For several years I have been keeping what I call a "Five Dollar Cup". It seemed that the best grocery buys always occurred when I was low on funds or I had a lot to buy that week. I started faithfully putting five dollars in a cup each week, even if it meant I had to knock an item off of the grocery list. When I had a week that I didn't need to buy as much I would throw the extra money in the cup as well.
I didn't bother too much about items that were 10 or 20 cents cheaper, but rather focused on higher priced products that were two for one or half price. I use a lot of mushroom soup in cooking so when it is on for 49 cents, I will buy 20 cans. When coffee is $2.99 instead of $5.49, I will buy 8 or 10 jars.
I always get items such as toilet tissue, coffee, laundry products, sugar, meats, soft drinks, condiments, tinfoil, saran wraps, dog food, etc. at a much better cost. The Christmas and Thanksgiving turkey are always bought for a much cheaper price. My husband and I take a daily children's aspirin and right now I have a year's supply put away that was purchased at half price.
Eventually it worked out so that I didn't have to include a lot of items in my weekly shopping list as I had enough stocked up so that I could wait until the next time they were on at a "too good to resist" price, and then I could stock up with the money in the "five dollar cup". I started keeping track of how often the different items went on sale and now I can predict fairly closely how often the "good buys" would occur so that I would have an idea of how many to purchase to last until the next sale.
Not having to buy these things weekly meant that I frequently had money left to put in the cup and thus keep the wheel turning for savings. Even though the price of groceries has gone up in the last couple of years I'm not paying any more.
By Mother of 5 from Nova Scotia
This page contains the following solutions.
I just recently started working again after a 5 year break of not being able to get a job. During that time I was on $70 of food benefits from the state as required by my disability through Social Security a federal agency.
To control your budget for grocery spending, load a store gift card with whatever amount you have for groceries for the month. Keep some spare cash from the budget to shop for items from other stores that might be on sale.
