Money Saving Grocery Ideas

The stock market had a decent comeback this week and oil prices dropped.  But GROCERY PRICES are still sky high!  So if you haven't already, its time to start thinking about how to save money on groceries.

Buy in bulk whenever you can at Costco.  Find things you need a lot of.  Paper goods, cereal, crackers, frozen foods, soda, water, etc.  Sometimes this backfires when you buy way too much stuff, especially perishable stuff.  So be careful about what you buy.  Buy in bulk when there is a special price on something.  I do this all the time at Albertsons.  If I see a 3 for $5 deal on Eggo Waffles that normally cost $3 per box, and there is room in the freezer, I'll load up on 6 boxes.

Don't hesitate to clip coupons!  If you don't get the Sunday paper, consider investing in one.  The L.A. Times costs $1 per week for Sunday delivery.  With proper planning you can easily parlay that $1 into $5, $10, $20 or more in grocery savings each week.  Hate messing with coupons?  At least seek out the larger ($1 and up) coupons.  They are the equivalent of $1 bills, so tear them out and USE them!

Take a look at a website called The Coupon Clippers, which has nearly 2000 coupons to search and choose from.  It is extremely easy to use.  Search by "aisle" of the supermarket, product type, product name, brand and even by coupon expiration date and value.  They mail you the coupons for a cost of 50 cents per order plus 10% of the coupon value plus 58 cents shipping.  Say you find 50 coupons with a value of $40.  This would cost you $5.08.  So your net savings if you use all the coupons is about $35.  Not bad if you can do this 2 times per month to net $840 in savings per year!