Mar 19
HOW TO MAXIMIZE YOUR GROCERY SAVINGS
There are many opportunities to save significantly on your grocery costs, with or without coupons. Depending on your families lifestyle, what you eat, how you cook and other factors different money saving methods work better for some then others. Use them all and you can see significant cost savings on your food and other purchase costs. Here are some tips on how to do that:
Shop weekly store sales. One cost effective measure you can take is to shop weekly sales at your local grocery store. Grocery stores will advertise what are called ‘loss leaders’. These are items the retailer may take a loss on to lure you into the store. It’s an advertising method to get you to shop with them. The key here is to shop in a disciplined manger. Make your list based on those sales and stick to it!
Plan out a weekly menu using products that are on sale at your grocery store. To really make shopping weekly store sales work, you will need to do some menu planning. Start with meat as it is usually the highest priced item. Stores like Winco often have good meat prices, but you can get good deals at places like QFC or Safeway by checking their weekly circulars.
In addition to planning your menu around store sales, try to reuse the same ingredients across meals. For example, if roast is offered in a buy one get one free sale buy 2. Potatoes and onions are produce items you can usually get very affordably. Your menu plan for the week might include a pot roast (throw the potatoes and onions in a slow cooker with the roast for an easy and tasty meal). You could use those same ingredients to make French dips with caramelized onions and fried potatoes later in the week. You are able to make your budget stretch further by sharing the same ingredients across multiple meals. You would need to buy the potatoes and an onion for the first recipe and now you have left overs for a second meal.
Learn your local grocery store. A great way to do this is to converse with the experts back at the meat counter, in the produce section and those you see stocking items. You can get great discount deals simply by learning when the best time to shop your store is. For example, my local Top Foods offers meat mark downs at certain times each day. They will mark their meats down based on expiration dates or overstock. They include peelie coupons anywhere from $1-$3 off that meat. By shopping soon after the mark downs you will have the best selection of meat discounts. If you are cooking or freezing it when you get home then there is no reason not to purchase these cheaper meats.
My local QFC has a high quality standard and will mark dairy products down well before the expiration date. They actually pull them prior to expiration date and so you can get great dairy product deals by looking for these clearance items. Each QFC is different that’s why you need to get to know your local store.
My Safeway meat department offers free cutting and repackaging of meats. By talking with my meat counter folks I have been able to really take advantage of meat sales. For example pork loins went on sale recently for a steep savings. They were huge though, and it was going to take a lot of work when I got home to cut it all up. I was able to take one of the large pork loins to the meat counter and they cut it up into two meal size loins and a package of pork chops for me. They then packaged it all and now I had three meals for the same great savings price offered on the one large pork loin! The point here is that your local store is your best source of saving tips like these. Talk with them, find out what they suggest and run with it.
Most grocery stores run their sales Wed. thru Tues. These include Albertsons, Safeway, Top Foods, and QFC. Fred Meyer runs their sales Sunday through Saturday and their circulars are in the Sunday paper or at front of store. Albertsons and Safeway will often run an additional weekend sales and include an insert in the Sunday paper.
Learn to cook cheaper cuts of meat & products from scratch. Rather then throwing a T-Bone steak on the grill you may opt to marinate a flank steak and simmer in the crockpot for the afternoon. The cost savings would be significant and meal is still tasty. Whole chickens often go on sale for under $1/lb. You can get a whole chicken for around $3.50 and should have enough meat to feed a family of 4-5 with. You can cook it whole for a roasted chicken meal, or butcher it and make fried chicken one night. You can boil it and take the meat off the bone to make just about any recipe requiring chicken. Difference is you spent half of what it would cost to purchase skinless chicken breasts.
Bulk foods can be a great option. Stores like Fred Meyer and Winco have nice bulk food sections where you can buy rice and beans to store away in an airtight container. They will last quite awhile this way.
Stockpiling. Stockpiling is where you purchase multiple numbers of items your family uses most when they are on sale. The idea here is try to avoid paying full price for the items you use most frequently. In order to stockpile effectively you need to know what you cook with most often, and how much you go through. If you choose to start stockpiling you may not see an immediate cut in your grocery bill as you are buying more then you would initially. However, within a few weeks you should start to see your grocery bill drop as a result of your stockpile. You will find more detail on how to make Stockpiling work for you here.
Use Coupons. Using coupons is a great way to save money. Coupons can be used in a way that best fits your life style. You can use them casually to help cut your bill, or aggressively (stacking coupons, etc) to see significant savings on your grocery bill. Coupons work particularly well for packaged items, snacks, beverages, cleaning and hygiene items. It’s a great way to stock up your pantry with things that you can add to make a meal stretch further. Read more about ‘Where to Get Coupons’ here (or get more details on eCoupons or Catalina coupons).
Depending on your circumstances you can use these tips in a way they suit your family best. Stay tuned for one article each day for the rest of this week that will drill down in more detail into tips that you can use to cut your grocery bill!
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