Cheap Grocery

Hello, this is Charles. Welcome to my cheap grocery blog! Looking for cheap grocery? I’ve put together some great tips on how to get the best cheap grocery in this main page from my previous blog posts.

Wow, I can’t believe I manage to put all my years of cooking experience and reading about cheap grocery into one page :)

Please enjoy my cheap grocery world….

How to find the best Cheap Grocery?

Well, for a start, you can look for coupons and flyers. Often you can save lots of money based on a combination of savings. Many times there can be more than 50% savings with the right combination. Or, you can keep track and stockpile items at the right time of year.

I know that different people have different needs, budgets, and tastes for their cheap grocery needs. To make things easy, my personal recommendations for cheap grocery are…

Cheap Grocery – My Reviews and Top Hints

  1. 3 Great Ways to Save 25% on your Grocery Bills
  2. 3 Great Ways to Save Hundreds a Month Through Coupons!
  3. How a free RSS feed program saved me 40% on my grocery bill
  4. 4 Nutritious foods for less than a dollar and a half

It can be hard to pick the right way to save money, but after going through all the top hints these are the best ones I’ve seen.

How Do I Pick The Best Cheap Grocery?

I use some 7 factors to measure how effective they are as cheap grocery.

What are the 7 factors?

  1. Savings
  2. Ability to Multiply Savings
  3. Quality of Product
  4. Popularity of Product
  5. Limits to total items
  6. Coupons vs. Blowouts
  7. Ease of getting savings

You can read more about the 7 factors as you move through this site and look for cheap grocery

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Published on 28 Nov 2009 in cheap grocery, by admin

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3 Great Ways to Save Hundreds a Month Through Coupons!

Ever wonder how that one person always gets away with a full cart of groceries for under $50?

The secret is proper use of coupons.

Do you clip coupons?

If not, after reading these you’ll see why you should!

And if you do, leverage these ideas to save even more!

- Call about expired coupons

Expired coupons? Is it possible?

Yes it is!

There are many areas where stores will accept coupons that are expired – even 6 months after their expiration date!

When looking for cheap grocery, keep in mind that the store has one objective – to get the items on its shelves out the door as fast as possible!

They
don’t care if they lose money on a specific item – because chances are
you’ll be buying other items that they will make money on!

Even if they lose money on a few carts of groceries, the ones they do make money on will compensate.

Often, stores will overbuy a certain item after coupons are out on it – and they are left with too much stock.

Call before trying this at your local store, however, and remember that they are doing you a favor.

- Look for stores that double coupons

Some stores offer the benefit of double coupons – meaning more savings for you!

Sometimes this is not advertised – you have to look for it to find it – like the expired coupons, call ahead.

- Trade them!

Ever run into the situation where there’s one or two coupons for the food you want and 50 for the food you don’t?

Ever think that maybe you should go out to buy and extra paper or take the flier off someone else’s door?

Here’s another idea – trade your coupons for other cheap grocery coupons!

Keep all the ones you get, and offer them for trade, either through a group or on a site like craigslist or kijiji.

Trading
coupons will mean that when there’s a big sale on, you can help other
people double up on their savings – while you double up on yours!

Talk to your local library to see if they’ll sponsor a meeting every few weeks, and you can start a local cheap grocery club.

If
trying to do this over the internet, keep in mind that you should avoid
inviting people you don’t know into your home – it’s better to send
them by mail.

While with mail you will likely run into some
characters who don’t return coupons, the ones that do can become long
term coupon trading partners!

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Save 10% or More on your Next Grocery Bill!

Looking to find the best cheap grocery?

Here are some great ways to shave 10% of your next bill!

- Bring a calculator!

As consumers, we’ve been trained that bigger is better – but it isn’t always that way!

Lately there’s been a trend to make economy sizes of items actually cost more per unit than smaller sizes!

Bringing a calculator will let you to quickly calculate the price per
volume or weight – this will give you an idea of what really is the
best deal!

- Fill up your tank before you fill up your cart

Shopping on an empty stomach is probably the best way to spend more than you have to.

Food companies spend millions of dollars to design their packaging so
that it appeals to consumers like you and I. When you’re hungry, the
effect of this marketing is even more powerful – whether you admit it
or not, you are drawn into this packaging even more.

Eat before you go, and you’ll be more inclined to stick to your list

- Look ONLY at two flyer pages

Flyers have some great deals advertised, however not all items in flyers are great cheap grocery deals!

The front and back covers, as well as the first and last pages, are the
best deals in flyers. Sometimes a special insert will also be good.

Pay attention to only these items – the rest of the flyer is mostly overpriced items posing as deals.

The perception for most consumers is that if a flyer has an amazing
deal on the front, and it is thick, then the whole thing must be full
of good deals.

Too often, this is not so.

Focus on the real deals for short term buying, and comparative shopping for long term purchases

- Go big or go home

Stores with large amounts of square footage are the best deals – go to
these and you’ll be more likely to find across the board savings.

Keep in mind that your time is also important – you can’t always be rushing out to a megastore for a quart of milk.

If you focus on making the right planned, long term purchases, then you can’t go wrong.

Often it helps to buy multiples of items – for example, have an extra
bottle of laundry detergent ready, so that when you’re done one you
aren’t in a rush to get out to the store. You can then replenish your
backup.

This will help you use the megastores more often, and over time ensure you have more cheap grocery deals!.

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How a free RSS feed program saved me 40% on my grocery bill

For anyone who’s on a cheap grocery search, processed foods are the most expensive items in your cart.

A home made meal is often less than half the cost of many processed alternatives.

I never had time to put these together, until I discovered the miracle of free RSS feeds.

What is an “RSS feed”?

Imagine you didn’t have to go looking for new information on your favorite websites. You just go to one web page and it gives you all the updates from all the websites you follow. This is what an “RSS feed” helps you do.

If you look in your browser, somewhere on the line where the url for this webpage is would be a little orange smybol with 3 diagonal lines. This is the symbol for RSS

If you click this, you are transported to an option to sign up for a regular update whenever this website is updated.

You’ll need to sign up for a program like google reader (it is 100% free). Their website contains a good set of instructions.

Once you have this program set up, you can subscribe to any website that has the “RSS” symbol on it’s website address.

Why would you want this?

Look for food and recipe feeds. There’s a ton of fantastic ideas out there to cook with, from the beginner to the expert.

Simply following them gives you new ideas, new tips, and new ways to cook for less

How did this save me 40%?

20% of the savings came from the fact that before doing this, my bill consisted mostly of processed foods and eating in restaurants.

By having the ability to cook something new on a routine basis, I can now focus my time on looking for cheap grocery purchases to satisfy meals that are better than restaurant quality.

Cooking with new ideas has allowed me to escape the monotony of a regular meal cycle, yet keep my costs further down.

A further 20% savings came from the fact that most grocery coupons and deals also promote their own RSS feeds. By having the newest coupons without having to go searching for them, I’m always up to date on where the savings are.

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Published on 03 Sep 2009 in cheap grocery, by admin

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4 Nutritious foods for less than a dollar and a half

It’s important to balance cost and nutrition when looking for cheap grocery items.

Here’s 4 great ways to keep your costs down and your energy levels up:

- Eggs

Good eggs can usually be had for less than a quarter each. They’re healthy and make a great breakfast

- Apple

3 or 4 can be had for about a dollar, if separate through the day more than enough to complement all your meals.

Apples are also known to be anti-cancerous

- Oatmeal

Market prices under 75 cents per pound, this amount would make a few servings.

Coupled with a pair of eggs, and you’re still under the dollar and a half budget.

Oatmeal is great in fiber, and a cornerstone for any cheap grocery searcher!

Banana

If you’re walking by a grocery store and need a snack, walk in and pick one banana off a bunch and go up to the cashier. Usually it’s less than 14 cents, and will fill you right up with lots of energy.

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Published on 29 Aug 2009 in cheap grocery, by admin

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How to get the best price on meat

Meat is a large part of both many people’s diets and expenses, and reducing the cost is a great way to ensure that you have a cheap grocery bill.

Here’s how to keep the cost down.

Wholesale clubs

Costco, Sam’s Club, as well as other warehouse clubs often have much better priced meat than you will find in your local grocery store – sometimes as much as 30-50% off.

Does this justify the cost of membership so that you can better find cheap grocery products?

That depends on your level of consumption, and your ability to freeze foods.

For two people or more, the cost usually justifies.

For the individual, here’s how to do a quick calculation.

Weekly meat budget: ______________

30% of Weekly meat budget (multiply by 0.3):  _____________

30% of weekly meat budget times 50 (number of weeks in the year less two, for the times you go out):

If this is higher than the cost the warehouse club membership, then it is worth pursuing.

There are, obviously, other benefits that can be realized outside of a membership club, however it is interesting that on a small weekly meat budget of $10, this would translate into annual savings of $150 on a membership that costs approximately $75.


Bulk up and freeze at discount time

If you don’t go the warehouse club route, there’s the option of looking for the “special price” red tag meat.

This meat is preferctly fine to buy – it’s to the grocer’s advantage to have it sold below cost before it hits the expiry date (when it will be required to be thrown away).

If you purchase large quantities of this meat, the savings can be decent, however remember that the expiry date is often within a day or two of your purchase.

If you’re going to freeze it, seperate it into portion sizes and freeze that day. Getting into a habbit of freezing food is essential to maximize your potential for a cheap grocery bill.

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Published on 24 Aug 2009 in cheap grocery, by admin

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