Planning and organizing your grocery shopping will save you as much time and money as clipping and using coupons! It’s really half the puzzle!
We recommend you first determine which stores (based on sales) to use for stock-up items. Next is to create a list of items you MUST HAVE each week (hopefully, over time, this list is very small and primarily consists of perishables). For those items, you look for the best price in sales ads of the stores you are already planning to visit, and search for coupons you can use. This way you aren’t hopping unnecessarily from store to store for just an item or two and you aren’t buying those “must-haves” at random either. The final step is to make your menu plan from the items you have on hand and the items you are already planning to purchase. Try to avoid adding anything to the list for your meal plan (you may have a few incidentals here and there).
The key to buying at rock-bottom is saving your coupons for use in conjunction with a sale. Don’t use your coupons right away unless there is a good sale to combine with.
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For example, we purchased dish washing detergent almost free ($.41 a box) by combining a sale with a coupon at our local Target store. The same sale cycled around to many local/national stores within weeks of the coupons coming out.
One final tip: Buy as many unprepared foods as is possible for your family and the amount of time you have to devote to cooking. It is far less expensive (and healthier in immeasurable ways) to make your own food – even cookies – than it is to buy them packaged. This applies to most prepared foods (even bread!) and the more you practice making these things, the easier it is and the more you will be willing to try other foods as well!
For grocery savings remember,
- plan and organize your trips
- look for sales on items your family uses
- practice coupon timing
- stock up on sales whenever possible
- menu plan
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