Question from a Reader

This email came to me from my sweet friend, Karen.

You mentioned that you can shop for pretty cheap. I realize that I have a few more people than you do and so my bill will be a little more, but I still would like to see if I can make it smaller. :-)

We don't buy processed food or pre-made food (ex: chef boyardee). We don't use coupons because it seems that most of the time the store brand is still cheaper or we don't use the product. And for the few that we do, I don't think the time spent sorting and clipping amounts to the savings (time is money you know).

I have tried shopping at Aldi's but it seems that most of the food sold there is in a box. I know there are a few things there that I do use, but if I have to go to another store to get the rest of my groceries, is it really worth going out of my way when I can get all the groceries at one store? Maybe it does since I will go over to Maple City to buy my spices after I did the calculation on that and discovered that those spices that they sell at the grocery store are like $15/lb.

I did head over to Sav-a-lot the other day, and was able to pick up a few items there, but I still had to go to Kroger to get the rest off the groceries.

So how do you shop?

I use coupons a lot. Yeah, most of the time they are for processed food or junk food, but I have found more and more organic items, and things like free salad dressing or $1 off produce, that sorta thing.


For example, in the August edition of the All You magazine that they sell At Walmart, they have a strip of free items when you buy 3 Nabisco/Kraft items. Since the Kool Aid packs that are $.20 each are a Kraft item, I bought 30 of them and got 2 packs of all beef hot dogs, 2 packs of sliced cheese, 2 boxes of Wheat Thins, 2 Salad Dressings, and 2 packages of Crystal Light for free. I also got $1 off bananas since I had 2 Kraft Dressings, even though I technically didn't have to pay anything for them. Now, I don't drink the Crystal Light, nor do we normally use the Kool aid, let alone 30 packs, but since I only paid $3.00 for all that, I was okay with giving that stuff to the food pantry.

Meijer also has http://meijermealbox.com where you can get coupons for the meijer products. Normally, I would buy the whole wheat noodles, but they often have a coupon for $.50 off a box of meijer brand pasta. And, it will go on sale for $.50 a box, making it free with the coupon. When that happens, I stock up since I can print off as many of the coupon that I want. Meijer brand spaghetti sauce works in a similar manner. They will often have a coupon for $.50 off a jar, and when it goes on the 10 for $10 sale, I will stock up on that as well. Not as good as the homemade stuff I will have in the fall, but works for us for now. :)

Aldi does have a lot of boxed and processed foods, but if you dig a bit, you can find the goldmines there. Like cheese, tortillas, milk, and eggs are usually 10-20% cheaper. I get some fresh produce there, but you gotta go in the mornings to get the best looking stuff. Usually Wed are the best mornings, that I have found.

I normally go to the bread store outlet once every 10 weeks or so. I can get "day old" organic bread for $1 a loaf. I stock up there, and have bread, buns, and whatnot for around $35 a trip. That almost fills 1/2 my freezer.


I have been getting meat at the butcher shop as well. We don't use a lot, so 75lb. has lasted us around 5 weeks so far, and we still have over 3/4 left. If I make spaghetti, I only use 1 lb for 2 jars of sauce, and have leftovers for homemade pizza the next night...and if I make hamburgers, I make 1 lb. into "sliders" (on the dinner rolls vs. regular buns) and then I make some black bean burgers as well to make more for us to eat. The black beans run around $.50 a can and 1 can makes about 6 slider burgers.

Things like organic and all natural peanut butter can be bought at places like Target, too.
http://www.afullcup.com has coupons for Target and other store coupons, too. I found Skippy all natural peanut butter coupons for $1 off. They normally sell for $2.08, but I got it for $1.08....and of course, it's a store coupon, so if you find a MANUFACTURER coupon (like in the Sunday paper), you can add it to the store coupon and save more.

If you prefer shopping at Kroger, you can add "clipless" coupons to your Kroger card. Check out the coupons at ShortCuts. You can even use a paper coupon combined with the clipless coupon to save you even more. For example, I had a $1/1 Downy clipless on my card, a $1/1 manufacturer coupon, and it was on sale for $3.99, so I got it for $1.99 total after all coupons.


Other ways that I save money are basically I use up leftovers to make something different so that we don't know we are eating leftovers, use about 1/2 the meat that is called for in a recipe, and make my own from scratch whenever I can (cereal, pizza dough, quick bread, noodles, that sorta thing) and I can get pretty creative when I need to. Our grocery budget is around $50 a week for the 5 of us, and I can stay under that if need be. We don't eat beans and rice for every meal, although I like it once a week, just because I enjoy them. I also try to make a soup from scratch once a week (chicken noodle, cheesy potato, black bean).

The biggest thing is NO, I don't buy everything at one store. I make a plan (takes about 1/2 hour) and map out all the sales at each store. It has to have at least 3 things at a good price before I will stop there. Otherwise, Walmart will price match everyone else's ad prices. If you like the one stop shopping idea, I would suggest reading my "how to" here.


As far as household and health and beauty products, I don't include those in the grocery budget since I normally get those for pennies a piece. I shop at CVS and use the Extra Care Buck system that they have to "roll" the bucks to buy other stuff. If you need help learning about how to shop at CVS, check out Money Saving Mom's CVS 101.

Does anyone else have any ideas for Karen? How do you shop and save money at the store?



*originally published Aug 19, 2008