Some of you have asked why I bother to shop at several different stores in a week. It’s very simple: I have found that I save more by stocking up on items at their lowest prices (buying super sale items at several stores), rather than shopping only at one store.
Each of the stores that I shop are within a 3 mile radius of my house and I shop on my way home from other events, so gas costs are not really a factor. If you live in a rural area this strategy will make more sense if you travel once every two or three weeks into a nearby town and purchase the sale items.
It does take more time, but buying groceries at the rock bottom lowest price enables me to feed my family of 6 (including three teenagers) for around $100/week. This includes expensive gluten-free items for one of my children who has a wheat allergy.
I spend 20-30 minutes on my planning day to search websites and newspaper inserts for the best sale prices and I make a menu from the sale items and what I currently have in the fridge, freezer and pantry. I then spend about 2 hours total shopping.
If I save just $50 by shopping this way, I am essentially being paid almost $25/hour for the time I spend. I’ll take that pay rate any day!
You can read more about all of the saving strategies I use (including how to make a price book) in my ebook Save More–Clip Less: Feed Your Family For Less Without Extreme Couponing.
If you would like to start saving money on groceries, check out eMeals*–weekly menus based on your local store’s sales including recipes and a grocery list! Click here and use promo code PEACEFUL for a 10% discount off of eMeals already low prices! (They even have gluten free plans!)
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During the summer there is a local farmer’s market, and we (attempt) to garden also. I don’t take the time to can, etc, (I say take because I could find the time but don’t!) but we have purchased tomatoes from a colony in bulk and my husband’s mother, aunt, and grandma canned them. We paid for the tomatoes, they supplied labor, and we split the results.
I appreciate the compliment…and of course we could do better…and I’m working on that. 🙂 Thus, I am following your blog! School starts this week, along with volleyball…thankful our concession stand sells veggie trays! 😉 Getting everyone to a schedule again will help with regular meals ( I hope!).
Love the plan to work together on the canning project. I’m not a canner either, so this would be a great plan for me. 🙂
I am one of those rural people…but I have to travel 18-30 miles one way to go somewhere other than our small town supervalu. The nearest Walmart etc is 85 or 110 miles one way, depending on which direction we go. We get there once a month-6 wks. We ranch (and I work full time in town) so we have our own beef but we still spend about $650 a month on everything else (family of 5).
I do stock up on things on sale in town that we consume often. I also go to Sam’s on our long trips for paper products, fresh produce, and other items that are high-dollar locally. When I am already going to 4 or 5 other places besides Walmart, I don’t want to go to Target or Safeway too, and they are usually more expensive anyway. The biggest problem with that is we often eat up the perishables long before we make another long trip (8 hr day or more to do the driving and all our errands! Ugh!) So we don’t eat as much fresh food as I would like, but still try to use frozen so it is more whole food in our diet.
We did e-meals for a while when I was recuperating from surgery and it was a big help to my husband who was doing most of the chores. I did the planning. The problem….access to specialty items and the fact that we pretty much only consume beef! 🙂 We even added a few dishes to our regular rotation that we found on their menus. I have recommended it to my friends and family because we did reap the benfits.
That is a difficult situation. Are there any local produce stands that are priced a little better than the stores in your area? Still frozen veggies are better than canned or no veggies. 🙂 We each have to do the best we can with our own situations and it sounds like that’s exactly what you are doing.
I do the exact same thing! I have two grocery stores, a Target, a CVS and a Rite Aid within a two mile radius of my house, and there is another grocery store that has one branch right near my husband’s work and one near my work. Because the amount of gas it takes to go to these multiple stores is a non-issue, each week I check all the circulars and get the best deal at each store (combined with coupons, but I don’t go crazy with coupons). This has definitely shaved at least $50/week off my grocery/household/toiletries bill, and it doesn’t take all that much extra time now that I’ve gotten into a routine.
I actually spend less time shopping this way than I did couponing and I save more money overall.