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Tuesday, July 15, 2008
What would you never do to save money on food?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I went shopping on Monday with Stephanie Nelson, who runs the Coupon Mom web site. It organizes grocery and drug store sale prices, matching them with available coupons and telling you the best possible price on hundreds of items at Kroger, Publix, Wal-Mart, CVS, Target and other stores. You have to register to use it, but she promises she won’t sell your email address. You can print coupons at the web site, too, and sign up for offers from her advertisers.
For bargain lovers, shopping with Stephanie is a sight to behold.
She spends an hour preparing for her weekly shopping trips, a job that includes cleaning out the refrigerator, taking inventory, seeing what’s on sale that week, planning a week’s worth of menus, then drawing up the grocery list.
She plans meals for her family of four based on sales, coupons and, of course, what they’ll eat. We hit a Kroger in Roswell in the morning, as workers were marking down meat and produce for quick sale. (By the way, you can read more about Stephanie’s money-saving tips in an upcoming article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It should be available online, too, by Saturday, July 26.)
Stephanie shops with a clipboard holding her shopping list, one printed from her web site that lists available coupons and their value, other deals on the product, and the final price. She figures she spends no more than $125 a week on groceries — that doesn’t include one restaurant meal a week, but does include the lunches that both she and her husband eat at home each day, and what her sons, who are 12 and 15, put away when they’re eating all meals at home in the summer. Personal care items like shampoo are in that total, too. In May, she really focused on spending to see how much she could cut and still eat healthfully, and got the total down to $82 a week.
Monday’s total: $69.61 before the coupons came out, with significant savings from buying marked-down meat and produce. After the coupons: $28.83. Among her purchases were not only food for her family, but cat food she picked up for free using coupons, that she’ll donate to a charity that provides food for people and pets.
Stephanie uses a store loyalty card, is willing to switch brands or try private label (store brand) products if the price is right. She buys meat and produce marked down for quick sale, because its sell-by date is the day she shops, or perhaps the next day. She picks produce based on what’s the better buy: Peaches this time of year instead of apples, for example. She limits her trips to stores close to home, and sticks with a couple of them, shopping one for better prices on milk and eggs, another for many of her staples. If there are coupons for something she thinks her sons would like that get the price so low it’s irresistible — this week it was raspberry tea, free with coupon — she picks it up.
They’re all good ways to save money, but many shoppers don’t take all those steps. Some don’t like store loyalty cards or online savings sites, because they don’t want to give up personal information or have their shopping habits put into a corporate database. Some want their favorite produce, regardless of whether it’s in season and inexpensive. Some go to four or more stores to get the prices; some just stick with one place, figuring they’ll save on gas.
What kind of things that would save you money on food are you willing to do? What are cost-cutting steps that you simply won’t take, and why?
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