How to Save Big Money on Groceries

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

3-ring binder with paper and dividers OR computer
envelope or coupon organizer

Step 1

The first strategy is to make your own personal price book - your key to scientific comparison shopping. A price book lists all the groceries you buy, one page per item. I use a small 3-ring binder with alphabetical tabs. Yours could be a computer document or series of documents in your Blackberry, Treo or other hand-held device. (Just be sure to keep a back-up copy!) For each item, note the store, date, brand, size, price, and unit price at each available store as well as whether it was a sale price. See Resources below for examples and a downloadable form.
To gather this information, over the next month or so take some extra time when you go grocery shopping. Record in your price book the prices and all other relevant information on everything you buy, not just what you are purchasing that day. Be sure to check the unit prices of all the sizes of each item you want because a quarter of the time the unit price of the largest size is not the lowest. Each week gather prices from a different grocery store until you've visited them all. Also, record the sale prices from the newspaper circulars. Food items often go on sale at regular intervals. Over time you will become away of these intervals. Be sure to note them.

If making a price book seems overwhelming, choose just 30 items your family purchases most often and make your price book with just these. Over time you may add other items as you see fit.
Step 2

You don't always find the best deal at grocery stores. Search out other sources for the things you need. Go catalogue shopping for food prices, too. Find prices for online groceries and groceries delivered are often cheaper than you think because you not only do you save on gasoline but you can often find discount coupon codes online. Warehouse clubs and local wholesale sources bear investigating . Did you remember outlet shopping? Do you have any scratch and dent stores near you? What about restaurant supply stores? Farmers' markets also offer fresh produce often at less than supermarket prices, especially if you can haggle late in the day. Are there any local food co-ops or a food buying club you could try out? If not, you could start one if you have a lot of friends who would split large orders from wholesalers with you. Dollar Stores are often good for garbage bags, air fresheners, laundry and household cleaning products, holiday decorations, liquid soap, shampoo, juice, baby food, noodles, snacks, big bags of candy, gift wrap, school supplies, and food-storage containers. Family Dollar and Big Lots can be good sources as well. Ethnic stores often carry herbs, spices, and produce at excellent prices. You can often find the best deals on prescription drugs, milk, eggs, butter, cheese, gas, alcoholic beverages, whole coffee beans, and fancy foods for gift baskets at warehouse stores such as Costco, Sam's, and BJ's.
Step 3

You may be unaware of some very different types of sources that can save you a lot of money that you should definitely check out. If you buy organic produce, Community supported agriculture farms (CSAs) offer (usually) organic produce which are definitely cheaper than at health food stores.
Angel Food Ministries, S.H.A.R.E. (Self-help and Resource Exchange), and Fare for All (MN) offer monthly pre-selected shares of a variety of foods saving you up to 60% on retail prices. See the Resources links for more information. If you can’t find a S.H.A.R.E. program near you try searching online for “SHARE, food, YOURSTATE”, or contact a local Roman Catholic Church which sponsors the program in many states, other houses of worship or your local food bank. Please also note that you should follow up to make sure all of the centers in the links below are still providing the program. Because it is often a small, volunteer-run operation, they may have no website available. You will have difficulty comparing these in your price book item for item. But they are definitely worth considering.
Step 4

While you are pulling together your price book, also gather grocery coupons from your local newspapers as well as in the grocery store aisles. Perhaps your neighbors and friends wouldn't mind giving you their unwanted coupons. Print online grocery coupons. Keep them all neatly organized so that you can find what you want easily. Combining coupons with sales often results in a 50% savings or more. But always check your price book to be certain that it is the lowest price. We have an Aldi grocery store in our area which almost always beats even great sale prices at other stores. I'm told Sav-a-lot is similar. So the key is, when you use coupons, first make sure the final cost you pay for an item is really to your advantage.
Step 5

Now for the fun part - comparison shopping. Your goal will be to go to four different stores per month, one each week. For those items that you need but that are not on sale, find out from the unit price in your price book where the lowest priced item is carried. When you shop at that store get enough to last you four weeks until the next time you will shop at that store. Say your plan is to go to Piggly Wiggly every first week of the month. Suppose Piggly Wiggly has the lowest priced ketchup. Your children are ketchup-fiends and go through one bottle per week. So you buy four bottles of ketchup to last until the next month when you return to Piggly Wiggly.
Step 6

Your next strategy is to build up your home food storage to the point that you all your food has been purchased at sale price or better. Sit down with your the sale flyers for the current week and your coupons. If you have any coupons for items in the sale flyers, write down on the sale flyer what your final cost would be with coupon. Compare those prices to your price book to determine whether the final cost of the item is actually the rock-bottom price for a certain item. If the price of an item is indeed a rock-bottom price, buy enough of that item to last you through until it goes on sale again. Say, for example, peanut butter is on sale for $0.99/18oz., an almost unheard of low price for peanut butter. Suppose it tends to go on sale every three months. In three months your family typically eats 6 jars of peanut butter. So you should buy 6 jars. Now, every time you go to the pantry for a new jar of peanut butter, you will be happy knowing for certain you got that peanut butter for a rock-bottom price.

Can you see the power of this fantastic strategy applied to all your groceries? Wow!
Step 7

Shop at the right time. Find out when the butcher marks down the meat about to expire. If you purchase it, cook it that day or pop in the freezer. The morning after holidays are also a good time to shop for meats on sale.
Step 8

If you consume case amounts of a particular item, another strategy is to purchase in bulk from the grocery store. You can get quite a discount by asking the store manager what price he would give you for a case lot of baked beans, for example. Typically, you can expect 15% discount for case lots.
Step 9

Eventually, your pantry shelving will be full of food which you purchased at next to wholesale prices. You will love this awesome and addictive feeling! Not only is this great for your budget, it's also great for emergency food when your car breaks down so you can't drive to the store or you're too sick to shop or, God forbid, you lose your job and have no money to shop. Once your stash is built up you won't have to feel guilty when the subject of emergency preparedness comes up. If you can slowly work up to having and entire year's worth of food in your home food storage, the amount of money that you save will be the equivalent of you having a part-time job. The beautiful thing will be that you have done this work at home on your schedule!