DM wrote to share his favorite grocery tip.
As the primary cook and grocery-getter in our household, I’ve discovered that there are certain pantry and household items that we use more than others. In our case, it’s things like: canned chicken broth, canned tomatoes, frozen ground turkey, and Diet Pepsi. These are things that I use several times a week, if not daily. I think it’s useful to know your “strike point” at the the supermarket for these frequently-used items.
As an example, Campbell’s chicken broth is typically priced at $0.89 per can. If I’m out and I need it for a recipe, I buy only what I need. However, it’s occasionally priced at $0.50 per can. When that happens, I buy a couple of cases and store it in the basement. Similarly, I never buy Diet Pepsi for anything more than $4.50 per case. But if it hits $4.00, I buy 10 cases or more.
My suggestion for others is to analyze their regular purchases and type up a wallet sized list of their key strike points. Break it down to a unit price as well, in case there are bulk discounts available.
This is a terrific idea. Kris and I use a variation on it already. We don’t have printed lists of staples, but we’re each aware of what our favorite foods cost. In my case, I am quite fond of a certain brand of canned chili. But I try not to buy it at regular price. I wait for it to go on sale for $0.89 per can (or less). Similarly, I can’t bring myself to pay full price for fruit juice. But our local grocery store often discounts juice by $1.00 or $1.50 or more if it’s close to its sell-by date. I’m perfectly happy to drink this stuff.
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I do this as well. Last week I bought Cheerios, five boxes for $10. There were also coupons for $1 off, so I got five boxes for five bucks. Not bad!
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[...] Rich Slowly share an idea on how to save on groceries: strike-point shopping, i.e., stock pile items you use often when they are on [...]
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I agree completely! I don’t have a typed-up list, but I do have a very good idea of what products that we use the most cost at various places (i.e. our grocery store vs. Wal-Mart vs. Target vs. drugstore vs. dollar store vs. any store/generic brand). Sometimes the drugstore ads run a really really good deal on a few things, and I stock up then.
It floors my husband sometimes. He’ll be with me out at the superstore or wherever and pick up a bottle of his shampoo, and I’ll tell him I can get it two dollars cheaper elsewhere.
Someday I should add up how much I save by visiting various stores instead of doing the one-stop shopping thing. (We live in a smaller town, so gas doesn’t factor into the equation.)
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This is the ONLY way I shop!! Great blog! I really appreciate all the great info!
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Coupons always works for me.
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thegrocerygame.com is a cool site that keeps track of the cycles that most food goes on and tells you when it is @ that “strike-point”. Goes by the same theory. Plus they keep track of which coupons to use. It’s all about stock piling.
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There’s a website called The Grocery Game (www.thegrocerygame.com) that basically does this concept as a database — they mark items on a weekly basis as good “stock up” sales or “rock bottom” sales. It’s not expensive — $1 a week for one store, $.50 for each additional — and it tags the databases to the coupons in your local newspaper so the prices are based on what you actually pay. I’ve been a member for about eight months now and it’s terrific. My average grocery bill has dropped by over $30 a week even though I’m celiac (so I can’t eat things like commercial cereals, soups, snacks, frozen foods, etc., that are often really good deals) and near-vegetarian (so I don’t use the meat deals).
Things that I will never pay more than sales tax for because they’re free with coupon more quickly than we can use them: toothpaste, toothbrushes, “women’s hygeine products,” baby shampoo, and deodorant.
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My mom has been doing that for years, stocking up on items when they are really on sale. A ways back I wrote Get the most from coupon clipping at the grocery store, an outline to really maximizing the use of coupons.
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I too share your addiction to Diet Pepsi, but have never found myself in need of 10 cases. You are a true addict.
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The price book helps a lot with this process. I recently blogged about 9 tips for budget grocery shopping (on the thrifty food plan) — following up on the hype about living on a food-stamp budget with tips to save on groceries. I didn’t include stocking up in so many words, but it’s a great one.
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If I take to $4 from the Diet Pepsi for the next 9 trips to the store and invest it ($36 for the next 9 weeks), what am I giving up for storing those cases in my basement for the next 9 weeks to save $4.50?
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5% APY for $36 for 9 months = $.31
.05 * $36.00 * (9 / 52) = $0.311538462
IT IS WORTH IT!
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Fantastic method for those that have the storage space.
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Dustin:
You’re kidding right? $36 invested for 9 weeks can earn you something like 31 cents.
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I’ve worked the coupon and sales cycle game to the point where I actually make money (rebates and such) on my shopping. And I have enough food in the house to last for 3 months after the next killer hurricane or snowstorm.
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The storage space is always an issue. We’d like to do this for paper towels, but it gets out of hand.
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I agree with Lazy Man – it’s a great idea within reason. I bought 5 things of 12-roll paper towels and I was tripping over those things in our storage room for weeks. And forget about buying spring water gallons in bulk.
Great idea, though. I may try to apply that to more than just groceries – you could apply it to cell phones, new technologies, etc. For example: I’ll get Vonage when it hits $9.99/month.
My only other question is how do you keep track of this? You say you don’t have a printed list, but in your head? Seems like a lot to remember. I am like George Bush Sr. – I have trouble remembering the cost of a gallon of milk, much less a can of garbanzo beans!
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[...] is from Get Rich Slowly called Strike Point Shopping which is based on a reader-submitted [...]
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I think it is more a matter of stocking up on things you buy regularly, (hopefully) you know the price you paid on those items.
I wrote a similar piece based off of this post on my blog as well.
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10 cases of Diet Pepsi?
I just threw up a little in my mouth.
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[...] And a reader at Get Rich Slowly Saves on Groceries with “Strike-Point Shopping” [...]
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To further extend this concept, many grocery stores will let you order by the case at 10% off. We’ve had instances where we got the 10% off the sale price. Additionally, this can help for those high consumption items that rarely go on sale. Typically you can ask the store manager. Some managers are more open to this than others. We have Ingles locally and some allow ordering at a discount while other’s do not. Also, we have a local GreenLife grocery (we buy a fair amount of organic food) and they have this policy as well.
Also, on a similar note, stores are not allowed to sell expired foods. If you see eggs or dairy products, the day before they expire you can typically get them at a substantial discount and most of the products keep for several days or (in the case of eggs) even weeks after expiration.
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Funny, I just wrote a similar article last week on my Pennysqueezer blog here:
http://pennysqueezer.blogspot.com/2007/07/grocery-shopping-stockpile-method-with.html
I also use bulk coupons, buying them in lots of 10 or 20 on Ebay, to make the savings go even further.
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[...] Save on Groceries with ‘Strike-Point Shopping’ [...]
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I do the same thing! I keep a small notebook in my purse, and any of my regular staples that are on sale for less than the regular price, I stock up on! Works even better when I can combine with coupons!!
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I’ve been doing this for years but never called it by a fancy name like “strike-point” shopping
. I have a near photographic memory. I can quote the prices at all the different stores of nearly all of the items I regularly buy.
Imagine how offended I get when Wal-Mart does a roll back on the item I normally buy for $7.97, but the sign says $9.97 rolled back to $8.97. I got so fired up about it that I took a copy of my receipt from the week prior and pulled the roll back tag off the shelf and brought them to the AG’s office in person. The sad thing is, they only have to sell 1 at $9.97 to be able to legally make that claim. This practice is more common than you would care to imagine…
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POP or Soda Its Called Most Places. Is killing the people we know and love. their out here fighting a “drug” war when presrip[tion drugs and food is killing more people than cigarettes, drugs alcohol combined.
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i do this as well. One item that I stock up a lot on is 32 oz cans of crushed tomatoes. In late August, the local supermarkets usually have a loss-leader sale on them, and I buy enough to last the year- 12 to 18 cans. I typically save between 25% and 50%. I mark the date of purchase on the cans with a magic marker so I have a sense of which ones are oldest and should be used first if they get mixed up in the pantry.
As of now, I have about 10 cans left in my pantry. So maybe I will only but 10 on sale this August!
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“Brip Blap: And forget about buying spring water gallons in bulk.”
Why buy in bulk when you can refill for 25c a gallon? Of course, I don’t keep an eye on the prices of bottled water, so maybe the sales make it less than that, but on the occasions that I have glanced at it it’s normally at least double that price.
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I’m new to some of this and was wondering how you price comparison at grocery stores ~ shopping at one store but getting the sales prices from another store? What are the tricks to do this? Or, are stores still doing this?
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