Learning to Enjoy Grocery Shopping

I found my new favorite place to grocery shop: Walmart Neighborhood Market. The ambiance is like a high-end grocery store such as the local Tom Thumb, but with the exact same prices as Walmart SuperCenter. LOVE. No seriously, if you can be in love with a Walmart, I am. This seemingly very minor discovery totally changes my world when it comes to grocery shopping because I hate grocery shopping.
I actually love shopping in general, and I don't particularly mind cooking. I do hate spending money, especially when there is the issue of fluctuating grocery prices and determining what a good price is on a gazillion products in a grocery store. This is a potentially stressful process for a frugal woman like myself. A frugal woman who has a teeny-tiny grocery budget to stick to. When I say teeny, I mean less than $50 a week (and our eating-out budget is even smaller, FYI).

Enter EMEALZ. Since cooking isn't my favorite thing to do, meal planning feels like homework. I dread it. I put it off. I don't mind scouring the internet (ie. Pinterest) and cookbooks for fun things to make or even for food to make for special events, but for weekly meals? Yuck. Not on this budget. It's no fun for me. Emealz takes care of this for me. I've been using Emealz for almost a year now, and we've absolutely loved like 90% of the meals we've made with it. The 10% we didn't love were mostly because we aren't big fish eaters, but you can swap the fish out for chicken in just about every instance. It is so worth the $1.25 a week if you are like me and hate meal planning. TOTALLY.

BUT, I still dreaded grocery shopping. We're on the Walmart plan (because overall it's cheaper than the others) with Emealz, but I've never been able to enjoy the shopping. It's the overall experience that I hate. It is generally better if I have a drink with me, but the overcrowded aisles, the ridiculously long check-out lines, the hike to and from the parking lot, and even the ultra-bright white fluorescent lighting in the store make it a miserable experience. This Walmart Neighborhood Market is a grocery store only. It's much smaller than even a basic Walmart. The parking lot is smaller. It's the middle of a mostly residential area, which means the store is less congested. The lighting in it is more subdued and indirect. This week, I spent less money on a week's worth of groceries than I normally would and was in and out of the store in record time. I have been shopping there for several weeks, and now I look forward to grocery shopping. What a difference shopping in a decent store makes!

This post probably doesn't interest anyone too much, but it was too exciting for me not to share!

Couponing Lesson Learned

Well, I learned my lesson. At least, I HOPE I did. The sales I shop are Sunday-Saturday, and I waited until Saturday night to go shopping. STUPID. So, so stupid. First of all, the sale price tags were already removed as the employees were putting up this week's sale already. Secondly, the stores were completely out of many of the items I wanted to purchase.

I got a $22.00 purchase down to $5, but really it should have been even better. I SHOULD have gotten $10 back in +UP rewards. It's too long and complicated and well, boring to relay here, but they were out of the product for which they were offering the $5 in +UP rewards. I had attempted to purchase two of said item, which would have been an awesome deal. I think I learned my lesson. I will now go Mondays or Tuesdays to do my shopping. I did my coupon clipping and ad-to-coupon matching last night and it doesn't appear there are as many good deals as there were last week, not to mention that I'm going to have to do it without the $10 in +UP rewards that I should have received. Bah humbug.

In other news, it's laundry day. I will have to write a post on the details of my laundry system. I am not afraid to admit that I have some OCD tendencies, and well, I LOVE my laundry system. :o)

Rite Aid Lesson Learned

Well, I learned my lesson. At least, I HOPE I did. The sales I shop are Sunday-Saturday, and I waited until Saturday night to go shopping. STUPID. So, so stupid. First of all, the sale price tags were already removed as the employees were putting up this week's sale already. Secondly, the stores were completely out of the items I wanted to purchase.

I got a $22.00 purchase down to $5, but really it should have been even better. I SHOULD have gotten $10 back in UP rewards. It's too long and complicated and well, boring to relay here, but I think I learned my lesson. I will now go Mondays or Tuesdays to do my shopping.

Learning the Art of Couponing

So, at the beginning of November, I began a new venture. With our financial situation, specifically with me working mostly from home now, it became crucial that we cut our expenses wherever possible. We already do not get cable/satellite TV nor do we have a landline phone. Back in March, I found the least expensive cell phone service with the best reception possible, and we cut our bill from about $109 (with no texting in the plans) to $75. (I have 1000 texts and 1000 minutes per month - I've only used up my minutes before the end of the month once. Nate has unlimited texts and minutes. If we both had my plan, it would be as low as $60 for both our cell phones. :o)) Since our rent is already so low (we rent a two bedroom cottage for $300 a month!), moving wouldn't exactly help to lower expenses. We do have two vehicle payments and have seriously considered selling our truck. But, after looking at those bigger expense-cutting decisions, we needed to try to trim elsewhere. We are being even more conscientious of our energy consumption, trying to remember to use as few lights as possible, turning lights off when we leave rooms, etc.

However, I discovered the easiest place to trim is the grocery bill. I started following a blog of my friend, Katie the Frugal Lady, where she gives tips on the art of couponing as well as how to sign up for freebies. The goal of couponing is to match multiple coupons for the same product with sale prices in stores. I didn't know this before, but you can use a manufacturer coupon AND a store coupon ($1 0ff a specific product for use at Rite Aid only, for example) for the same single item!

What kind of deals can you get? One of the big rules I've learned is to actually read ads before/while you make your shopping list. I read Meijer's ad for the week of Thanksgiving and discovered that Meijer was doubling coupons $.50 and under that week! I eagerly flipped through my coupon binder to see if I had any under $.50 that I could match with sales to get good deals. Since I did my shopping yesterday, the last day of the sale, I didn't take full advantage of Meijer's coupon doubling special. However, I would like to highlight one example of an item I got 47% off.

MEIJER

Aunt Millie's 100% Whole Grain English Muffins

Regular Price: $2.49

On Sale For: 2/$4.00

(At Meijer, when they have items 2 for $4.00, 5 for $5.00, or a similar type of pricing, you do not have to buy two or five to get that price. You can buy just 1 item for $2.00 or whatever the sale is. For example, Pace Salsa is almost always on sale for 2 for $4.00. My husband LOVES salsa, so we go through A LOT. Sometimes I buy one ($2) and sometimes I get two ($4). The price is the same regardless.)

I had a coupon for $.35 off any Aunt Millie's Whole Grain product. (Don't know where I got it.)

Meijer doubled the coupon and took another $.35 off.

I paid $1.30 for the Aunt Millie's 100% Whole Grain English Muffins.

I hope to learn how to lower that even more, but I was pretty excited! I used to just buy the cheapest product, usually Meijer brand, but we all know that whole grain products are never the cheapest. So, I really ended up with a healthier product for less money than the cheapest Meijer brand version that I usually buy.

RITE AID

I have only done two of what Katie calls "heists" at Rite Aid. The first time I was told that I could not use two coupons for the same item. At the time, I did not have the coupon policy printed, so I could do nothing but accept what the cashier told me. However, the second time I went, I had the coupon policy just in case, but the cashier did not question it! So exciting. I am not going to explain how to do everything because Katie does that so well already. I am just going to explain what I did on my last trip so you can see that it works for other people besides Katie! :o) *Please note that you must have a FREE Wellness+ Rewards Card to get many of these prices.

2 - Hershey Milk Chocolate XL Bars (for my Christmas baking) - $1 each - $2

3 - 100 ct. clear Christmas lights (which we needed - I price compared at Meijer and Walmart for a like product. Meijer was selling them for $2.17 and Walmart for $2.27 per 100 ct. strand) $1.88 each - $5.64

2 - Fleece 50'x60' Blankets (price compared at Walmart - $5 each there!) $1.99 each - $3.98

1 - Total Advanced Clean Toothpaste (4 oz.) - on sale for $1.77 each

2 - Holiday M&M's 9-12 oz bags (for my holiday baking) - 2/$4

3 - Christmas Wrapping Paper - B1G2 Free (I accidentally bought a larger roll than I intended for my paid one, but I liked the print on the paper, so I didn't return it, plus I needed it to "pad my purchase" to get it up to $20) - $3.99 total

Before coupons:

Subtotal: $21.38

Tax: $1.28

Total: $22.66

Used my $4 off a $20 purchase coupon FIRST - dropped total to: $17.38

Used $1.00 off Rite Aid Video Values Colgate Total product coupon - $16.38

Used $0.75 off manufacturer's Colgate Total product coupon - $15.63

(I paid $.02 for a tube of toothpaste, people!!!!)

$2.99 +UP from a previous purchase - $12.64

Subtotal: $12.64

Tax: $0.76

Total: $13.40

Plus I walked away with $6 in +UP rewards to use on a future purchase.

I received $36.67 worth of merchandise for $13.40!

If I did my math correctly, that's $63% off! I didn't buy anything I wouldn't have already bought/didn't need for Christmas baking, gifts, etc. Oh, and I'm also returning one of the strands of lights because it was shorting out and I had one too many strands for my tree anyway, so knock another $2 bucks off my total. :o)

GROCERY EXPENSE LOG

In order to discern how much we have actually been spending on groceries in order to accurately assess whether we are saving more money or not, I had collected all of our grocery-related receipts from January to now, and have kept them in a folder in our filing cabinet. For our budget, I had been guesstimating our grocery expenses at about $125-150 per month. I recently discovered we had actually been spending an average of $195.50 per month! For two people, I think this is ridiculously high. I now have a "Grocery Expense Log" where I record the date, the store, the total bill, the savings, and the out-of-pocket expense. I also keep a running total for each month. It sounds like a lot of extra work, but after the initial setup, it really isn't. Also, since this is a grocery/household expense list, I try to either keep extra purchases separate (ring them up separately or subtract them from the total bill) so that we don't have gift purchases, etc. mixed in with our grocery bill as that would obviously affect the total.

I have only been keeping the "Grocery Expense Log" for a month now. I knew going into this that you don't notice the lowered expenses immediately because you are buying more than you normally would (due to stockpiling). For example, I don't drink coffee. Nate does. I bought two large 34 oz Folger's coffee B1G1 Free for $11.99. I also had $1 off coupon. So, for $10.99, he has coffee to last him for months (ideally). I hope to be able to lower this by using multiple coupons when it is on sale again, but you get the idea. It's a lot to add to our bill for the month, but since I won't have to buy coffee again for a long, long time, it will save me in future months.

Our bill for October (the month before I started couponing) was $210.67. Yep, kinda high.

For November (I am done grocery shopping for the month), our grocery bill is $182.41. It's lower, but not by much. We shall see what December holds.