Thrifty Thursdays ~ Planning to Save

Saving money at the grocery store takes some planning. (And honestly, the planning is MUCH more important than the coupons.)

1. Plan your menu for the week (or two weeks ... or however long you go between shopping trips.)


2. Identify the ingredients you need to serve the meals you've planned. (Don't forget about breakfast, lunch, and snacks as well.)


3. Check your cupboards to see what you already have in stock.


4. Make a list of the ingredients you need to purchase. (It'll be easier if you at least roughly sort it by section of the store.)


5. Buy the ingredients on your list, your whole list, and nothing but your list at the store that has the lowest prices across the board (... for me, that's Aldi).

If you have not been doing these things already, they are the first steps to reducing your grocery budget.

Once you have those down, start checking the weekly sales at one grocery store. My favorite store is Publix. Why? They're coupon friendly, run great sales, keep the store impeccably clean, and have incredible customer service. Their motto is "Love to Shop Here, Love to Save Here" and they've managed to make it true! We have two other stores in the area, but one is not coupon friendly and the other does not seem particularly clean, and neither of them can touch Publix's customer service, so I generally just stear clear (unless they're selling chicken for $2/lb or something like that.)

SouthernSavers.com is an incredible resource for those in the southeast. Each week she matches store sales with the coupons currently available (including links for printable coupons) and posts a list of the "best price" deals at each store. You can click on the products you want to buy and print a shopping list. It's great! (And easy!) Pull the coupons you need from your organized collection based on the list you printed, put them in an envelope or something else small, and head to the store.

When I see products in the Publix sales flier for less than I would spend at Aldi for the comparable product, I plan to buy as many as we'll use in about 2 months. By doing this, my pantry is well stocked with the ingredients I need to feed my family our standard recipes (i.e. pasta, rice, spaghetti/alfredo sauce, baking supplies, canned tomatoes, canned/frozen veggies, chicken, mayonnaise, peanut butter, olive oil, salad dressings, cereal, M&Ms, etc.) On a weekly basis, I generally buy dairy products, produce, a very few recipe-specific ingredients, and then whatever items happen to be at stock-up price. (Among other things, this week I stocked up on olive oil and spaghetti sauce, last week it was cereal--both weeks I spent about the same amount for produce and pantry items at Publix.)

One final word about Aldi vs. Publix. Aldi's prices are generally about 40-60% less than Publix's prices for comparable products. Which means that if Publix is running a B1G1 sale, it will probably be about the same as Aldi's price on the comparable item. When you add a coupon on top of the sale, it's almost always cheaper than Aldi. So, I buy produce and shop the sales at Publix (along with buying whatever ingredients Aldi doesn't carry.) But shopping at Aldi is already about equivalent to saving 40-60% on my Publix grocery bill.

So, collect your coupons and keep them organized, but planning and shopping at frugal stores in the first place will take you a long way to cutting the grocery bill.

How have you saved money on groceries?