Okay, here it goes...thanks to C, I signed up for the Grocery Game...and thanks to the curiosity from Mandy, I'm now going to document my savings. :)
The basic idea of this thing is you pay for a list of advertised and unadvertised sales at your local grocery store (you put in your zip code and it tells you what store lists are available in your area. I like to shop the produce stand and a couple of local, small grocery stores in our town, but for the purposes of this trial, I'm shopping at Safeway). In addition to the list that tells you what's on sale, it also tells you where to look in the Sunday paper for coupons to add to the savings. In some cases, when something is on sale and you also use a store coupon and a manufacturer coupon, you can get an item for free!
This week, I saved $50 off my grocery bill with the combined savings of the store sales and coupons. I think I'll save more in the future because this week's list wanted me to use coupons from the Sunday paper of the last few weeks, where I only had the ones from the most current issue. A couple of the best deals I got were on meat- NINE huge natural top sirloin steaks for $14! That's the price I usually pay for two! I also bought 4 organic chicken thighs for $2! That's more than half off.
I have to admit, I was a little clumsy this time, making sure I pulled out each coupon as I selected a product so I wouldn't have to go through the coupon file at the register...but it was pretty cool to watch the cashier scan all the coupons and the total kept going down and down!
The main idea of this thing is to stockpile products...it's helpful to have a freezer and a place to put extra dry foods, so that when you have a coupon for 10/$10, you buy all ten items and then don't have to buy them again for a long time.
I'm looking forward to keeping this up...all my friends who are doing this are saving a lot more than me, so I'm hopeful that next week will be even better!
On a side note, it's nice to get the Seattle Times on Sunday...it was fun to sit with my coffee, peruse the paper and clip my coupons....wait, that sounds SOOOOO lame...who have I become? Clipping coupons?!
Sigh.
2 comments:
Where do yoou find out about the sales & coupons? I kinda' have my own "grocery game" that I play by myself every week. Maybe I'll post about it because it makes me oddly excited every time I go shopping :) I'm a total nerd!
Robin, thank you so much for you comments on my blog! Like I said in some of my posts, it means so much that people who don't even know me reach out to encourage! I look forward to keeping up with you in the blogging world!
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