Smart Shopping

A long time ago someone had told me that they would go to several different grocery stores each week to buy their weekly items. I thought man that is crazy think of how much time they waste I'd rather buy everything at once and get it over with. Boy was a wrong. Once I got married and we had our house, we had to start cutting back on things, that is when we really started to try and stretch our dollar. I would look up who had what on sale and go to each store to purchase their sale items. Wow, we saved a LOT of money doing it that way! Still never used coupons. I always thought ah they never have any coupons for the things we use, blah blah blah. That was simply because we would buy generic items to save money or so we thought until now. Now I know what an awesome deal you can make with a coupon at a grocery store and buy name brands for even cheaper than the generic! Most grocery stores automatically double your manufacturer coupons. I know that Shaws doubles up to a $0.99 coupon and so does ShopRite. I believe ShopRite even has triple days sometimes! I have to find out about this. Make sure you check your local grocery store's coupon policy. I get my coupons from the Sunday paper and also online. Now that I have been using coupons and finding deals, I can't even believe that I would pay the prices I did for things before. LoL. As a STAHM to two boys, I feel like my job is to try and make that one income go further in the household and that is why I have started all this. So in conclusion the best way to save money on grocery items is to view each weekly circular and plan around items that are on sale that you can/would use, combine that with coupons and you can get stuff for dirt cheap or FREE! Also remember to stock up on things when they are on sale. The last thing you want is to run out of something and purchase it at full price and screw up your whole weekly budget. It's hard for me to even buy something without a coupon now! lol. I know this may not make financial sense for some people to be driving to multiple stores, but we are lucky enough to have just about every store possible within 10 min of us. So if you can and you aren't spending more in gas that is the way to go. Also be sure to stock up on stuff like meats when they are on sale. We just purchased that ground beef and I have like 4 pounds of it now in my freezer so I won't need that for a while now and most likely it will go on sale again by the time we need it. Same with chicken, we purchase the boneless skinless chicken breasts in the bag that are individually frozen so we buy that maybe every other month or longer! You can get the chicken at Aldi for a good everyday low price if you can't find it on sale anywhere. Aldi is where I go for all of the staple items we need like milk, bread, eggs you just can't beat their prices for those items even on sale!