Grocery Coupons Tips: January 2012
Keywords: save on groceries, grocery bill, lower my bill, price match, save money, groceries, sales
The grocery bill can easily become the most intimidating wrecking ball in one’s budget. This is compounded in a family setting where the price tag could easily break well over $200 in a week and even exceed $500, depending on the number of members living or often visiting the home. This means that families can spend OVER a thousand bucks each month. That’s amazing and frightening all at once. Of course, this leads many shoppers to find ways to trim that grocery bill down as much as they can. They need useful ways or tips on saving money with groceries. I don’t blame them, since I often find myself targeting the exact same thing. Let me cover a few things here with you and hopefully you can save yourself some financial pain going forward.
USING PRICE & AD MATCHING TO LOWER YOU BILL: This is, by far, the most powerful tool in your arsenal. I have saved myself from thousands upon thousands of dollars in food spending because I took the time to use this service that some stores offer. If you aren’t aware of what this is, here’s a brief explanation: Some stores will sell their products or services to you at the sale price of another store. They do this so as to keep or take business away from their competitors. Meaning, if one particular store has apples on sale for $1.50/lb while the price matching store has them for $2.50, they will bump down the price to the cheaper offer in order to keep you coming back to their business.
Now, you might be thinking, “How does that save me money when I could just visit the other store?” Great question! The secret here that most people don’t realize is that many price matching stores don’t have distance requirements. Or, if they do, the distance is extremely large. For example, one of the local stores I use to grocery shop at, doesn’t force customers to only use ads from other stores in town. I can use the special sales pricing of a store that’s over 50 miles away. Sure, I could drive 50 or 100 miles to go shopping there, but that’s not practical. This might not make a lot of good business sense, but the store does allow it. I, personally, peruse the sales ads of dozens of big name stores and small shops before I go shopping. There are almost always great deals going for things I would have bought anyway. This is why I can accurately claim to have saved countless thousands of dollars on my food bill.
Taking advantage of Local Deals will help you save a lot of money in the long run. This can prevent you from hours of searching stores far from home, for better deals. The one thing you should be aware of is that your price matching store may require a physical coupon. If that’s the case, call the stores that are not in town and set up a mail delivery for their circulars. I do this and it works quite well, even if you’re not near one of their stores. Another option would be to print their circular, but be cautious- not all stores accept them in that form.
TAKING ADVANTGE OF GENERIC BRANDS: There’s a stigma with some people that you can’t enjoy a product unless it’s a major brand. While this may be true in some cases, there are many instances where it simply makes little difference. What you’ll notice is that many stores offer their own special products while using their own name. There will, of course, be national off brands as well. This is where you must do a little trial and error. I went through this process myself and in the long run, it’s saved me tremendous amounts of money.
Sometimes a substitution just won’t work. One product we found that we couldn’t buy the off brand for, was nuts. This goes for peanuts and mixed nuts used as snacks. We discovered that there just wasn’t a substitute for the major brand we enjoy. On the flip side, we found that we could replace our favorite brand of pretzels with the store brand. There was practically no difference in taste, and we enjoyed it just as much as the major brand. This saves over a dollar per bag. Not too shabby. Periodically substitute one of your normal purchases in this manner and see what fits.
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