Here’s a piece from this morning’s Today Show about saving money at the grocery store. Meredith Vieira spoke with Janice Lieberman of Reader’s Digest, who just published this article. It includes well-worn bits of info, like don’t shop on an empty stomach, take a shopping list and a calculator, etc:
Not a whole lot that’s new here, but good tips nonetheless. The type of thing I intend to elaborate on in this blog. Here’s the story from todayshow.com: 13 things your grocer won’t tell you (It’s pretty much the same thing as the Reader’s Digest article, with maybe an added tip or two).
Not the biggest purchaser of Oscar Meyer goods, although their bacon is pretty tasty. Safeway is having a “Buy 5, save $5” sale:
Buy any 5 OSCAR MAYER items with your Club Card, in a single transaction, between 2/18 – 3/03 and receive $5 back instantly!
Grammar mistakes theirs. Might be a good time to stock up if you’re an Oscar Mayer consumer. Might be better to make several trips and buy 5 items each time.
There’s a 99¢ sale this weekend, and a “$5 Soup & Salad Sale” (1 soup, 1 salad, 1 salad dressing and bread for $5). Not clear about the soup and salad deal (do you have to get one of each?). There’s also the Oscar Mayer sale. Remember, I live in Albany, CA, so I think these apply to Safeway stores near me. Live farther away? I’d love confirmation that these apply or not where you live.
Produce
- 5-lb. Clementine Mandarin Tangerines: $4.88 (save $5.11)
$4.88 is a good price, but I think those savings are inflated. Trader Joes’s sells the same box of Clementines for about $6.
- Asparagus: $1.48/lb. (save $2.91/lb)
- Avocados: 99¢/ea (save $1/ea)
- Large Hot House Tomatoes: 99¢/lb (save $3/lb)
Meat/Poultry/Fish
- Honeysuckle Whole Turkey Breast (Bone-in. Frozen.): 99¢/lb (save $1.32/lb)
- Whole chicken: 77¢/lb. (save 92¢/lb)
- Tri Tip Roast: $2.49/lb. (save $3.52/lb)
- Bumble Bee Solid White Albacore Tuna: 99¢/5 oz can (save $1.30/can)
Groceries
- Safeway Apple Juice: 99¢/64-oz
The flyer says you save $1, but I think it’s a bit confused. They often run specials for 2/$5. Not sure what’s up here.
- Progresso Traditional or Vegetable Classics Soup: $1.25/18.5-19 oz cans (save up to $2.00/can)
Household
- all Laundry Detergent: $5.99/100 oz (64 load) (save $6.00)
Frozen
- Breyer’s Ice Cream: $2.49/1.5 qt (save $4)
Plenty of other specials in the flyer. If you think I missed any, let me know and I’ll be sure to include them in further updates.
And a bit broke, so it looks like I’m not doing any major shopping trips this weekend.
One thing I may have done to myself is that I’ve buying too much. I just realized how much meat and poultry I’ve got in the freezer; there’s a bunch of cereal and soup and whatnot in the pantry. The good news is that we’ve got food. The bad news is that I don’t really have the resources to treat my wife to the Valentine’s Day she deserves. Things will get better.
That said, I decided to sell dome domains that I own: mrchimp.com and misterchimp.com and myassistoobig.com, but I’m having too much fun with the latter. I hope to update with a “From the flyers” post soon.
It’s Tuesday ni.., no, it’s Wednesday morning, and I haven’t posted my trip results. Doesn’t bode well for future updates. So, last weekend: two trips, both to Safeway.
Trip 1: $60.97 (saved $42.12/41%)
Trip 2: $93.67 (saved $56.93/38%)
Total: $154.64 (saved $99.05/39%)
A few things. I thought I walked out the store with 51% savings, so I was kind of bummed to see the 41% number just now. Thought I was looking at the wrong receipt.
The best deals:
- Cranberry juice was half price (no, that wasn’t a hypothetical in the previous post). My wife insists on Ocean Spray, so when it’s on sale, I buy a bunch. No, I didn’t get 10 (but I did get 8).
- With a “Safeway Super Coupon,” graham crackers (and fig newtons) were half off as well. Got a couple of each.
- Ground turkey was, again, half off (make that buy one get one free)
- Grapes were 88¢/lb. Great price.
- The Max Pack, or whatever it is at Safeway, of chicken breasts was more than half off @ $1.99/lb.
Bear with me as I figure out the format here. Hoping to turn this into a discussion, and not a monologue.
I’ve been trying to save some money. With a mortgage, debts, and a couple of kids, one of the things I’ve been doing to try to save some cash is buying groceries in bulk. Not like CostCo or Sam’s Club bulk, though. More like “OMG! The cranberry juice my wife drinks is half off! I’ll take 10!”
I always examine my receipts after leaving the grocery store, and the metric on which I base a success/fail shopping trip is savings percentage Safeway and Lucky (and, I’m sure, others) print toward the bottom. If the number is lower than 33, the trip was a failure; greater than 50, I show off to my wife.
That said, I’m far from a financial genius. That percentage isn’t really helping me out in the greater sense. So, I figure, start a blog. Record how much you spent and what the savings was. Point out the really good deals you find. Granted, I can be kind of lazy (that’s a story for another site), but I hope to post at least a couple times a week, pre and post shopping trips.
I’m just East of San Francisco, so I don’t know that deals I find here at major grocers apply anywhere else, but if you see that they do or don’t, please feel free to leave a comment. If enough interest is generated, I’ll try to build some kind of deal notification thingy, but let’s just see how it goes as a blog for now…