Let’s be honest grocery shopping can be expensive and a good part of our paychecks/ budget goes to this every week. So anything we can do to save money it’s worth it in the long run. This article goes hand-in-hand with a smart grocery shopping discussed several months back. The question becomes what is the biggest tip for saving money towards our grocery bills?
Checking weekly flyers
The simple answer, yet best answer, is shopping sales flyers. It is quite rare that my wife and I will spend full price on our groceries. We will shop deals in the sales flyers for 50 to 60% of our total groceries, paying full price for only maybe 40%. This can easily save $20-50 per week just by looking at the weekly flyer. Based on what things are on sale, you can find things that can be stocked up on. Which then saves money during future grocery trips.
Most stores come out with a weekly flyer of their on sale items. You should be making it a point to quickly review this. From there, you can make a grocery list each week on which sales items you typically use and need. Sometimes you can find good deals on more splurge items, which are good every once and a while. Once you start looking at weekly flyers often enough, you’ll be able to pick up when something is a good saving or if it’s a really good deal/stock up price.
Combine with coupons
Not only is it important with shopping sales flyers to create a grocery list but also to figure out what you can stack with coupons. This helps to maximize your savings. It can be the difference between a good deal and a great deal, especially with stores that double the coupons. I just wanted to know the coupon policies of local stores. An example of this is with CVS or Rite-aid, they often run deals such as with toothpaste. They may be on sale for a $1.00 and can be stacked with a $1.00 coupon to get them free or at least extremely cheap There are tons of examples out there, this is just the first that comes to mind.
Know when to stock up
This reiterates the point I made above about knowing the weekly flyers and your store’s regular deals. Being able to figure out when you should stock up. This may vary slightly from area to area. But a common example of when to stock up is for chicken breast if it’s on sale for $1.49 per pound. This would be something that I would say you should stock up on and freeze some. This holds true with anything you buy regularly for groceries. Another example of this with the K-cups, I will stock up if they are they are under $0.25 per cup; and more, so if they are under $0.20 which is rarer.
Bringing it all together
A lot of it comes back to basics, shop your local deals. Shopping sales flyers helps to save a lot of money. You should be checking on the best deals in your local store flyers each week. From the sales flyers, you should be able to figure out a meal plan based on that, which keeps your total grocery bill down overall.
Like I stated before, we always try to save money and shop sales on at least 50% to 60% of our total grocery bill; which is on the low end most weeks. Best way to go about this is to create a budget for groceries then work to spend even less. With this being goal driven, you’re more likely to stick with this. If you’re not shopping sales flyers, then you are throwing a lot of money away over the course of the year. Shopping sales flyers should be part of your weekly routine.