Grocery Savings 101

The best tips for getting the most out of your grocery store shopping:

Shop the Sales: Most products go on sale at their lowest price every six weeks for the southern US and 10 weeks in the north. Watch the sales flyers to help find the items on sale.

Stockpile: When you find the item at it's lowest price, you want to buy as many as you need to at least get you through till the next lowest price comes in the sale cycle.

Use Coupons: to lower the price of your item even more, use a coupon. Often by adding a coupon to an already rock bottom price, you can get an item for pennies or even free! By matching coupons to named brand products on sale, the name brand will almost always be cheaper than the generic version.

Give up brand loyalty This is a hard one for many folks. To be sucessful at couponing, you must be willing to give other brands a chance. We


COUPON LINGO
Below are the abbreviations to the coupon terminology that I use in my shopping lists

BOGO -  Buy One Get One Free.  Depending upon the store, it often means that an item rings up at half price.  This way you can only buy one and still get the discount.   At other stores, particularly drug stores, the first item will ring up at full price and the second one at zero.   I try to note which way it will ring up on my posts.

Printable - This means that the coupon can be printed from the internet.  Usually the word "Printable" is a link directly to the coupon.

RP - Redplum Insert.  This is the name of one of the coupon inserts that come in Sunday's paper

SS - SmartSource.  Another insert in Sunday's paper

P&G - Proctor & Gamble.  Insert in Sunday's paper

GM - General Mills.  Insert in Sunday's paper

00/00 - Date of the paper that insert came in.

Catalina - A coupon that is printed at the register after a transaction.  The name of the machine is Catalina, that's how the coupons got their name.

Blinkie - These are coupons that you find in the aisles of your grocery store.  They are in a little machine that blinks.

Tearpad - Coupons that can be found on tearpads around your store.  They are sometimes in the aisles, at the entrance on on special displays of products.  You just have to keep an eye out for them.