Grocery Savings

I have a friend who is on a very small grocery budget (half of my grocery budget, which itself is quite modest), yet she feeds her family well and saves hundreds of dollars a month by combining sales with coupons. I've always rejected this method of shopping; when I've looked through the Sunday coupons in the past, most of the coupons are for items my family would never buy. Instead, I have for years made weekly menus and shopped for the ingredients, thinking that it helped me avoid impulse spending. I always have spent much less than the average family, but after talking to my friend, then reading Shop Smart, Save More (which I found while browsing new books at my wonderful local library), I knew I could do better.


Though my family does not use most items featured in the Sunday paper's coupon section, we do purchase enough of the brands to justify the $2.00/issue of the Sunday paper. Even if we don't buy Gorton's fish sticks, the savings we get on Speed Stick, Secret, and Crest are easily over $2.00. So I've joined the coupon band wagon. On Sunday evenings I clip the coupons that I want from the paper, then I read through the flyers of the two stores I like to frequent: Food City and CVS. Food City is more convenient to me than Walmart or Kroger, and if I return to CVS every week or two to spend my ExtraBucks before they expire, I can save tens of dollars a month there. I make a list according to the items listed on sale in the flyers, and often I'm able to combine the sales with a coupon. I stock up on those items and have a "stash" from which to draw at home rather than paying full price for an item later. I'm saving at least $75-$100 a month using this new shopping method.