Save at least 50-75% or more on your groceries each time you shop!

I *LOVE* The Grocery Game (http://www.thegrocerygame.com/). I’ve been using The Grocery Game process for almost two months now and each time I go to the store, I save at least 50% on retail prices. I aim for 75% and it’s now become habit for me to accumulate free things when I shop.

Here’s how it works - The Grocery Game website tracks what promotions your local store is currently running and then matches up what coupons were in the paper recently for those items, resulting in a report that indicates what items you can purchase this week at rock bottom pricing (think 50c for a marinade that is usually $3.29, $1 for bread that is usually $2.99 etc). The report is color-coded to indicate what items are on a good sale, what items are at absolute rock bottom prices and what items you’d get for free after coupons. The items are listed by the store’s typical layout, making it easier for you to shop and you print out your list. You can sign up to The Grocery Game for a $1 trial and then after that, you pay according to how many stores you wish to get reports for (you will definitely recoup the money on your first visit to the store if you use the system correctly – in fact, I saved so much in the first month to buy a freezer for all the groceries I get on sale). If you decide to sign up for a trial, please send me an e-mail to gaylebu@gmail.com so that I can send you the link and get a referral credit (every bit helps!)

Here’s what you need to do after signing up:

You buy at least two copies of your local major newspaper every Sunday (the ones with the coupons in them). Here in Atlanta, we have the AJC and we can get a bundle of two at our local Kroger, Publix or Walgreens at a discount. If you’re out of town, get a friend to buy it for you.

You then need to manage your coupons. You can do this two ways:

1. Clip and file the coupons that you plan to use for your family in a large check file (I have the following categories: Today, Baby, Beverages, Cans, Cereal/Bread, Desert/Snacks/Candy, Drugs, Frozen, Paper/Cleaning, Refrigerated, Toiletries/Cosmetics, Other), or:

2. Remove the coupon inserts, put the date on the front and keep them in a file so that you can go back and clip the coupons when you see an item on The Grocery Game report you wish to buy.

I do a combination of both. I clip all the coupons that I plan to use and file them in my coupon file. I then keep the coupon books in tact, put the date on them and file them away. That way, I can carry my coupons whenever I go shopping and take extra advantage of any unadvertised specials the store may have, but at the same time, my coupon file is not overfilled with random coupons I’ll probably never use. But if an item comes up FREE on The Grocery Game report or it’s ridiculously cheap for an item that I might not normally use, I can still refer back to old flyers and clip the coupon.

Then… go shopping! Challenge yourself to only buy items that are at least 50% off the usual retail price and stockpile those items. After a while, you’ll find that you create new rules for yourself as to how much you will spend on an item. In my opinion, you should never pay more than 75c for a box of high-end toothpaste (I’ve accumulated about 10 FREE boxes in the past month), name-brand hand soap is no more than 30c and name-brand frozen veges no more than 50c a bag! You will be amazed at the amount of totally FREE stuff you accumulate. I’ll keep posting photos of my free stuff so you can see that’s it’s really possible.

If you want to make a habit of only buying items that are both discounted and coupon-worthy, I encourage you to go online and find free printable coupons to complement the coupons you get from the newspaper. Next time, I’ll tell you about what websites I’ve found that have printable coupons.