what better way to warm up the house than to cook?
Only cooking can be the biggest part of any household budget, beyond your house payment. It is also the easiest one to go over budget on, therefore special attention needs to be paid here.
There are numerous ways to cut grocery costs and there is absolutely no way I could even begin to list all the ways to cut those costs, but I can list several. It is my hope that you will add more cost cutting measures to what I’m listing.
So let’s get started:
LOSS LEADERS, as I explained in the previous post on the blog loss leaders are an incentive to get you into the store. It is also one of the best ways to cut your grocery costs.
The best way to use them is to first learn what day your local grocery puts out there weekly sales ads. In some cities it’s Sunday’s others it’s Wednesday, your town may be entirely different. It is important to know how long a sale will last, it could be very frustrating to go to a store on a Sunday and find out the ad you planned your shopping around ended at midnight the night before.
I personally do not subscribe to a newspaper, and I live rurally so I seldom if ever get sales flyers in my mail, especially since I have registered our address on the no junk mail website. So I must be a little more creative about getting my ads. It’s a simple tool called “the internet”. Yep, just about every store known to man has a website with their weekly sales flyer on it.
Once I’ve located where these ads will be for the stores I’m doing cost comparison at I bookmark the site and/or subscribe to their email ads. I do this not only for grocery ads, but for hobby stores, and my husband gets notices and fuel coupons from Murphy fuel stations in his email on a regular basis.
Once you get the sales ads take time to sit down and really look at them. Just because it’s in a sales flyer does not mean it is on sale. Read the ads closely. Even better get out your PRICE BOOK (more on this in a moment) and do some serious comparison of not just price, but sizes.
Now make a list of the things that your family will truly eat that is truly on sale. Store by store, it’s always better to compare various stores loss leaders. Here’s one trick you may not know. Many major stores like Wal-Mart, Target and others (not just grocery stores) will do price match for IDENTICAL items. So if your local grocery has say a name brand frozen food on sale that you want, but it’s not worth the drive to pick up just that one item, take the ad to one of the price matching stores and get it for the same price there. Not only do you get the item for a lower price, but you don’t burn extra fuel or time to pick up the item.
Once you get the list made, you can possibly plan a menu for the week around these loss leaders. You can also consider stocking up to help cut your food costs for future meals. Ideally this is what you want to do if you are trying to meet the $1 a day challenge. Some stores will limit you on how many of what item per person per purchase you can get.
There are, of course, ways around this limit. Shop more than one time, more than one store, or take a shopping buddy with you. If the store is out of an item request a RAIN CHECK. This can be a true help in cutting costs. Because it allows you to spread out the cost of those more popular items. It is simply a coupon to purchase X amount of that item at the loss leader price when the store once again has it in stock.
Now about that PRICE BOOK. What you put in a price book is entirely up to you. My personal one is a spread sheet. The rows are the items ie: Chicken, leg quarters per pound; chicken, boneless skinless breasts per pound; Green Giant green beans 14 oz can. Being who I am it’s alphabetized for speed in locating an item.
The columns are the stores ie: Wal-Mart; Target, Dollar General, Aldis etc.
Then I start filling in the columns with the non-sale (every day) prices for each store. This can be quite time consuming at first. I recommend using grocery receipts you have at home to start out doing this, you can gather a lot of information and fill in the spreadsheet as you watch tv. Then each time you go to a grocery gather a little information while you are there. Just spend five minutes or so on a single aisle making notes and after a while you will have all the stores done with little effort.
Another way to save money is couponing. I am a former coupon/rebate queen. In the 80’s I was like those ladies you read about. I did not pay for groceries, in fact a grocery store once paid me because they doubled the free food coupons I had. Back then I ate only name brands, worked hard at rebating and our stores doubled and sometimes even tripled.
Those days are gone for me. I use very few ready made mixes or convenience foods. I clean with basic cleaners and like I said I do not purchase newspapers or magazines any longer. What I do have is a large box of non-expiring coupons from those days on basic items. So as the loss leaders pop up I will use those coupons until they are gone.
You can also download coupons from the internet, but be aware many stores will not take internet coupons, so before you waste the time, ink and paper check with the stores you will be shopping at.
There are also several individuals who will, for a fee, send you sets of coupons via the mail. I personally have not used any of these services, so I have no idea if they are cost affective or not.
Remember, a coupon is only good if it is an item you will truly use normally and it brings the price down below similar items that are equally as good. Ideally you want to match your coupons to the loss leader sale ad for the best deal. Also if you shop at places like CVS they have special store credits they hand out for certain purchases that can be used to bring your prices even lower.
If you are blessed enough to live in an area that still doubles coupons, by all means read their rules closely and then take advantage of it.
STORE BRANDS. Quite often a store brand is produced at the exact same factory as a name brand. It is in fact the same item, just a different label. But not always. Know what your family will and won’t eat. It’s not a good deal if your family won’t eat it.
Example: My family will eat the store brand instant oatmeal just as well as they will eat the Quaker of the same flavor. The store brand is of course much cheaper (but not as cheap as making your own instant oatmeal—a recipe to post at another time). However, we find the store brand raisin bran cereal tough and unpalatable, so we stick with our favorite name brand.
BULK COOKING. I’ve already wrote volumes on this in the past, simply do a search in my blog using the search feature at the left using key words/phrases like bulk cooking, Once a Month Cooking, OAMC , OMC and you should be able to pull up the posts on it.
GARDENING. I’ve done a few posts on this in the past and as spring approaches I will be doing more. Anyone can garden, no matter where they live. Many a garden is grown in window boxes and flower pots. Remember even one tomato plant gives you garden fresh tomatoes year round (yes they are a perennial) even in the coldest climates if you bring the plant inside when the weather turns nippy.
PORTION CONTROL. My last post had a lot on this, but it needs to be pointed out again. Control the portions, control the cost.
PLANNED LEFTOVERS. Instead of trying to figure out what to do with a leftover after the fact, plan for it before you even cook. Then once the cooking is finished set that leftover aside before serving up the meal. I’ll do a post in the future on the numerous ways you can use leftovers you may never even have thought of.
This has ran on too long, so I’ll close for now.
Jan who is looking forward to your suggestions on cutting grocery costs in OK
As a roast simmers on the stove and the air fills with the delightful smell of bread in the bread machine my thoughts turn to what I consider “the cooking season”. The weather outside is below freezing, so what better way to warm up the house than to cook?
Only cooking can be the biggest part of any household budget, beyond your house payment. It is also the easiest one to go over budget on, therefore special attention needs to be paid here.
There are numerous ways to cut grocery costs and there is absolutely no way I could even begin to list all the ways to cut those costs, but I can list several. It is my hope that you will add more cost cutting measures to what I’m listing.
So let’s get started:
LOSS LEADERS, as I explained in the previous post on the blog loss leaders are an incentive to get you into the store. It is also one of the best ways to cut your grocery costs.
The best way to use them is to first learn what day your local grocery puts out there weekly sales ads. In some cities it’s Sunday’s others it’s Wednesday, your town may be entirely different. It is important to know how long a sale will last, it could be very frustrating to go to a store on a Sunday and find out the ad you planned your shopping around ended at midnight the night before.
I personally do not subscribe to a newspaper, and I live rurally so I seldom if ever get sales flyers in my mail, especially since I have registered our address on the no junk mail website. So I must be a little more creative about getting my ads. It’s a simple tool called “the internet”. Yep, just about every store known to man has a website with their weekly sales flyer on it.
Once I’ve located where these ads will be for the stores I’m doing cost comparison at I bookmark the site and/or subscribe to their email ads. I do this not only for grocery ads, but for hobby stores, and my husband gets notices and fuel coupons from Murphy fuel stations in his email on a regular basis.
Once you get the sales ads take time to sit down and really look at them. Just because it’s in a sales flyer does not mean it is on sale. Read the ads closely. Even better get out your PRICE BOOK (more on this in a moment) and do some serious comparison of not just price, but sizes.
Now make a list of the things that your family will truly eat that is truly on sale. Store by store, it’s always better to compare various stores loss leaders. Here’s one trick you may not know. Many major stores like Wal-Mart, Target and others (not just grocery stores) will do price match for IDENTICAL items. So if your local grocery has say a name brand frozen food on sale that you want, but it’s not worth the drive to pick up just that one item, take the ad to one of the price matching stores and get it for the same price there. Not only do you get the item for a lower price, but you don’t burn extra fuel or time to pick up the item.
Once you get the list made, you can possibly plan a menu for the week around these loss leaders. You can also consider stocking up to help cut your food costs for future meals. Ideally this is what you want to do if you are trying to meet the $1 a day challenge. Some stores will limit you on how many of what item per person per purchase you can get.
There are, of course, ways around this limit. Shop more than one time, more than one store, or take a shopping buddy with you. If the store is out of an item request a RAIN CHECK. This can be a true help in cutting costs. Because it allows you to spread out the cost of those more popular items. It is simply a coupon to purchase X amount of that item at the loss leader price when the store once again has it in stock.
Now about that PRICE BOOK. What you put in a price book is entirely up to you. My personal one is a spread sheet. The rows are the items ie: Chicken, leg quarters per pound; chicken, boneless skinless breasts per pound; Green Giant green beans 14 oz can. Being who I am it’s alphabetized for speed in locating an item.
The columns are the stores ie: Wal-Mart; Target, Dollar General, Aldis etc.
Then I start filling in the columns with the non-sale (every day) prices for each store. This can be quite time consuming at first. I recommend using grocery receipts you have at home to start out doing this, you can gather a lot of information and fill in the spreadsheet as you watch tv. Then each time you go to a grocery gather a little information while you are there. Just spend five minutes or so on a single aisle making notes and after a while you will have all the stores done with little effort.
Another way to save money is couponing. I am a former coupon/rebate queen. In the 80’s I was like those ladies you read about. I did not pay for groceries, in fact a grocery store once paid me because they doubled the free food coupons I had. Back then I ate only name brands, worked hard at rebating and our stores doubled and sometimes even tripled.
Those days are gone for me. I use very few ready made mixes or convenience foods. I clean with basic cleaners and like I said I do not purchase newspapers or magazines any longer. What I do have is a large box of non-expiring coupons from those days on basic items. So as the loss leaders pop up I will use those coupons until they are gone.
You can also download coupons from the internet, but be aware many stores will not take internet coupons, so before you waste the time, ink and paper check with the stores you will be shopping at.
There are also several individuals who will, for a fee, send you sets of coupons via the mail. I personally have not used any of these services, so I have no idea if they are cost affective or not.
Remember, a coupon is only good if it is an item you will truly use normally and it brings the price down below similar items that are equally as good. Ideally you want to match your coupons to the loss leader sale ad for the best deal. Also if you shop at places like CVS they have special store credits they hand out for certain purchases that can be used to bring your prices even lower.
If you are blessed enough to live in an area that still doubles coupons, by all means read their rules closely and then take advantage of it.
STORE BRANDS. Quite often a store brand is produced at the exact same factory as a name brand. It is in fact the same item, just a different label. But not always. Know what your family will and won’t eat. It’s not a good deal if your family won’t eat it.
Example: My family will eat the store brand instant oatmeal just as well as they will eat the Quaker of the same flavor. The store brand is of course much cheaper (but not as cheap as making your own instant oatmeal—a recipe to post at another time). However, we find the store brand raisin bran cereal tough and unpalatable, so we stick with our favorite name brand.
BULK COOKING. I’ve already wrote volumes on this in the past, simply do a search in my blog using the search feature at the left using key words/phrases like bulk cooking, Once a Month Cooking, OAMC , OMC and you should be able to pull up the posts on it.
GARDENING. I’ve done a few posts on this in the past and as spring approaches I will be doing more. Anyone can garden, no matter where they live. Many a garden is grown in window boxes and flower pots. Remember even one tomato plant gives you garden fresh tomatoes year round (yes they are a perennial) even in the coldest climates if you bring the plant inside when the weather turns nippy.
PORTION CONTROL. My last post had a lot on this, but it needs to be pointed out again. Control the portions, control the cost.
PLANNED LEFTOVERS. Instead of trying to figure out what to do with a leftover after the fact, plan for it before you even cook. Then once the cooking is finished set that leftover aside before serving up the meal. I’ll do a post in the future on the numerous ways you can use leftovers you may never even have thought of.
This has ran on too long, so I’ll close for now.
Jan who is looking forward to your suggestions on cutting grocery costs in OK
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