A New Way of Shopping

Before I started "saving money", I would make a grocery list and go shopping. We would decide what we wanted to eat for the week and if we ate the last box of mac and cheese or cracker in the box I would put it on the list, and buy it on our next outing. That was expensive. I never left the store for under $60. I would come home, unpack the bags and think.... We don't have anything to eat. How could that be? I just spent $60 on 4 little bags of groceries? Then I found coupons (insert angels singing here).

My new plan. Grocery adds come out on Wed. I'm always super excited to see the grocery ads. I take a few minutes and look them over. At this point. I decide what deals we can't pass up. We never have 1 box of crackers or 1 box of mac and cheese (I will post a picture of my pantry in a later post). I know what we eat and I stock up on those items when they are on sale/free/cheap. I won't lie. I bough 8 boxes of mac and cheese last week. We were not out, but I couldn't pass up $.33 a box. Usually it's $1.26. I also use these ads to decide what fruits and veggies we will eat, meat we will buy, and plan our eating for the week. We eat by the sales. Some weeks it's a blueberry week and others it's peaches. I can't tell you how much we save by just looking and thinking before we buy.

I take the time to sit down and plan my list. I use a old envelope to write my shopping list. I pull out and tuck the coupons for the items I'm going to buy inside of it, so they are ready at the checkout. This keeps me focused on the deals and from "impulse buying" things that are over priced that we don't really need. I try to stick to the list, and stick to the deals.

Another thing I do is shop twice a week. Usually on Friday and Monday. This allows me to take advantage of the new coupons for the week (Sunday paper) and that weeks other deals one last time (they change on Wednesday and I have both kiddos home on Tuesday and there is no way in heck I'd go shopping with both of them... no way!!!). This is especially good if there is a produce deal. I can buy grapes on Friday for the family and replenish on Monday for the rest of the week. It's like 2 weeks of sales. Before I started doing this, I would kick myself when the new ad came out and we were out of grapes and they went from $.99/lb to $3.99/lb over night.

Don't get me wrong. We do eat things that we want to eat. I just may not buy it when we are going to eat it. Hence the warehouse like storage rack in my garage and overflow fridge and freezer. We do eat the fruit that's cheap. Honestly, I think it keeps variety in our house and encourages us to feed the kids new things.

Think about how you shop. A little change could save you a lot.