Budgeting 101 – Using your groceries to finance your next trip

Join The Grocery Game.com

The real reason that people don’t want to use coupons is that even if you cut them they wtill need to remember to use them and be able to find them when they need them.  Enter the Grocery Game.  This is a wonderful site that was set up by an entrepreneurial woman named Terri who was passionate about saving her family money.  She developed a system to pair coupons with the sales at local grocery stores in order to save the absolute most money possible.  Every week members (it costs less than a dollar a week to join) get access to her ‘list’ for your local grocery store.  This tells you which things are on ‘real’ sale and which coupon from which week’s newspaper to pair with it.  All you need to do is keep a file folder with each week’s coupons in it and when you need one, go and cut it out.  No more clipping, no more searching, no more filing!  Best of all, no items make it onto Terri’s list unless they are at least 50% off the regular price.  Because I’m lazy and because I don’t have the time to figure out the system myself this is the way I’ve been able to save the MOST money.

Stock Pile Groceries

Terri’s list is great, but unless you are stock pilling things when they are on sale and ‘shopping’ out of your stock pile you won’t ever save any real money on your grocery list.  If you have to shop for something when you need it, you loose any bargaining potential you may have with the grocery stores in the form of waiting until something goes on sale.  If you need it, you will buy it when you need it. 

I created a master shopping list of everything our household buys on a monthly basis and organized it by the area of the store in which each thing is found.  This list became my basis for stockpiling.  If something on Terri’s list matched our list I bought enough to last a month.  If it was a name brand item (Life® Cereal, Ritz® Crackers, Quaker® Oatmeal) I bought enough for 4 months because these things go on sale so infrequently.  While I spent the same amount in groceries for the first 4 months that I had been spending before, once we got a good stockpile going I suddenly never needed to shop for more than a few things.  Our grocery bill plummeted.  All I had to do then was buy enough to replenish my supplies whenever something we buy regularly showed up on Terri’s list.

Mooch

Mooching: getting someone else to pay for what you need to buy.  Almost no one on any ‘save money’ website is ever willing to add this as a way to cut your bills, but I am a big fan of mooching.  Mind you, there are appropriate ways and inappropriate ways to mooch.  Here are some appropriate ways to mooch for your groceries- I’ll include appropriate ways to mooch for other items later….

• Cut out 1 meal a week by joining or creating a ‘potluck’ night with friends or neighbors.  You may spend $3 on baking a cake or a side dish, but you get dinner for four and social hour free!

• Volunteer as a family at a local soup kitchen once a week.  During non-holiday seasons most soup kitchens around the nation desperately need volunteers.  Start helping out regularly and create a tradition of service in your family.  Plus you’ll get dinner on the house.

• Talk you boss into buying lunch for the office once a month.  More if possible.  You give them your hard-earned hours and only get 2 weeks of vacation a year.  They should help you save for spending those 2 weeks in paradise!

• Eat your mother’s (or in-law’s) cooking as frequently as possible.  It makes her feel special and you get a night off.  She’ll love to see the kids too.  If your mom doesn’t live nearby, adopt a surrogate older adult. 

• Learn how to say ‘thank you so much’ when someone offers to cover the bill at a restaurant, don’t forget to send them a postcard from Tahiti and of course, don’t force them to pay if they don’t offer. 

• The main key to successful and appropriate mooching is to give back to whomever is feeding you and yours. 

With some strategic and well-thought out plans you can easily cut your grocery bill enough to save at least $200 a month towards your next vacation.  Remember, buying bread is MUCH more exciting when you’re doing it in Paris.