Using bulk buys to cut the grocery budget

It's not that we eat tuna all that regularly. It's not that I'm prepping for the zombie apocalypse. It's just that, when I find that deal that's so good I have to post it on Facebook (you know you've done it), I don't ever buy a sensible amount. I buy almost everything on the shelf.

There's a little controversy surrounding stock-up buys. Some people say it's not fair for one person to buy two cases of tuna because it's a loss leader at 2/$1. I say, since when is life fair? Everyone else should have gotten there sooner, because my pantry will be stocked with cheap food for as long as I can keep it that way (50 cents for a 5.5 oz can of tuna is a protein source at less than 10 cents an ounce). When I find that once-a-year deal, I have to be able to pay for it, and that's where a stock-up fund comes in handy. It's the cushion that allows you to buy your normal grocery budget while stocking up on the occasional awesome deal. Normally, $100 is a good amount to budget for unexpected windfalls, but if you can set aside more, that's even better. These are the sales that will get your grocery spending down further than you ever imagined was possible, so don't be shy – buy everything you are comfortable buying. Store it under a bed or a couch if you run out of room in the kitchen.

Of course, spotting these super awesome deals means knowing your prices and/or carrying your price book. Hubs glanced away for a moment at the grocery store last week and was SHOCKED, I tell ya, when he looked back and saw me loading 10 pounds of butter into the cart. I explained, gently, that butter is a staple and staples don't ever go on sale, so 30 cents off is a big deal for butter (which is yet another thing that freezes beautifully). If I had a decent sized deep freeze, I would have gotten three times as much as I did: it was the cheapest I had ever seen it. I'm still kicking myself for only bagging up seven pounds of free mangoes at the local Mexican market last week. D'oh!

Some women brag about some fancy shoes they got for 10 percent off. I brag about a year's worth of coffee for $54, or two months' supply of milk for $5 (freezes!). My shoes, by the way, are $120 shoes that someone got a "great deal" on, then wore twice and sold to me for 50 cents at a garage sale.

Starting a price book means never having to head-slap yourself for paying too much

A price book is a notebook you organize to suit your shopping habits, in which you record a product's price per ounce (or serving, if you prefer), the brand, size of the container, store name and date. A cold cereal category might look like this:

Brand Name	Package Size	Store	Date	Price per Oz
HCF Corn Flakes	18 oz	East Side Grocery	04/06/12	0.087

(If using software to make your price book, I just realized you need to set your number format to text so it won't automatically round your price per ounce to the nearest penny.)

When you're first starting a price book, I recommend going to the store without children, if at ALL possible. At least for me, when there's math involved, it must have my undivided attention if it's going to be anywhere close to accurate. Use a calculator to figure price per ounce or serving; don't trust the handy-dandy price per ounce on the shelf tag that some stores provide. That number is sometimes wrong, so figure it yourself.

Calculate the prices of everything in a certain category that you are sure your family will eat, and then decide on a maximum price per unit (price point) you're willing to pay. For cold cereal, I don't pay more than 11 cents an ounce. Don't assume that larger quantities (such as huge bags of cereal) are cheaper; that's what manufacturers want you to assume. Those bags sometimes cost double what smaller boxes cost. What happens when I don't find cereal that is less than my highest price point? We don't have cereal.

Keeping a price book can help you track store sale cycles (usually 3 months). It can also save you time at the store if you're buying loss-leader items, because you'll know in advance if they're good buys for you. Loss-leaders are advertised sales, usually on the front and back pages of a sales circular, on which the store takes a loss. They're hoping that great deals will entice you into the store and you'll spend money on other things so they'll recoup that loss, but an ad scheme is no match for a smart shopper with a price book.

A few of my price points:

• Cereal: 11 cents an ounce
• Fresh fruit: $1 a pound
• Cabbage: 33 cents a pound
• Potatoes: 30 cents a pound (good cheap food, but “junk” food in my book)
• Ground meat: $1.50 a pound
• Bone-in meat: $1 a pound

Just a note: adjust your price points with inflation. The cost of everything has gone up about 33 percent recently, and it's only going to go higher as gas prices increase.

Can you eat on $50 a month? Sure you can, with a few lifestyle tweaks

My family of four, on average, eats for a grand total of $200 a month. Sound impossible? It's totally possible, but first you have to know what you are currently spending on groceries. I'll hold your hand, because it's pretty scary when you actually know.

The most flexible portion of any budget, after entertainment and dinners out (if those are in your budget), is groceries. When Hubs and I found ourselves suddenly living on one income, I sat down and figured out a budget that allowed $400 for groceries. I figured this was pretty close to what we were spending, but knew I needed to know for sure. I kept grocery, restaurant and fast food receipts to figure out how much it cost us to eat one month, and the grand total was staggering. We spent nearly $700 just on food. That was a number that was incompatible with our financial solvency, so we immediately:

• Cut out all food not cooked at home.
• Eliminated almost all pre-packaged foods.
• Began keeping a log of all the food we had to have, where we bought it, when, and how much it cost (per ounce).

Soon I began to notice patterns at my local grocery store. Sales repeated every three months, so I learned when to stock up. We were blessed with a small freezer at the perfect price (free), and I discovered that just after Thanksgiving, turkeys went on clearance for 59 cents a pound. That freezer holds seven large turkeys, I discovered.

Within a couple of months of finding the best prices per ounce for staple foods, following sale trends and getting back to real, homemade food instead of processed food, we cut down to $400 for our grocery spending. That's when I got creative, and shaved off another $200 a month for a sustainable average of $200 a month to feed all four of us. And that, my friends, was just the beginning.

You call that a clearance? Five steps to saving actual money on markdowns

You know the feeling. From across the store, you see an orange price sticker on top of another price sticker, and your palms get sweaty. You thread your cart carefully through displays and past other shoppers, trying not to appear anxious or walk too quickly, all the time thinking, “Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, clearance stuff!” You can actually feel the adrenaline begin to surge as you find THE bargain of the day.

The thing is, sometimes those haphazard piles of stuff aren't really a bargain, but store managers have figured out that those orange tags and clearance bins are magnets for wannabe savers. If you really want to find the great bargains, it's going to take some detective work and discipline that could pay off, big-time. Follow these magical steps to get your tightwad juices flowing:

1. Find department managers and ask them when the sales are. This is especially true at a grocery store. My favorite store bags up clearance produce every Monday night at 7 p.m. The meat counter does its markdowns Tuesday at 7 a.m., so I shop Tuesday at 8 a.m. (Make sure they're actually good deals – see step 3. And remember, lots of this stuff freezes well!)
2. Ask somewhere where the clearance items are located. Periodically, this changes, so making friends with a certain cashier can get you some “insider” information.

3. 

   Next year's Valentines for the boys.

   Know. Your. Prices. Knowing the regular price of a certain type of item is key to saving green. If there's a basket full of wasabi peas for $3.50 per can, but they're regularly $3.65, I don't call that a clearance. It's a “special treat” food, and with little nutritional value, I'm still not paying that much for it. Gourmet ketchup for $3 a bottle is not a bargain when the regular price for store brand is $1.98.
4. Know your price point. I know I'd buy the entire basket of wasabi peas (Hubs loves 'em) if each can was marked, say, 50 cents. Do not waver on the price points you set for yourself.
5. This could also be Rule No. 1: Do not buy things you wouldn't ordinarily buy. A great deal isn't a great deal if you wouldn't buy it otherwise. I don't need Bump-Its, even when they're marked down from $10 to $1.50. It's a great deal... for somebody else.

I think maybe my favorite step up there is number three, but it's also the one that takes the most time and effort. How do you really get to know your prices on a personal basis? Follow me and let's find out...

What is Aeropostale, and why should I care?

First off, let me say that I'm just a regular person and the ideas I have aren't new.

Are you still here? Hellooo?

You see, I've been living this super-tightwad life for several years now, constantly finding new ways to pinch pennies, falling off the wagon and getting back on again. And, I keep learning stuff and living this life and, while it's old hat to me now, every time I open my mouth about the things I do to save money, people act like I've just invented this cool new widget that I must share. Huh.

I started looking into it because I didn't think it needed to be done. I figured all this stuff was covered, what with all the frugal, thrifty coupon sites out there. Heck, I was subscribed to a lot of them. But, as I found myself unsubscribing from the blogs and sites that hawked coupons and ways to save $10 at Aeropostale (what?), I realized that maybe I did have something to offer.

This is not a site for the faint of heart, although if you think you can't do the stuff I do to live the life you want, you might just surprise yourself. I haven't worked outside our home since 2007. On a teacher's salary, we've bought a house with land in the country. We are well on our way to being debt-free, we're healthier than we've ever been, and I have lots of pretty little chickens and two happy country boys to show for it. And, I've gotten to live my dream and raise my kids. That's the most valuable part to me, and who knew I could get there by changing my attitude and washing some Ziplocs? You can, too. Follow me to some sheer tightwad awesomeness...